On Wed, Dec 12, 2018 at 02:43:38PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> Eric has never been the developer of a distribution, so there will be
> things he doesn't understand. I am all for having as many users as
> possible. I understand the problem of proprietary firmware and hope that
> this is not a significant blocker for most people, especially since most
> distribution installers do provide a way to download it (and we should
> offer the choice even if we don't approve). This will not help people with
> a network interface that requires proprietary firmware to run.

o_O

But...Devuan has actually always included (and will continue to ship)
both free and non-free firmware in all the installation media, despite
many Devuaners are against this choice....

>
> But IMO the main problems with developing a large user community are ease
> of use and impedance mismatch between the developers and users. Many Debian
> developers would not have been the best people to communicate with a naive
> user, and Devuan does further distill that characteristic. IMO this is
> self-defeating for Free Software.
>

Devuan has never had a border between users and developers. We simply
call ourselves "Devuaners", without distinction, because we all use
Devuan and we are all contributing to make Devuan a better distro and
a better community.

If you come to the forum of a distro, yelling that the developers have
not understood anything, and that they must implement as soon as
possible this and that and whatnot otherwise you will leave to not be
seen ever again, what do you think the most probable reaction will be?

This is what esr has done, and IMHO this attitude does not help to
lower any existing impedence mismatch, irrespective of your name being
Eric, Bruce, Linus, Alan, Richard, Dennis, or Ken. Nevertheless, many
Devuaners took the time and energy to understand his point. But what
they got back was more yelling, and more "you must do this and that or
I will leave".

"Developers" should be more understanding, you rightfully say. But
those who insist in defining themselves "users" have no right to
threat as servants other fellow "users" or those they call
"developers", in no circumstance, and for no reason at all. This is
not the right spirit over here.

There are hundreds of GNU/Linux distros around, and hundreds of
development teams to yell at.

HND

KatolaZ

-- 
[ ~.,_  Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - Devuan -- Freaknet Medialab  ]  
[     "+.  katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it  ]
[       @)   http://kalos.mine.nu ---  Devuan GNU + Linux User  ]
[     @@)  http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia --  GPG: 0B5F062F  ] 
[ (@@@)  Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ  ]