[Pkg-scicomp-devel] joining debian-science and pkg-scicomp

[Andreas Tille]

On Wed, 9 Jul 2008, Ondrej Certik wrote:

> Great -- if it's internal to Debian, then all is fine. When I read
> that, I said -- hell no, I don't want another derivative. :)

I really love people who think "hell no" if they hear about just another
derivative from Debian. ;-))
Welcome in the boat of people who try to make Debian good enough to make
any reason to derive void.  BTW, I'm constantly thinking about a better
name for the beast than Custom Debian Distributions. [1]

> change the link:
>
> http://wiki.debian.net/?DebianEdu
>
> to:
>
> http://wiki.debian.org/?DebianEdu

Thanks for any hints.  If anybody wants to fix this kind of problems
directly - the text is inside the cdd source package and can be accessed
in SVN [2].

> Andreas --- so the Debian Science CCD just provides the metapackages?
> I mean -- all you have to do is to make sure that the user just
> installs one metapackage and he gets a fully working system ready to
> do whatever he needs in his field? And then you also make sure that
> all the packages work nicely together?

Well, this is one major point.

> Or is there something more that I don't see. :)

I try to propagate more things around it but things are developing slowly.
If you consider that the tasks pages in the web [3] I frequently advertised
here on this list took at least three years from the idea to the implementation
you might imagine that there are more ideas hanging around how we could
provide other clever tools if spare time would permit.  David Paleino had
done a really good job with the Debian Med alioth pages [4] - the tasks pages
are only one part of it.  My goal is to be the missing link between upstream
developers and users of field specific software.  This is the cruxial idea
in a CDD.  The rationale behind this idea is that Free Software does work
perfectly in standard desktop applications (browser, mail, office suite),
but it does not in special applications for a minority of users.  There
are for sure exceptions - but try to look at the blockers in specific
Windows - Linux migration scenarios.   The point is basically that the
critical mass of Free Software developers is to small for specific applications.

My dream is that CDDs might help to bring people together to reach the
critical mass which is needed to develop high quality Free Software.
(And trust me - it is a long winding road to make people aware of this idea. ;-) )
I just learned that the way to wider acceptance is to provide techniques
people *want* to use and the tasks pages are one of these.  Once you
are able to provide a technical base people try to understand the idea
behind.

Kind regards

          Andreas.

  [1] http://wiki.debian.org/CDDNamingProposals
  [2] svn://svn.debian.org/cdd/cdd/trunk/cdd/doc/en/?rev=0&sc=0
  [3] http://cdd.alioth.debian.org/science/tasks/
  [4] http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/
-- 
http://fam-tille.de