I think a fruitful way to continue the discussion with Debian would be
to try to take a step up from the mechanical issues raised in Thomas's
original message to try to discover what the substantive concerns behind
them are--e.g., licensing, the right to inspect and modify software,
etc.  It seems to me he has translated those into the modes that are
typical for source/binary software, and it would better to get the
substantive requirements from Debian and then for us to think about how
those can be met in the context of squeak (and persuade Debian that way
is appropriate).

The rest of this message is a response to the dialogue below, which is
arguably wandering off topic to the nature of Debian.  However, just as
Debian needs to understand a bit about squeak to make the integration
work, squeak needs to understand a bit about Debian.  It seems to me
that Norbert's characterization of Debian, or at least some possible
readings of it, are a bit misleading.

On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 11:39 +0200, Norbert Hartl wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 11:03 -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> > On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 14:42 +0200, Norbert Hartl wrote:
> > > Even if squeak could cope well with all sorts of dependency and 
> > > conflicts management it wouldn't change much. Debian is an operating
> > > system and they are looking for an operating-system-way to do all
> > > these things. 
I'm not sure what you meant by "looking at things in an operating
system way," but most of the effort in Debian goes into packaging
applications.  They definitely want it so that if you pull in package x
you will get all the other packages, at the appropriate version levels,
that x requires to function.

> > Debian is a distribution that includes operating systems (primarily
> > Linux, but at various times BSD and Hurd) and a lot of other software.
> > 
> Of course, debian is a distribution system  for software.
"distribution system for software" sounds as if it refers to the
servers you can pull packages from, whereas "distribution," which is the
more typical phrasing I've seen, implies an integrated and manageable
set of software.  Debian is both.

>  But for me it
> is an operating system, too. The name is DebianLinux
I don't think I've seen Debian ever referred to as DebianLinux in
Debian.  Debian has made a big deal about its main distribution being 
"Debian Gnu/Linux", where the GNU is an explicit reference to the fact
that there's a lot of other software on top of Linux, and that there is
or could be GNU/Hurd, GNU/BSD, etc.  Of course, not all the software is
GNU software, but please let's not go there.

>  but you can savely
> omit the Linux and everybody knows what you mean :)

www.debian.org provides more.  At the top:
What is Debian?
Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating
system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your
computer run. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating
system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence
the name GNU/Linux.

Debian GNU/Linux provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 18733
packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy
installation on your machine.

[Ross: so the first paragraph says Debian *is* an OS, while the second
says Debian *includes* an OS.  Go figure.]

> 
> To be correct (I think you wanted to be) none of your examples is an
> operating system. Linux and Hurd are kernels and BSD is an operating
> system family. 
> 
> Norbert

True.  I think the GNU/BSD was to be using just the kernel of BSD, but I
could be wrong.  At any rate, I think that particular project was
abandonned.

Your definition of an operating system may be "bigger" than mine; I'd
include some core but non-kernel software in it, but not most of what
are considered applications.

Ross