Scheduled Maintenance: We are aware of an issue with Google, AOL, and Yahoo services as email providers which are blocking new registrations. We are trying to fix the issue and we have several internal and external support tickets in process to resolve the issue. Please see: viewtopic.php?t=158230

 

 

 

A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

Here you can discuss every aspect of Debian. Note: not for support requests!
Message
Author
User avatar
marenostrum
Posts: 6
Joined: 2011-05-25 22:01
Location: Turkey

A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#1 Post by marenostrum »

Turkish government distributes Debian by just altering the logo and the brand.

Probably most of you haven't heard of it yet. I'll try to tell the story as short as I can do.

There was a GNU/Linux distro ("GNU/Linux" is my qualification; the distro never called itself so, officially) named Pardus. Pardus had been developed by a Turkish governmental body, TUBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) beginning from 2003 till 2011 and it gained popularity among Turkish GNU/Linux users and developers alike. There were -sometimes very harsh- criticisms on it, but, you know, in the last resolution it is a GNU/Linux distro and it was appealing to Turkish society for this reason or that.

Pardus was an independent distro. In sense of not being "based" on something else and it had a set of its own tools, proudly developed for the project, including its own package management system parallel with its own package type, namely PiSi. There were a number of other such tools as well.

Pardus was a distro with KDE being its sole (for a long time) or main (in its last days; the other being Xfce) desktop environment.

Pardus had two versions: Individual and institutional. (Not to be confused with desktop vs. server; it didn't have a server version, but some Turkish state institutions were using it on desktops in offices and that was called as the "institutional" version.)

After the 3rd election victory of the pro-Islamic, fundamentalist, pro-USA governing party in Turkey and during their 3rd term; along with tailoring the police forces, the army, universities, judiciary -synchronized with mass arrests and trials of opponents- and with the attempts to write a new constitution, the government tailored TUBİTAK for its own benefits as well. Both juridically and in terms of firing an amount of its staff and/or shutting down some of its sub divisions.

Some say that as a direct extension of this policy, some say that because of the undeniable mistakes of the Pardus project leadership, the government's new TUBİTAK administration fired or forced to resign both the leader of the project, Mr. Erkan Tekman, and all the employees, gradually; roughly speaking, by the end of 2011.

As a result, Pardus project was de facto dead. It was no more developed. To the extent that, its last edition 2011.2 was announced to get no more updates with no new edition present or announced.

On the other hand, the government front, that's to say TUBİTAK administration, never confessed that they are killing the distro. Instead, they always declared -and are still declaring- that they will continue and evolve the project and they are asking contribution from the circles such as Linux related NGOs, academicians, for-profits and so on.

To assure what they claim, they organized a workshop on “the future of Pardus” by the end of March 2012. At the end of the so-called workshop, nothing was clear but TUBİTAK administration gave their word that they will do all to be done in coordination with an advisory board and what's more they said that the board would be in charge of making decisions as well apart from being just an advisory one.

In those days, government and TUBİTAK did not prevent Microsoft from taking part in the big state project of 600 thousand smart boards as a software provider. Up to that point, Pardus was more than ready to run on those boards and it was qualified for it. If government preferred to do so, it was very easy for them to make Pardus the only OS running on smart boards. Instead, they preferred to have "both Windows and Pardus" on them, which practically means that all and every of them will be booted from Windows partition.

Months passed by, and by the end of July 2012 they called the board for its first (and as a matter of fact, the last) meeting. Some reputable figures of the Free Software, GNU/Linux movement of Turkey were among participants.

As made public by some participants, there during the meeting, TUBİTAK administration tried to approve their already made decisions to the participants. Majority of them said that they are not there to approve already made decisions and insisted on either being a real, decision making board or not to take part in this game.

Up to now, they are not called for a second meeting and there are reports that they can't get any answer for their questions from TUBİTAK.

And during what's going on, some GNU/Linuxers realized that, what running on those smart boards are not Pardus in any sense, instead, they are Debian GNU/Linux with just the Pardus logo on it. We can not even call it a fork: Plain Debian!

TUBİTAK administration tried to explain that Pardus was not running on those boards but Debian was. They couldn't explain a) How comes that Pardus was running on some samples of similar boards, and b) How comes that they will make a distro "based on Debian", provided that they can not adopt the software of Debian which makes it to run on those boards to another GNU/Linux distro, Pardus. There was no answer to the question, such as, "Will you make Pardus Red Hat based distro if one day some component of Debian will not work for some particular task out of the box."

As a result some people, including me, began to think as such: Government/TUBİTAK is killing the Pardus project we already have. They try to claim some technical bullshit but these are not valid. They are killing the project now, they claim that they will go on with a Debian-based distro under the very same Pardus brand, but it will not even be a "Debian based" distro, not even a "fork of Debian", instead it will be the very same of Debian with just "Pardus" name and logo on it.
And at a particular point, they'll say that they just stopped the project. “Debian based Pardus” is just a mockery.

A week ago what people suppose became real: Existing TUBİTAK administration uploaded some number of "Pardus ISOs" on their ftp server. Their names, "Pardus 2011.3 rc1" (that's what should be after Pardus' very last version 2011.2) imply that they are some kind of Pardus (even if its very childish to release 2011.3, by the end of 2012) but they are pure Debian, yes you guessed it, with the exception of logo and brand and some artwork.

Many of us downloaded them and installed to see what they contain. There are tons of reviews out there with screenshots and even with videos.

Those Pardus 2011.3 rc1 ISOs seems to be no longer there on the ftp but there still exist repositories which are basically the same with Debian's. (Disappeared one was ftp://depo.pardus.org.tr/pardus_iso/2011.3rc1/tr/ . Still you may check under ftp://depo.pardus.org.tr/kurumsal and ftp://depo.pardus.org.tr/bireysel ) (They might put non-free elements in main and so on, because of having no notion of GNU/Linux and having no respect for free software philosophy; and there might be even more evil components among software; anyway, we'll see and discuss such, later.) Apparently, in a near future we'll see the "real fake thing".

For sure, free software can be made modifying some other free software. Distros can be made based on some other distro. Forking is something we like and even encourage. Ubuntu-Debian and Mint-Ubuntu and Mint-Debian relations are such examples.

This is totally something else!

Turkish government takes Debian GNU/Linux OS and all of its repositories and publishes it with its logo and name on and with minor cosmetic changes such as a couple of background images with some “Pardus related thing” on them.

Nowadays jokes on "pseudo Pardus/genuine Debian" and "the theft case" are very popular among Turkish GNU/Linux society.

I just wanted you non-Turkish speaker Debian community & leadership hear about what's going on, because you deserve it.

K. Deniz Ogut
a.k.a
marenostrum

User avatar
dasein
Posts: 7680
Joined: 2011-03-04 01:06
Location: Terra Incantationum

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#2 Post by dasein »

It's sad that Pardus as an independent project is officially dead. Pardus always seemed a little "rough around the edges," but I watched it with interest and had high hopes for its future.

As for "rebranding," hey, it happens. It's really no different from what folks at CentOS and Scientific Linux do with RHEL (except they they do it openly).

emariz
Posts: 2901
Joined: 2008-10-17 07:59

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#3 Post by emariz »

This is sad from a political point of view, but if the project serves users that would not use Debian otherwise, then it is positive. Do they acknowledge that their system is Debian under the hood? Do they claim that they created it?

User avatar
JLloyd13
Posts: 394
Joined: 2012-06-29 04:08
Location: Halifax NS Canada

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#4 Post by JLloyd13 »

emariz wrote:This is sad from a political point of view, but if the project serves users that would not use Debian otherwise, then it is positive. Do they acknowledge that their system is Debian under the hood? Do they claim that they created it?
good point. crunchbang says 'powered by debian' right there in the install menu, since its basiclly just debian plus openbox. as long as turkey doesn't go 'we made this' i'm fine with it
Laptop: Debian GNU/Linux 9 'Stretch' 64bit
Read: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian/
We are the Universal OS. Be patient, give help, teach the Debian way.

User avatar
nadir
Posts: 5961
Joined: 2009-10-05 22:06
Location: away

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#5 Post by nadir »

marenostrum,
as you might know there is a very big community of Turkish people in Germany. A lot of them young, most born here, with phones and all (just like the youth everywhere, i guess).
As far i see most don't know about Gnu/Linux at all. _ If _ there is a way to spread the info among them: thanks for that (perhaps there are facebook, twitter, or other channels they communicate with each other, i simply don't know).

back to the topic:
I guess that is what one has to live with if one wants freedom and openness. Else one will run into rules and restrictions and what not.
But thanks a lot for the very deteiled info.
"I am not fine with it, so there is nothing for me to do but stand aside." M.D.

PeterB
Posts: 122
Joined: 2010-10-03 16:53
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 2 times

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#6 Post by PeterB »

JLloyd13 wrote: as long as turkey doesn't go 'we made this' i'm fine with it
Well, from the website
http://www.pardus.org.tr/en/pardus/hakkinda/

"Pardus project, ... is the leading free software initiation of Turkey."

User avatar
dasein
Posts: 7680
Joined: 2011-03-04 01:06
Location: Terra Incantationum

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#7 Post by dasein »

PeterB wrote:Well, from the website
http://www.pardus.org.tr/en/pardus/hakkinda/

"Pardus project, ... is the leading free software initiation of Turkey."
Point #1: In fairness, this page linked to above clearly hasn't been updated in a year or more. And when it was written, Pardus was indeed an independent distro being developed by TUBİTAK, as outlined in the OP.

Point #2: Anyone who wants to take Debian and "re-brand" it is perfectly free to do so.

Is it polite? No. But there is no point in crying "foul" when someone exercises a right that they've been granted explicitly.

Deb-fan
Posts: 1047
Joined: 2012-08-14 12:27
Been thanked: 4 times

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#8 Post by Deb-fan »

^ Will go along with that ...

It's not like rebranded Debian is a strange thing. See ubuntu and a gazillion others, shrugs. Whichever gestapo is involved here is actually showing sound judgement ( imo), to take advantage of all the kickbuttness that is Debian, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel themselves.

Would like to see Debian get more credit from the clingers than it tends to. If only for the sake of credit ... where it's due. But it's not a perfect world for sure ...
Most powerful FREE tech-support tool on the planet * HERE. *

knightron
Posts: 26
Joined: 2012-07-03 07:40
Has thanked: 1 time

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#9 Post by knightron »

Hello, this is the first i've seen this distro. It appears interesting to me, and it's a shame it's no longer continuing it's original path. I havn't followed you completly, can you please explain this a little better. Pardus uses the pisi package management, Debian used deb, is pardus switching in the possible future release?

User avatar
phenest
Posts: 1702
Joined: 2010-03-09 09:38
Location: The Matrix

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#10 Post by phenest »

PeterB wrote:
JLloyd13 wrote: as long as turkey doesn't go 'we made this' i'm fine with it
Well, from the website
http://www.pardus.org.tr/en/pardus/hakkinda/

"Pardus project, ... is the leading free software initiation of Turkey."
Definition of initiation: the act of starting something for the first time; introducing something new.
Nothing wrong with taking the initiative.
ASRock H77 Pro4-M i7 3770K - 32GB RAM - Pioneer BDR-209D

User avatar
cra1g321
Posts: 241
Joined: 2011-01-20 23:03

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#11 Post by cra1g321 »

I'm near sure Pardus wasn't based on Debian, seeing as it used RPM packages :roll: :?: :wink:

User avatar
dasein
Posts: 7680
Joined: 2011-03-04 01:06
Location: Terra Incantationum

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#12 Post by dasein »

cra1g321 wrote:I'm near sure Pardus wasn't based on Debian, seeing as it used RPM packages :roll: :?: :wink:
Uh... no. "Original" Pardus used its own package format, neither .deb nor .rpm

User avatar
cra1g321
Posts: 241
Joined: 2011-01-20 23:03

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#13 Post by cra1g321 »

dasein wrote:Uh... no. "Original" Pardus used its own package format, neither .deb nor .rpm
and now i know :)

I quite liked Pardus, seemed like it had great potential, though i remember having a issue where black boxes would show onscreen when using the nvidia driver,
also some software was unavailable in the repos, i remember wine 64bit being one of them.

mikeonthemarne
Posts: 1
Joined: 2012-09-11 10:41

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#14 Post by mikeonthemarne »

Some people posting don't seem to get marevostrum's point: it's one thing for a group of individuals, a company / association or an institution (in the case of the original TUBiTAK) to reshape or re-model Debian according to specific needs and give it a their own name (it's all part of the richness of Linux - e.g. I use Crunchbang and SolusOS, both Debian-based distros); it's quite another when a state, whose present régime has a particular ideology, hijacks the name of the original project that it has suppressed - for those very ideological reasons, apparently - and just sticks that name on to the original Debian, rebranding the latter as a Turkish government-approved OS. How dare they! Sorry but the laid-back attitude of certain people's posts shows a little naïvety and lack of awareness IMHO.

User avatar
nadir
Posts: 5961
Joined: 2009-10-05 22:06
Location: away

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#15 Post by nadir »

I don't agree.
You either give the freedom to rebrand or you don't.
I can't fine exclude="different political opinions" somewhere in the GPL.
Neither at the according Debian sites.

That is the one big step forward: Same rules and rights for everyone.
"I am not fine with it, so there is nothing for me to do but stand aside." M.D.

el chapulín
Posts: 78
Joined: 2012-09-07 08:34

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#16 Post by el chapulín »

emariz wrote:Do they acknowledge that their system is Debian under the hood? Do they claim that they created it?
Do ubuntu? I don't think that's a factor here...
dasein wrote:Point #1: In fairness, this page linked to above clearly hasn't been updated in a year or more. And when it was written, Pardus was indeed an independent distro being developed by TUBİTAK, as outlined in the OP.
I cannot see any official links from the Pardus site or TUBİTAK, to these phantom Debian based 2011.3 rc releases. The links in the OP prove nothing and only seem to point to a Debian mirror. I'm not seeing the rebranding, is there any evidence of rebranding? I grabbed the squeeze desktop-base source file, extracted it and cannot see any rebranding at all, meaning that the debian logo, wallpapers, splash screens,. etc will appear... I searched the web but can see very little talk of this, even on turkish sites - can the OP provide links?

It's clearly a politcal thread/protest with very little in the way of hard facts, but very biased, heavy on rhetoric and vague unsubstantiated claims - I'm very wary of this sort of thing:

"After the 3rd election victory of the pro-Islamic, fundamentalist, pro-USA governing party in Turkey and during their 3rd term"

"synchronized with mass arrests and trials of opponents"

"Some say..."

"some say that..."

"as made public by some participants..."

"There are tons of reviews out there with screenshots and even with videos..."

"Those Pardus 2011.3 rc1 ISOs seems to be no longer there on the ftp..."

"They might put non-free elements in main and so on, because of having no notion of GNU/Linux and having no respect for free software philosophy; and there might be even more evil components among software..."

"Nowadays jokes on "pseudo Pardus/genuine Debian" and "the theft case" are very popular among Turkish GNU/Linux society...."

I half expected you to finish up with a request for €200,000 to be deposited into a Nigerian bank account...? :roll:

You may be telling the truth, or not, or you may be repeating someone else's misinformation - either way, back up this story with hard evidence or it's just another politically motivated FUD spreading exercise...

User avatar
dasein
Posts: 7680
Joined: 2011-03-04 01:06
Location: Terra Incantationum

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#17 Post by dasein »

mikeonthemarne wrote:... when a state, whose present régime has a particular ideology, hijacks the name of the original project...
I always find it interesting when a brand-new account makes its first appearance in the middle of an otherwise obscure thread. Maybe I'm just old and cynical, but it makes me think "alt account."

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, every regime has a "particular" ideology. It kind of goes along with being, well, a regime.

And Pardus was originally a Turkish government effort. So it's hard to imagine how one "hijacks" something that one already owns.

Insofar as I know, nothing in the GPL, nor the DFSG, says, "we have to like your politics." Any other position exhibits the naivete that this particular post decries.

User avatar
nadir
Posts: 5961
Joined: 2009-10-05 22:06
Location: away

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#18 Post by nadir »

dasein wrote: At the risk of pointing out the obvious, every system has a "particular" ideology. It kind of goes along with being, well, a system
Corrected it for you.

Every system so far has considered itself the best of all and the end of history too.
Nothing unusual
(democracy, in the beginning, was thought as an endless process to a goal never to be reached, btw. A regulating and idealistic idea. For unknown reasons they gave up on that).
"I am not fine with it, so there is nothing for me to do but stand aside." M.D.

emariz
Posts: 2901
Joined: 2008-10-17 07:59

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#19 Post by emariz »

el chapulín wrote:
emariz wrote:Do they acknowledge that their system is Debian under the hood? Do they claim that they created it?
Do ubuntu? I don't think that's a factor here...
Ubuntu has always stated that it is based on Debian (1). This information has been in (more or less) the same place for years.
And it matters because deception is a typified criminal offence.

1. http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubu ... and-debian

el chapulín
Posts: 78
Joined: 2012-09-07 08:34

Re: A new distro: Debian under another name and brand

#20 Post by el chapulín »

emariz wrote:
el chapulín wrote:
emariz wrote:Do they acknowledge that their system is Debian under the hood? Do they claim that they created it?
Do ubuntu? I don't think that's a factor here...
Ubuntu has always stated that it is based on Debian (1). This information has been in (more or less) the same place for years.
And it matters because deception is a typified criminal offence.

1. http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubu ... and-debian
Fair enough, but it's a small section, three clicks from the main page...

Very different to crunchbang's main page:

"CrunchBang is a Debian GNU/Linux based distribution..."
http://crunchbanglinux.org/

Post Reply