Re: LFS (was Re: bind_textdomain_codeset error while building gnomevfs)

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Glenn McKechnie">

> Now it's your turn to say a nice word about LFS :-)   Hmmm - Nope!  better
> not overdo it, one smiley will have to do.
> 
> I guess LFS attracts everyone from incompetent to expert and you only hear
> from the raw and uncut end?

There _is_ only a raw and uncut end. Everyone else has better things to do,
and are smart enough to take advantage of the massive community network
effects (in terms of work and technical knowledge) available to them.

That pretty much sums up the reasons why I'm so passionate about Debian, and
so disgruntled by LFS. In one corner, you have a large community of
contributors helping each other, concentrating on what they do best, and
generally converging on excellence. In the other corner -- well, I won't go
there. Flaming is also a waste of time.

One of GARNOME's paradoxes is that I dislike that culture so much, but have
produced a tool that makes it easier to continue with... and GARNOME has
been *very* popular amongst those cultures.

But that's okay - hopefully it means that we have more testers for GNOME
2.0, and we'll have a better piece of software for the entire community.

Possibly the silliest thing about LFS is that it's turned the most boring
process in software development - waiting for the fucking thing to build -
into a celebrated culture. And yet there are so many things to do and
contribute to in Free Software, all the time!

Wouldn't you prefer to be doing something else?

End of rant. :-)

- Jeff

-- 
      "But in the software world, that's daily business." - Kent Beck       
     "That's pissing money away and leaving scar tissue." - Alan Cooper