Why need Debian?

[Derek Broughton]

Daniel Robitaille wrote:

>> A few times I have statements in the ubuntu website that there can't
>> be Ubuntu if there's no Debian. This statement seems to me like it's
>> only relevant to Warty, but why should they continue taking debian
>> sources, especially considering that Ubuntu's main is normally ahead
>> of Debian's sid? Is it the avoidance of effort duplication or is a
>> matter of maintaining compatibility or...?

Both.
> 
> Ubuntu is more than Main; it's also universe and multiverse.  Between
> the 3 that's the 16,000 packages available in both in Debian and
> Ubuntu.  Debian  has over 1000 maintainers/developpers to take care of
> all this.   Ubuntu has what?  maybe 50 people between paid developpers
> and community members (mostly via MOTU).   Ubuntu cannot exist without
> Debian  because you cannot compare the size of the people maintaning
> this large body of packages.
> 
> While some of the more visible aspect of Ubuntu seems to be generally
> ahead of Debian (think here Gnome, Xorg, etc), many of the
> applications in Main are directly coming from Debian, and we get new
> versions in Ubuntu simple because of updates in the Debian's sid.
> There isn't the maiunpower to do it all by ourselve in Ubuntu.

And why would we want to? There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Debian,
there's just some issues that keep the release cycle down to a crawl. 
Though I've seen some complaints from Debian people about Ubuntu, in the
long run I can only see the two complementing each other.

I still follow (and post to) a number of Debian lists.
-- 
derek