Ubuntu again

[Matthew Carpenter]

On Monday 01 May 2006 12:12, Dallam Wych wrote:
> Debian is heavily involved with SPI and OFTC, making many
> contributions to the opensource community.

Indeed.  And the more I get to know Ian, the less I dislike him.  He seems a 
decent fellow.  I'm learning more why Debian is the way it is.  That does not 
mean that my estimation of their state as of a year ago is any different.  
That does not mean that I think Ubuntu has been any less of a driver to bring 
Debian into the 21st century.

<snippage of really good information>
> 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? 

Perhaps, but not necessarily.  It would seem that Debian has allowed itself to 
be in this position.  Shuttleworth may have created an enigma situation, but 
if the Debian constitution doesn't have a problem with it, there is no 
problem.  Things grow as needs arise.  Perhaps there is a conflict of 
interest.  Perhaps not.  Ubuntu and Debian sync up every 6 months.  I can 
certainly understand the call by Ian for Ubuntu to maintain binary 
compatability, etc...  I believe the periodic resync is more feasible, since 
Ubuntu is focusing more on the cutting edge.

> 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.

Is that any different than IBM and Novell and SuSE and Red Hat all having 
major developers in the Kernel, Samba, Apache, etc....?

> 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.

That's interesting.

> 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.

They still seem quite related.

> 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.

Because exploits for servers take time.  You think it's better to use an older 
version which has had more inspection by attackers?  It seems a bit like a 
wash.

> 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.

I've removed Kubuntu-desktop many times.  It doesn't whack a whole lot of 
packages, just the ones in conflict.  Perhaps Ubuntu-desktop is different.

> 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 can understand that point.

> 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.
hmmm... I can respect your opinion.  I can understand your point.  There was a 
lot of chaos in testing/unstable.  The focus doesn't seem to be on that area, 
an area where most other distros are working hard.  Ubuntu adds that value.  
Anyone not able to appreciate the value Debian brings, needs education...  
Just like Webmin is a beautification of a very valuable Unix platform.  It 
makes things better.  It's not for everybody.  And nobody should be deluded 
to think that Jamie Cameron (wonderful guy he is) created Unix.

Thanks for your points, Dallam.

Matt
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