[clug] Has Ubuntu resulted in a decline of Linux distribution innovation

[Alex Satrapa]

On 18/06/2009, at 23:55 , Hal Ashburner wrote:

> ... it's fair to say that Canonical contributes very little indeed  
> in comparison with Red Hat, Novell, Mandrivia, etc.

If you limit the scope of "contributes" to simply "number of commits  
to the greater Linux and GNU codebase" perhaps.

> http://lwn.net/Articles/298864/

... and especially if you subscribe to propaganda such as that  
nonsense. Greg specifically mentioned that "all contributions to GNOME  
benefit OpenSolaris users too", totally ignoring the fact that all GNU  
software (such as gcc and binutils) falls under the same umbrella. He  
cherry-picked those projects which Canonical had contributed the least  
number of code patches to.

Limiting "contributing to the community" to "committing patches to  
this small set of software" is a blinkered view.

> If you look at the innovative ideas in the Ubuntu distribution I  
> strongly suspect the overwhelming majority of them will have been  
> derived directly from the debian project.

Does Debian have any guidelines at all on how to design the UI of your  
applications? The Gnome and KDE teams are working on standards, but  
then along come your Java apps which just do their own thing. Is  
attempting to provide a consistent UI to end-users not a contribution  
to the FOSS community?

How much work is involved with preparing a Debian package, that  
doesn't directly contribute to the utility of the upstream for non- 
Debian users? How much work is involved with hosting a repository that  
doesn't directly contribute to the Debian or upstream projects?

There's more to Linux, GNU or Debian than just lines of code.

> James Henstridge is such a nice guy, insanely smart and has made  
> such a terrific contribution to GNOME (libglade amongst other  
> things) it would be a shame if his association with Canonical  
> resulted in him no longer writing fantastic Free code.

Worrying less about problems you can't solve (or that plain don't  
exist) means you'll have more energy left to solve the problems you  
can solve. This is why paranoia is listed as a mental illness: it  
interferes with a person's ability to live a meaningful and productive  
life.

Rather than fearing the loss of someone else's contributions to the  
community, see what you can do to contribute to the community. That  
guy could get hit by a bus next week. This other guy could get shot by  
a cranky ex-wife. If it's really a concern that someone could stop  
contributing, you take action to ensure that cessation of their  
contributions will not harm your work.

Succession planning, risk management, training: these are all  
positive, forward-thinking activities. Griping about someone else's  
decisions is time-wasting, unproductive and engenders negative morale.

Play the hand you're dealt, and don't let the propagandists tell you  
what to think.

Alex

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