The author's point about "dogfooding" jumped out at me more than he probably intended, but that's probably because it's an aspect of Slackware's SlackBuilds repository (SBo) that I can't say enough about.
Quite often, SBos are maintained by folks who use (even depend) on the software they are responsible for. As such, well-tested and sanely configured software tends to be highly valued by maintainers, and package responsibilities will commonly change hands when a maintainer no longer uses what (s)he's responsible for.
The mechanics of an SBo are also dead simple, making package review and modification by the user straightforward. This means that rolling your own package is straightforward, enabling you to easily become a "dogfooding" maintainer yourself for any package not already in the repo. Few distributions allow ordinary users to close the official package loop with anywhere near the ease--both technically and bureaucratically--that SBos do.
SBos are not the Perfect Package model by any means. But in terms of "dogfooding", ISVs and big distributions (especially Canonical) could stand to learn a few things from a relatively unstructured community of volunteers with a taste for the KISS principle.
Quite often, SBos are maintained by folks who use (even depend) on the software they are responsible for. As such, well-tested and sanely configured software tends to be highly valued by maintainers, and package responsibilities will commonly change hands when a maintainer no longer uses what (s)he's responsible for.
The mechanics of an SBo are also dead simple, making package review and modification by the user straightforward. This means that rolling your own package is straightforward, enabling you to easily become a "dogfooding" maintainer yourself for any package not already in the repo. Few distributions allow ordinary users to close the official package loop with anywhere near the ease--both technically and bureaucratically--that SBos do.
SBos are not the Perfect Package model by any means. But in terms of "dogfooding", ISVs and big distributions (especially Canonical) could stand to learn a few things from a relatively unstructured community of volunteers with a taste for the KISS principle.