On 2003-11-15 19:00:57 +0000 Ben Francis ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk wrote:
However, I can imagine that many of the Debian users on this list would oppose his views with some hostility. Is Mr Oxer missing the point of the Debian GNU/Linux project altogether or does Debian really need to start appealing more to our well known friend Joe, the "mainstream user"? I'd be interested to hear some views on this.
Damn that site. Set a foreground colour if you set a background colour, damn it. Thank the fates for the print version. The article also contains the normal sort of errors ("truly Open Source" is just plain wrong) but maybe there's an overzealous copy editor revising his text where it doesn't meet house style. Some of it also seems dated to me, as I think I was at a 10th Debian birthday a while ago. (As is often the case with debian things, my memory is fuzzy.)
If he really thinks this, I think Mr Oxer needs to raise it on debian lists rather than posturing in magazines. I searched the archives of the debian-desktop list he mentions from today back to the start of 2001 and found no posts by him there. I did find that he maintains some packages which looked like nothing to do with making Debian popular for mainstream users (A PHP profiler, an apt cache tool and something I forgot already) and saw someone grumbling that he'd filed an Intent To Package (ITP) notice but not acted on it.
If he's serious, I hope he'll act on his ideas. I get the impression from Ben's message that he thinks "Mr Oxer" is just trolling like a lot of paid writers. Is that the general impression it gives?