blog entry: "Ubuntu and Debian"

[Shawn McMahon]

>From the article:

=====

     A major point of friction I've gathered from many (Debian) sides
stems from the fact that many developers are largely unsatisfied with
how Canonical/Ubuntu cooperates and "gives back" to the Debian
community: essentially, at the moment all we get are monolithic
patches describing the differences between Debian packages and their
Ubuntu counterparts. Even though Mark has claimed that the patches
should be modular if the underlying package uses a modular package
management system (such as dpatch), this does not seem to be the case
at first glance (c.f. e.g. squid). You have to look inside the
monolithic patch to note that its changes are compartementalised into
dpatch files.

      Yet, Canonical/Ubuntu continuously claims to be "good" and to
"give back" to the Debian community, but that's just not happening in
that way. Canonical/Ubuntu either has to start giving back according
to their own claims, or stop pretending that it does, and it's good
that I have heard this voiced by one of the Canonical employees as
well.

=====

My translation, correct me if I'm wrong:

Ubuntu claims to contribute modular packages.  Debian developers at
first glance think they don't, but looking into it further shows that
they do.  Ubuntu needs to stop pretending to contribute modular
packages, because it's not fair to continue doing something people
think you aren't doing.

Or did I read that wrong?

>From the article:

=====

The perception that Canonical/Ubuntu is taking advantage of Debian
seems to prevail. Taking advantage in this definition entails using
but not giving back, as well as dragging integrative work out of
Debian, something Joey Hess described as the supermarket thing, which
has the potential to ruin the Debian project. Whether this is true or
false, intentional or unintentional, it is important to recognize that
these sentiments do exist among a number of members of the Debian
community.

=====

My translation:

Some Debian folks believe that Ubuntu is taking advantage of them.
Whether it's true or not, it's Ubuntu's responsibility to make them
stop thinking that.

Oh, and if Ubuntu's decisions have "the potential to ruin the Debian
project", yet are simultaneously making Ubuntu wildly successful,
perhaps Debian should be adopting them, not decrying them.

>From the article:

=====

The "universe" community that gathered around Ubuntu's core
surprisingly often does not know about Debian, or do not know how
Ubuntu and Debian relate. I do not have any data on this,
unfortunately (see below).

=====

I don't have any numbers either, but most of the time that I've needed
to look up who maintained a Universe package, it's been an
"@debian.org" address.  If folks with those email addresses have never
heard of Debian, I'm thinking that's not our problem to fix.

>From the article:

=====

There's no question about Mark being on an agenda, for which he has
assembled an impressively powerful team (which indirectly includes
many Debian developers) at an (even more impressively) cheap cost.
It's not my business to speculate about other people's finances, but
those that do conclude that Mark is very likely not running too much
of a risk with what he does at the moment and could basically pull out
at any point in time. To some, who have dedicated large parts of their
lives to Debian, this seems like an unwelcome way to play a game.

=====

Translation: Mark could decide to quit.  If he does, that would be
bad.  Therefore, Mark is bad.  Mark should stop being able to quit.
While he's at it, it's very selfish of him to be subject to aging,
disease, and accidental death.  Mark should immediately have himself
embraced by a vampire to alleviate these concerns.

>From the article:

=====

When Canonical entered the market and hired some developers to work on
a Debian-related project, a lot of jealousy boiled up among those who
didn't get a job, because back then it seemed that Canonical was out
to pay people to work on Debian -- which is a common dream among us
developers; at least people hoped that's what it would be. Many
fundamental contributors felt left out and confronted with the
question why they should continue their work for free when others are
now getting paid for it.

=====

Translation: When Mark started the project, a bunch of Debian people
made unwarranted assumptions.  Mark didn't force them to stop making
those assumptions.  Therefore, he is responsible for those
assumptions.  Mark should immediately give Debian a million dollars
and a pony.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mark started Ubuntu in the first place
because he had ideas about how to make Debian far more successful and
some extra money lying aroudn that he wanted to contribute to making
Debian more successful, and Debian wasn't interested.  Now it turns
out that most of his ideas were exactly correct.  Is madduck demanding
that Ubuntu immediately stop being more successful than Debian, and
does the following:

"If I may add a thought that has come up lately (it's not only mine):
a derivative like Ubuntu, namely one pushing Debian to the desktop, is
an important asset for Debian. However, the only way this is going to
work from the Debian perspective is as a mutual effort. If
Canonical/Ubuntu do not realise this, maybe another derivative has to
step in to fill the void?"

...mean that if Ubuntu doesn't stop it, Debian will be forced to
create a new distribution that'll be more successful, and that'll show
us?


Or am I just totally wrong here?