A Question of Derivatives [Was: MEPIS Founder Plans Transition To Ubuntu]

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Lukas Sabota">

> If their going to use the ubuntu base, why don't they contribute directly
> to Ubuntu?  How do their goals differ?  Both Ubuntu and MEPIS are GNOME
> desktop distributions, what does MEPIS want to do differently than Ubuntu?

MEPIS is actually KDE-based, but that still leaves the question open - what
does MEPIS want to do differently to Kubuntu?

The answer to that is entirely up to the MEPIS dudes. I can think of a few
things, including branding, package selection and a different approach to
some of the non-free bits that we refuse to ship with Ubuntu. It's a local
company with local problems to solve. I'm sure there'll be many areas for
Ubuntu and MEPIS to collaborate and share the load - it wouldn't be worth
deriving from Ubuntu at all if that were not the case! Straight off the bat,
MEPIS benefits from the immense amount of work being done in upstream code
integrated by Debian and Ubuntu maintainers, work being done within Ubuntu
such as laptop and thin client support, and from work being done by Ubuntu
derivatives such as the KDE package maintenance in Kubuntu. Ubuntu benefits
by having another derivative, a greater audience of users and testers, and
more developers working on the periphery - all of whom have the opportunity
to work in the centre of development should they choose to. :-)

There are many reasons why someone / a project would choose to derive from
Ubuntu instead of using it directly. In some cases, we could counsel those
developers, suggesting that their work would be more effectively done within
the project... But in many cases their goals or focus would be sufficiently
different from ours to warrant a different approach, an entirely different
way of organising themselves, even.

Thanks,

- Jeff

-- 
FISL 7.0: Porto Alegre, Brazil        http://fisl.softwarelivre.org/7.0/www/
 
             http://www.xach.com/debian-users-are-beatniks.html