(I'm taking the liberty to reorder your questions) On Tue, Feb 28, 2006 at 07:23:08PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > 1/ What is your personal opinion about Ubuntu ?
It's reportedly a good distribution (I never tried it myself), and they definitely have done a great job on making Linux more popular and accessible by reaching a lot of new Linux users. I do think it's been a healthy thing, as competition can make both parties stronger. I believe Debian will remain the universal distribution, and because of the nature of open source, any general improvements they apply technically, will eventually make their way into Debian. Having 15 or so full-time employees on a distribution that is similar to Debian unstable can only benefit Debian in the end. But yes, Ubuntu does take away users that could otherwise have been using Debian. But so does Red Hat, and why would our response be different w.r.t. Ubuntu than with Red Hat? We should simply ensure our distribution is the best. Also w.r.t. media approach, and Code-of-Conduct, we can possibly learn in some aspects from Ubuntu, and I intend to look into that. I just think that copying shipit.ubuntu.com won't be feasible for us... (however, sponsors interested in that, should definitely contact leader@ :) > 3/ What changes do you wish concerning the Debian-Ubuntu collaboration ? Their intentions are good, and I can understand that with a startup project like it is, they can not always keep up to their promises. However, it'd really like to see that they were a bit more realistic in their outwards communication about contributing back to Debian. It is not a shame that they don't always manage to do so (I hope it'll improve, though), but then they need to be realistic about it. However, it would be unfair to put the onus completely with Ubuntu, because it's also Debian's responsibility to collaborate if we are interested in that. I can easily imagine an Ubuntu contributor not giving highest priority to forwarding his latest patch to Debian when the previous dozen or so are still lingering without maintainer response in our BTS. Cooperation needs to come from both sides, and I think some improvements are possible, but they mostly should happen at the maintainer(-team) level. One cannot really enforce cooperation from above. Let teams like the debian-installer team be a good example for everyone, also, I will warmly support the Utnubu project. Where I can assist with infrastructure to get patches more easily contributed back, I will do so. > 2/ What explains in your opinion the bad feelings that some DD have against > Ubuntu ? I am not a psychologist, nor aspire to be one (my brother is studying to be one, maybe I should ask him :). Anyway, I think a large part has to do with fear of Ubuntu getting more popular than Debian, which hurts our ego in varying degrees, and another reason is the feeling that Ubuntu is showing off with the work done in Debian. At least the latter thing definitely seems to be the root for the whole "What should Derivates^WUbuntu do with the Maintainer field" issue. I think we should be confident in our own distribution. --Jeroen -- Jeroen van Wolffelaar [EMAIL PROTECTED] (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357) http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
