Idea for expanded support of some non-free software

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Philippe Landau">

> >Absolutely. The small team of Ubuntu developers within Canonical 
> may i ask you how many you are ?

Canonical has around 40 employees, around half of which work directly on the
distro.

> >have a very clear brief: To provide a totally awesome Free Software
> >operating system. So supporting proprietary software is outside that
> >brief, and in some cases, not possible at all (ie. we can't fix problems
> >with it, 
> 
> this is a common situation, and you work around it daily by integrating
> software including it's bugs so it is still usable.  of course it is
> important to have priorities and time budgets.  is it possible to make
> these transparent ?

All development is done on the public mailing lists and irc channels.

> >I don't think this is a relevant point - you seem to be 
> >suggesting that we should set Ubuntu apart by including  
> >proprietary software. That is not in line with our philosophy.
> 
> i am not suggesting this, no.
> my question is genuine.
> since reading about ubuntu on distrowatch,
> i always wondered what the main goals of this distro are.
> the publicity suggested it is making
> an easily usable OS for the simple user,
> what i saw pointed more to complete debian's ambition,
> there were scant hints the goal would be future profitability,
> and there was the crucial promise to keep it
> free of charge, including support.
> it would be great if the real priorities and aims were published.

Our priorities and aims are published on the website and reiterated in these
threads on the development list.

- Jeff

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