Re: Can't update package index
"SL Baur" <steve(a)xemacs.org> writes:
On 8/18/07, David Kastrup <dak(a)gnu.org> wrote:
> If Linus dropped out of the game, development would continue.
> People would at some point converge to some favorite preferred
> points to pull from, but there would be no deadlock or vacuum in
> the mean time.
I understand that and I've been reading lkml for some months now
again. I worry about where the convergence point would be, but I
presume it would sort itself eventually.
Personally, I just don't like dictators. Ever. No matter how
benevolent and not even me.
I created xemacs-review for a reason. Linus has an informal
linux-review, I just prefer it to be a formal arrangement with equal
privileges on the core source tree.
Huh? Linus is dictator over his own repository and nobody else's.
Just like everybody else is. That people decide to pull from his tree
gives him a certain leverage. If people don't like what he does, they
can stop pulling from him right away without any interruption of their
work or any inconvenience: they have the complete repository history
that they want to work with (usually everything since the inception)
on their computer. So his powers are much less than that of elected
politicians (or steering committees) which one has to tolerate until
the end of term.
The XEmacs steering committee has quite more dictatorial power than
Linus does: they are in charge of the Subversion repository, and one
has to clone and take over the project if one does not like their
decisions. A move that is costly because it severs ties and leads to
an incompatible repository with a separate development course.
In contrast, with git everybody forks off his private branches and
projects all the time anytime: that is the _standard_ way of doing
things, and one resynchronizes (either way) when one considers it
worth doing.
There is no need to beg for a private branch in a central repository:
you can just work with one on your own (and offline) without impacting
your ability to merge or pull from elsewhere.
So when you lambaste Linus' "dictatorial" role established by using
git rather than Subversion, I have my doubts that you really have
understood the way Linux development works in relation to git.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
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