Why I use Debian. Was Re: [plug] Mandrake - printing

[Christian]

John Summerfield wrote:
> > Then I reiterate: Anything distribution-specific is not a "killer app.".
> > It is either poorly programmed or ridiculously restricted by license.
> 
> Greg
> You are entitled to your views,  but have the grace to recognise they are
> not held by others as universal truths.
> Many people have no problem using commercial products, and for some
> purposes there is no satisfactory alternative. DB/2 and Oracle are both
> high-end RDMSs, there is no free alternative. If you want a
> high-performance database amounting to terabytes of data, postgresql is
> not a choice.

They may not be "universal truths" but they still largely appear to be
very valid and accurate statements.  A piece of software that runs only
on one distribution would be mostly a waste of time since only users of
that distribution could take advantage of it.  A killer app?  Not
really... if the app ran only on one system then it would be quickly
ported to the others or a free(er) alternative would be written. 
Furthermore, if the software only ran on one distribution (considering
that most distributions share more similarities than they do
differences), then it would have to be remarkably badly written in order
to "achieve" this feat of incompatibility.  Greg's comment about a
"ridiculously restricted license" also seems valid given that Linux is
all about free software and freedom since a program licensed to only one
distribution would almost certainly be soundly rejected by the GNU/Linux
community.

On the other hand, your points concerning high-end databases seem to
make no sense whatsoever.  In fact, your example of Oracle only
validates Greg's point of view!  Oracle, as the most popular DBMS in
general, is destined to be the most popular DBMS on Linux.  Should they
have written it to only run on one distribution then they would have
been drastically limiting their own success and likely other database
manufacturers would have stepped in to exploit the oppportunity.  While
you seem to like to dimiss other people's points of view with an
arrogant, casual carelessness, perhaps you should consider the substance
of what they are saying more closely first before doing so in future. 
Or, at the very least, provide some sensible evidence or reasoning in
return.