Right now, things are working for us. And they're working well.
You could say that the standard way for developers to distribute packages in the free software world is in the form of source tarballs.
Yeh, but this wont work for proprietary software. And since Linux is supposed to get into the enterprise ruled by proprietary software ... I need not say more, you do the maths.
Doesn't the firefox installer work on most/all distributions? And vmware?
Just wait till glibc breaks compatibility. And have you noticed the large size of those 'installers' huh? It is because they include ALL the needed libraries, tailor-build for legacy-free distribution (eg. they dynamically lookup their data etc). These tailor-made binaries are very inefficient, since they are all compiled -march=i386, no optimisations, all extra features disabled because the binary distributor do not want to drag in extra dependencies to do generic-legacy-free-rape with.
If people would support the LSB ABI, the host distributions could build their userland components to be compliant, efficient and robust. But since most of you OSS guys PISS ON THIS STANDARD, we go nowhere, never!
Take a look around. GAIM. Rhythmbox. The GIMP. Et cetera.
They work on all (not only the top five) GNU/Linux distributions, and some even work on other operating systems, including Windows (which isn't UNIX-like).
I believe we have an unbeatable standard for distributing software here.
OpenSource distribution won't work for corporations, who want to have some money for their efforts. Selling binaries is the way to go for the next 500 years i'd say.
Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the 'bazaar'-model of doing things the OpenSource-way! But currently this model WILL NOT make GNU/Linux viable as an enterprise OS.
And why do I care about the enterprise-reliancy of GNU/Linux? Because I want those COOL, commercial grade games/apps that other OS's currently have! And there is NOTHING bad with this!
Call me an 'INFIDEL BASTARD' if you like, I do not care. I just want GNU/Linux wankers to get the facts! And this work I am doing is SO HARD, because people are so blind to their religions ...
