Ubuntu again

[Dallam Wych]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2006 at 09:05:55PM -0600, Collins Richey wrote:
> Excerpt from Dallam Wych
>>I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to imply. Is it a dig or just
> >>stating the obvious? It seems perfectly ok to me that Mark decided to
> >>finance his own distro. He liked certain things about Debian and
> >>rather obviously he thought certain things should be different. So, he
> >>put his money where his mouth is, and I have certainly benefitted from
> >>his choice.
> 
> >To first address your paragraph above. The answer to your first
> >question is that actually it is both. It's a dig from me to
> >Shuttleworth. It's also the obvious to most Debian users. It's
> >also perhaps enlightening to users of other distributions who
> >wonder just who is developing for Ubuntu.
> 
> This sounds like a riddle wrapped in an enigma. I'm not a Debian user,
> so nothing is obvious to me.

It's not a riddle. The statement I made already is already well
known to a vast number of Debian Users. For those who don't use Debian
I had hoped it would be informative. It had not occurred to me that it
would provoke this kind of response. I am aware that you use a derivative
of Debian, therefore you would fall into the "those who don't use
Debian" part of my statement.

> >Secondly, it's ok with me if Shuttleworth wanted to create his own
> >Debian derivative. What I have a problem with is that he (and his
> >millions) raided other opensource projects for developers. He
> >should have hired his own developers, it's made a lot of bad
> >feelings towards Ubuntu with a lot more people than just myself.
> 
> Hmmm? yet more of an enigma.

> I would love to hear more exact details about some of these innuendos.
> Perhaps others on the list would be interested as well. Are the bad
> feelings you mention just sour grapes, or is there more to it?

It's hardly innuendo. As you apparently don't realize how the Debian
project works, what it's goals are, it's social contract or much
else about it for that matter I'll point out some issues that I
*personally* have in regards to Ubuntu.

Debian is heavily involved with SPI and OFTC, making many
contributions to the opensource community.

Debian is an all volunteer project made up of approximately 1000
developers. Under the Debian constitution, each of these
developers (if they meet certain criteria) are entitled to vote
in the yearly election for DPL (Debian Project Leader). They also
(and rightfully so) have much to say about the direction of the
project in general. Now, lets consider that some of these developers
have entered into an employment contract with Shuttleworth. In other
words, they are now employees of Canonical. Yet, regardless of
whether they contribute any longer or not to Debian, as DD's they
are still entitled to vote for DPL. Surely you can see the conflict
of interest here. Do you really not see the position that
Shuttleworth has designed here? That by hiring Debian developers it
(to a relatively large degree) gives his company quite a bit of say
concerning another projects direction and other important decisions.
Debian is one of the few projects I know of that Shuttleworth could
have pulled this on and succeeded simply by virtue that all of
Debians developers are volunteers. IANAL, but I believe most states
have laws preventing one corporation tampering with another
corporations employees so creating a Redhat or SuSE derivative (for
example) and then trying to hire away their developers wasn't a
viable option.

It also has reached the point where various Debian lists receive
lots of questions about Ubuntu systems. These questions are for
the most part answered, something that in all of the years I have
been a list member I have *never* seen happen before. Redhat users
posting a non-Debian related question were referred to redhats
lists, same for SuSE and others. So why does Ubuntu get special
treatment on the lists? Because of the developer situation. 

Debian doesn't enter into special relationships as a rule, and I
don't think that practice should change because Ubuntu came along. 
It's just another derivative, and shouldn't receive any more attention
from Debian that any other derivative does.

As for Ubuntu itself, I find it a poor policy to mix testing and
unstable. btw, that's something that Debian doesn't recommend.
I believe this from a security and bug fix point of view.
Further to this line of thinking, if Ubuntu is based on packages
meant for testing and packages meant to just be entering the Debian
packaging system (unstable) why does Ubuntu include web servers?
Who among us would actually use a testing or unstable branch on a web
server? That is a task best left to stable IMHO.

Secondly, I find Ubuntu to be geared more towards new linux users.
Also the default install includes a multitude of software that I
certainly have no need for (though I do realize this isn't true for
everyone). And why is almost everything dependant upon Ubuntu
Desktop? I wanted to remove some simple application that I don't use
and I was shocked at everything marked for removal over this one
dependency. I don't care for the sudo bit personally, that's
something I feel should be left up to the user to decide for
himself.

Also, is Shuttleworths manner of doing things really the
direction we want opensource software to go in? Do we want new
developers to continue to come into opensource and scratch their
itch in a distro like Debian, Slackware or another system like
one of the BSDs or do we want them to head straight for the guy
that's handing out the money? I feel to a degree that stifles
creativity. I know that lots of the distributions pay their
developers and I don't have a problem with that. A lot of the
developers that currently work for SuSE and the other for pay
distros contributed someplace else for free or just offered what
they coded for free before joining a for pay distro. The remaining
distros that are dependent on volunteers shouldn't be driven under
by someone who decides that today they want their own distro and
commence raiding other opensource projects developers. I personally
feel that while this practice may be legal, it doesn't fit into my
personal comfort zone of what is completely ethical and how I like
to see things done.

Regards,
Dallam