As I've said, I think the discussion about the "real definition of a distribution" is not interesting. It's like idiots who think they are smart when they say "tomato are technically a fruit".

What I'm interested in, is obtaining a system that allows me to run Linux and userland reliably and trust-worthily. I don't know about you, but I don't compile all my software one by one myself after checking the source code. So, I prefer not relying on people who don't display much understanding on how to distribute a system reliably and trust-worthily. If someone is "just" making their own "flavor" of desktop and distribute it and call it "a distribution" without even noticing that such a package is lacking a lot of things that traditional distributions are doing, these people are just not mature enough to be trusted to do a good job. (and of course, being a "traditional distributions" is not "good enough", it is a necessary but not sufficient condition)

Don't get me wrong, they can distribute their flavor as much as they want, I'm happy with that. But if they act as if their stuff is the same as what is traditionally called "linux distribution" or if they are not smart (or honest) enough to mention that it's different, then 1) they are not mature enough, 2) it is worth informing newcomers or naive people about that.

It's a bit like a company that build cars, and then you have a guy that buy some of these cars, change one or two things on the dashboard and paint the car in a different color, and call themselves a car manufacturer. Nothing wrong with selling customised cars, but it is dangerous to act as if the guy is a proper manufacturer when they don't have either the capacity, the knowledge or the expertise to provide a good reliable car.