by Dietrich Schmitz
There's no question that Richard Stallman's great vision caused an explosion of open source wealth and sharing around the world.
We see the by-product of his genius. The ongoing cultivation of collaborative community development continues unabated. It's all good. Proponents appreciate having choice and so do I.
But when one surveys the landscape and takes a tour of Distrowatch.com and comprehends how many individual Distros there are, it begins to seem like quite possibly something else is going on.
The Distrowatch rankings is a veritable weather barometer of trending Distros both on the rise and fall. It is watched like a stock market ticker tape to divine what is happening daily, weekly, monthly in the Linux World.
But is there a flip side to having so many Distros from which to choose?
What effect does one more spin variant of Debian or Ubuntu have?
Does having more 'me too' cookie cutter Distros help the ecosystem or might they dilute the strength of those that precede them causing confusion and less innovation?
I have my concerns that while differentiation is potentially good, copy cat Distros may be doing a general disservice.
What are your thoughts?
-- Dietrich
There's no question that Richard Stallman's great vision caused an explosion of open source wealth and sharing around the world.
We see the by-product of his genius. The ongoing cultivation of collaborative community development continues unabated. It's all good. Proponents appreciate having choice and so do I.
But when one surveys the landscape and takes a tour of Distrowatch.com and comprehends how many individual Distros there are, it begins to seem like quite possibly something else is going on.
The Distrowatch rankings is a veritable weather barometer of trending Distros both on the rise and fall. It is watched like a stock market ticker tape to divine what is happening daily, weekly, monthly in the Linux World.
But is there a flip side to having so many Distros from which to choose?
What effect does one more spin variant of Debian or Ubuntu have?
Does having more 'me too' cookie cutter Distros help the ecosystem or might they dilute the strength of those that precede them causing confusion and less innovation?
I have my concerns that while differentiation is potentially good, copy cat Distros may be doing a general disservice.
What are your thoughts?
-- Dietrich
