Flavor Review Request of UbuntuKylin

[Scott Kitterman]

On Monday, February 18, 2013 07:01:47 PM Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> On 02/18/2013 04:10 PM, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > When you say "We" have a formal relationship with the Kylin team, who is
> > "We", what is the nature of the relationship, and (because it appears to
> > then be relevant), what is this Kylin team?
> 
> 'We' is Canonical in this context. The relationship is that we've agreed
> to contribute engineering support that we would previously put into the
> Chinese Edition, into joint work, which we'll call 'Ubuntu Kylin'. The
> Kylin team previously was working on their own distro, called Kylin. A
> Kylin is the lion you'll see outside many Chinese buildings, a symbol of
> luck and well-being.
> 
> There is some precedent for this - you'll be aware of a number of Ubuntu
> derivatives that have government sponsorship of one form of another.
> 
> > If this new Ubuntu flavor is approved, will it be allowed to be
> > distributed in China without further modification that would compromise
> > it's freeness?
> Yes. There would almost certainly be an OEM version which may include
> things like WPS, just as the OEM builds of Ubuntu often include codecs,
> Flash and other consumer-friendly modifications that are unlikely to
> gather the support of RMS :). Nevertheless, that makes them a more
> viable contender against Windows and other platforms that would
> otherwise be shipped.

That's certainly reasonable and typical of the OEM customizations Canonical 
often adds.  My concern is more specifically about if the product will, like 
existing Ubuntu flavors, be designed to protect the privacy and security of the 
user and that it be shipped in China with the same content as elsewhere in the 
world.

Scott K