On Thu, 2003-09-25 at 10:30, keith smith wrote:
> I don't get it.  What real R&D is there for a distribution?  

A Ton...if you want somebody to test and patch the latest utilities and
programs, then you need to pay them. Sometimes, i wonder if they follow
that model (gcc latest-bleeding-edge on a boxed release?)..Also, i'm
sure that they have a staff of linux-kernel hackers....RPM and it's
technologies are starting to get better, so i'm sure that they are
paying a staff to work on that (god, i hope so). 

All of that aside, it's a huge pain in the ass to maintain a Distro. You
have users demanding that you pre-package utilities that would only take
20 minutes at the most to compile yourself. You have to keep a staff who
just watches the security-focus mailing lists and fixes bugs and pushes
them up to your servers. And god forbid if they have to just compile
their own kernel. 


I know Debian just recently announced for an aggresive push for a Sarge
release in December, but that will only come through charisma and
dedication of the part-timers...most of the work will probably come with
those who can devote 10 hours a day on that. 
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003/debian-devel-announce-200308/msg00010.html


Don't get me wrong...i'm not bashing the Open Source Model..i'm pretty
sure that Debian will make that target, or miss it by only a month. I'm
just pointing out that their is REAL work, dollars, and R&D to be done
when putting your name on a Linux Distro.