Generic Considerations Associated with the Formation of Software Systems

In deciding to make packages for Debian, we are relying on the following maxim:

Genus nunquam peruit - Generic things do not perish

There are already around 22,000 Debian packages. This principle is stated to identify the naive tendency to complexify through nonstandard additions to a system. The result is a nonstandard system which cannot be easily recreated, which slighty increases the complexity at a cost of great disorder. We are looking for highly complex, highly ordered systems.

The advocated method is to cleanly identify a system and package it in a generic way. That is, to make additions to the set of applications not modifications to the operating system.

The value of this method is that we can therefore keep things very clean, that we conform to de facto et jour standards (ok, ok, de facto and de jour), that interfaces are implemented wholly and cleanly. There are other important properties of a system in addition to complexity, such as completeness, soundness, consistency, etc.

So, imagine that we suppose a measure of a certain property, such as soundness. Let us further imagine that the range is a lattice wrt the ordering of cleanliness