alt Hacker News> The solution in the Linux world ... is that there is a second level of human beings...
AKA "unpaid labor". I don't think that's a good solution, either. Certainly it's only by pure luck that no malefactors have infiltrated the ad hoc, anonymous social proof communities that Linux depends on, and I don't think other systems should emulate it.
The real solution (for Linux too) is a paid package curation service. Or really, a small handful of them competing on price, speed, reliability.
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There is a version of that. It is called RedHat Enterprise Linux. : )
> Certainly it's only by pure luck that no malefactors have infiltrated the [pinko commie Linux hippy commune]
Yeah... no. Sorry, that's a wild misunderstanding of the economics of the Linux ecosystem, modern libertarian thought and the employment status of people with write access to the packaging layers.
> ... a second level of human beings responsible for reviewing, auditing, packaging, and customizing those hacker-generated upstreams for the benefit of their users.
> The real solution (for Linux too) is a paid package curation service. Or really, a small handful of them competing on price, speed, reliability.
That was also what I was thinking aloud a moment ago. And there would be a business opportunity, too. Perhaps not like RHEL et al. full-blown stuff per se, but say smaller scale guarantees with different pricing; web, AI, scientific computing, and whatnot. At the pace things are progressing, I'd guess you might even get desktop etc. users on board (for nominal pricing).