Paweł Madej posted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, excerpted below, on Fri, 23 Sep 2005 18:22:43 +0200:
> Hello, > > I've found a news that LSB Release3 [1] was announced. So there is my > question. Are Gentoo Foundation and Gentoo Developers developing Gentoo > Linux in coordinance with standards provided by this specification? > > Could someone give me reasons why yes or no? Note that I'm simply a user and in no way speak officially for Gentoo. However, this issue has been of interest to me, so I've some observations on the Gentoo/LSB interaction. Hopefully, however, my reply will save some developer from having to compose one, meaning they can spend the time on doing stuff I don't have the skills for, all those new ebuilds! =8^) No, Gentoo is not, basically because much of the standard only makes sense for binary distributions, not from-source (meta)distributions like Gentoo, and/or for all-at-once release upgrades, not incrementally upgraded as it comes out distributions like Gentoo. Additionally, normal all-at-once releases only have one version of things like KDE installed at a time, where Gentoo slots them, so multiple versions may be installed at the same time without conflicting (very much) with each other. The LSB makes little if any allowance for this sort of thing. Keep in mind that the LSB is really targeted at binary-only products, regardless of what distribution the product is to be run on. If it's available under an open source license, then a distribution can distribute it and manage support of any changes it has to make. Those who refuse to open their source thus face the problem of supporting all the diverse distributions out there, where the distributions would be providing support for at least the differing stuff themselves, if they were given the chance with open source. Thus, it's those closed source vendors who tend to support stuff like the LSB the strongest. (I must say that IMO Gentoo does pretty good with even closed source, tho, considering the number of ebuilds available and supported, to aid in the installation of closed source apps. =8^) All that said, as for any distribution, the closer Gentoo can be to normal FHS locations and the like, the closer it keeps to assumptions made by even open source developers about stuff like lib64 vs lib vs lib32 on hardware that handles dual bitness (like amd64, my arch, therefore my interest in the subject), for instance, the less changes Gentoo devs must make to even open source apps, as compared to upstream. Thus, it makes sense for Gentoo to maintain compatibility where it doesn't conflict too strongly with other Gentoo goals or policies, since being different means more work than abiding by the standard. Gentoo can be and is different where it makes sense to be based on what Gentoo /is/, but it tends to follow pretty closely the defined standards where there's no strong reason /not/ to do so, because it just makes life simpler that way. What this all means in brief is that Gentoo in general abides by the LSB/FHS where doing so doesn't come in conflict with Gentoo's own priorities. Assuming Gentoo users are comfortable with Gentoo and its priorities or they'd be using a different distribution, it will follow that most of them will also be comfortable with how Gentoo treats the LSB, because to treat it differently would mean compromising part of the priorities that help make Gentoo what it is. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
