Comments for etbe

Comment on fair trade is the Linux way by Wendy Jakobson

Wendy Jakobson — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:33:59 +0000

Hi, Great posts
I too am very interested in Fair Trade Chocolate, and agree that the quality is worth the extra price.
Cadbury’s efforts, while admirable are nothing more than guaranteeing their supply chain. The factors leading to this initiative have little to nothing to do with child slavery, and much to do with the fact that the places where Cadbury’s grows their cocoa is seeing a ageing farmer base, crops yields half what they were 10 years ago and no new farmers taking their place.
This article by The Economist questions the reasons behind it. (The Economist isn’t exactly ‘left’) so that tells you something.
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10609020.
Cadbury claims that it’s not about price for Ghanaian cocoa as it sells at 10% above the Fairtrade floor price, but about ’sustainability. Well, the fact remains that the Fairtrade floor price is just that, a floor. Fairtrade agreements pay above current world market prices, not just the floor price. So that’s a red herring. The reality is that 70% of Cadbury’s cocoa comes from Ghan, and it’s simply trying to ensure it can continue to buy it.
Another article posits that the water wells that Cadbury are building are really to assist the women of the vilage to get their water more efficiently so they can not spend so much time getting water from distant wells, therefore more time around the farm to work, thereby increasing yields.

If they were so concerned about the farmers they would have done this years ago when the world market price was half what it is now.

Wendy

Comment on Release Dates for Debian by Mark Shuttleworth » Blog Archive » Discussing free software syncronicity

Thu, 15 May 2008 18:24:55 +0000

[...] in the comments on Russell Coker’s thoughtful commentary there’s a suggestion that I really like - that it’s coordinated freeze dates more than [...]

Comment on Release Dates for Debian by Don Marti

Don Marti — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:44:37 +0000

Even if the release date isn’t the same, it might make sense to agree on the same versions of major components, such as the kernel, X, and Samba. That way upstream can plan “Production” and “Crack Smoking” releases. The kernel developers do sync up feature introductions with RHEL and SLES releases.

“You can sort of track 2 major distros’ release schedules but once you get beyond that it gets kind of tough.” — Ted Ts’o at least year’s kernel summit.

http://www.linuxworld.com/community/?q=node/621

Comment on Release Dates for Debian by etbe

etbe — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:13:12 +0000

Christopher: I used to work for Red Hat and know how their processes work. While I won’t divulge any details I can tell you that it’s nothing like a sausage factory. ;) I am a Debian Developer, I can’t claim to know anything special about Debian as almost everything that is of interest is published.

I now do a lot of sys-admin work on both Debian and CentOS (with a small amount of Fedora thrown in). So I have seen this from all sides.

Chris: The recent OpenSSL issue would still have occurred only in Debian and not in Red Hat if something like my suggestion had been implemented a few years earlier. There will continue to be plenty of variation between distributions in terms of compile options.

Also we should keep in mind the fact that while having similar versions might make it easier to prepare attacks, it will also make it easier to detect and fix the bugs.

Comment on Release Dates for Debian by Chris Rutherford

Chris Rutherford — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:12:13 +0000

I thought one of the things that made Linux harder to exploit on a large scale was the variation and lack of pervasiveness. Do the positives out weigh the negatives? i.e. easier to port apps between distros? - I personally think not

Comment on Release Dates for Debian by Christopher Cashell

Christopher Cashell — Thu, 15 May 2008 03:37:41 +0000

Well said, Sir.

All in all, I agree with you. I think Red Hat does a pretty good job of spacing out their RHEL releases, and that would make a pretty good goal for Debian to match. And, as someone who administers a large number of RHEL/CentOS boxes along with a smaller number of Debian boxes, having a closer match of versions for major software packages would definitely ease some of the hassles of synchronizing between them. Obviously there are a few minor issues, as raised here, but I haven’t seen any that seem insurmountable.

Comment on Release Dates for Debian by Green420thumB

Green420thumB — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:25:55 +0000

I dont think that I like this idea, I believe that Debian is as stable and as secure as it is because they do release when ready. Why would you want to release a product when it is not? Then you might as well sell out to M$.

Comment on Release Dates for Debian by J. Lambrecht

J. Lambrecht — Wed, 14 May 2008 10:26:50 +0000

Though mostly agreeing with both Anouk and James still there’s validity to the proposal. How compatible are distro’s anyway these days ?

Debian is growing older and older with every release upcomming and it is not improving. Just for fun ?

Comment on Release Dates for Debian by Cian Brennan

Cian Brennan — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:46:34 +0000

Again, while I believe the “ship when ready” is one of Debian’s major mistakes, I don’t think there’d be an issue with a feature freeze at an early date. Having all/most of the major linux distros on a synchronised release schedule would be an incredible benefit, and would lead to far greater stability/security within distributions, as it would make patch sharing far easier/more productive/more likely

Comment on Smoke from the PSU by Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:26:56 +0000

Stupid me, I read the headline as “smoke from PSU” and clicked on it in aKregator wondering “OMGWTF is going on in downtown Portland? Did the homeless revolt or something? Why haven’t we fed them to the hungry yet?