Who better to comment on the current controversy than Ian Murdock himself?
He agrees with a suggestion made in a comment on his page:
I think Debian’s stance should have been to distribute epiphany and move Firefox to the appropriate *verse repository.
Ian’s reasoning is as follows:
Best of all, it maximizes freedom—namely, the freedom of users to decide whether or not this is an issue worth switching over.
I agree with this – it is the most practical choice. Both groups of developers got too focused1 on their own project and failed to consider the bigger picture and ask themselves “What is best for open source?” And while disagreements take place frequently in the open source world, I don’t think they are a bad thing – as long as they are resolved with a net gain for the community as a whole. I’d rather have passionate developers arguing for projects they believe in than a bunch of yes-men constantly trying to please everybody.
1 I can never remember whether to spell “focused” with one ’s’ or two, so I put it on GoogleFight to check. Results were overwhelmingly in favor of one ’s’, which I personally favor because it is more aesthetically pleasing.
