Evolution Of Debian Package Dependencies Resemble Predator-Prey Relationships 58
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have performed an ecological analysis of software packages in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution over time; they found that dependencies can be successfully modeled as a predator-prey relationship."
Pure nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Once again, people versed in one discipline apply their skills to another with results that sound fancy and expensive, while really are just nonsense [abstrusegoose.com].
Re:Pure nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me see if I can put this on context for you: Life doesn't debug, debian does.
It's called reproduction. Failure in life results in decreased chance of reproduction, including the ultimate decreased chance, death.
Dependencies compete for limit resources called developers. Just look at all the various sound systems Linux has gone through. They, and the software that depends on them fight to gain more users to thus draw more developers. And, they either live and reproduce, or die.
You are thinking of predator-prey wrong. It's not about eating by about parasitic relationships. And biology is very good at that. What this can show a developer is, based on known algorithms of life and chances of survival, which pieces of software are most in danger of extinction. And that's not always obvious. A music app might be facing extinction because of a particular reliance on a codec dependency that is slowly losing support in favor of another. It let's the developer see further down the road.
Re:Genesis 1:1 (Score:4, Insightful)