Originally Posted by
lssanjose The idea someone, like Cyanogen Mod - or anyone brave enough to compile their own ROM, will be able to do it. I understand guys like RIM have their own updates, but the timeliness of those is dictated by RIM.
The distribution I use for Linux is Slackware. It's maintainer, primarily Pat Volkerding is what many would consider the benevolent dictator. Unlike others, he doesn't really set a deadline for updates - only when those updates become stable. I like his idea, in that things work well, and are well-integrated. His practices are what you call ancient because he refuses to use GRUB, and sticks with LILO.
He also, by philosophy, forces users to take care of dependencies on their own. Some prefer this, many don't. But, he doesn't throw the hammer down, and locks down his distribution like Jobs does with OS X. If people want to use GRUB, they have that option. If they want to install certain libraries, despite his detesting of those (PAM being one of them), you can go ahead and do that. Want to use the newest kernel? You can certainly do that.
I can go on and on, but it's a matter of having that choice of what you want to put in your system.