What's more volatile than a discussion with a group of enthusiasts with chips on their shoulders made of pure sodium? A discussion that pits two such groups against each other.
When it comes to binary compatibility, Debian's answer is basically the same as the App Store's: Use only our official packages and you won't have to worry about compatibility.
With all the flamey comparisons about the contents of the iPhone App Store and Official Debian Repositories, who develops for each, and what their motivations are, what's getting lost is that in each case what connects the developers with officialdom is some kind of approval process. By investigating the App Store's approval process, the Debian project can get a lot of ideas about what they might want to add to their own approval process (and what they might want to remove from it).
Why does everyone discount the idea of people finding apps through the search box? Are the users assumed to be unimaginative and unresourceful? Is the long tail too flat for anyone to make a living off of?
Since this is basically what Piggly Wiggly brought to the world of grocery retail in 1916, but with the customers replaced by robots (tee-hee), I wonder how long it will be before robots do the moving around of products at a supermarket near you?
Whether I shop at a warehouse store, or I go to the big department store and or supermarket chain stores that are all evolving into the same kind of 150,000+ sq. ft. 'everything' store (i.e. warehouse stores with better product packaging and shinier floors), I can see that retailers are already doing warehouse-sized volume in cities all over the planet.
http://www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/news/industry-deve...