Yet Another example of Shuttleworth awesomeness.

[starcannon]

After reading Mark's entire post, I have to say, I think he is making a very generous offer, and that the reasoning is sound. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of work to divide our community; I've witnessed it here on these boards, indeed I still see those same people posting and stirring the pot. FUD is something that beckons to our base primal natures, its hard to ignore; so I beg everyone who would be involved in the Cadence concept, to use reason, not instinct, as your guide when considering this proposition. There is a lot to gain if a freeze cadence can be agreed upon.

[HappinessNow]

After reading Mark's entire post, I have to say, I think he is making a very generous offer, and that the reasoning is sound. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of work to divide our community; I've witnessed it here on these boards, indeed I still see those same people posting and stirring the pot. FUD is something that beckons to our base primal natures, its hard to ignore; so I beg everyone who would be involved in the Cadence concept, to use reason, not instinct, as your guide when considering this proposition. There is a lot to gain if a freeze cadence can be agreed upon.

Off topic/ why do they call the lake/town Medical Lake (I know there is a hospital there but did the name(s) exist before that)?

[starcannon]

Off topic/ why do they call the lake/town Medical Lake (I know there is a hospital there but did the name(s) exist before that)?

People used to come here from all over the place to immerse themselves in the "healing waters", now days its so full of who knows what that it'll give you a rash.

[gnomeuser]

Ubuntu needs Debian, but Debian doesn`t need Ubuntu.

Don't kid yourself, Canonical now employs quite a lot of important Debian developers and invest heavily in infrastructure and technology that Debian also uses. If Canonical was to say "screw you Debian, stop treating us this way" and take their toys to go play with say openSUSE instead Debian would suffer a major setback.

Debian depends a great deal on contributions from Ubuntu as well as new developers coming their way via Ubuntu.

Debian absolutely needs Ubuntu these days.

[Bigtime_Scrub]

Don't kid yourself, Canonical now employs quite a lot of important Debian developers and invest heavily in infrastructure and technology that Debian also uses. If Canonical was to say "screw you Debian, stop treating us this way" and take their toys to go play with say openSUSE instead Debian would suffer a major setback.

Debian depends a great deal on contributions from Ubuntu as well as new developers coming their way via Ubuntu.

Debian absolutely needs Ubuntu these days.

Exactly, which is why I don't understand why Debian is not hot to this idea. It makes a ton of sense. Like someone said earlier Ubuntu people said it...scratch that our benevolent dictator said it, which automatically tunes them all out.

[Hallvor]

Don't kid yourself, Canonical now employs quite a lot of important Debian developers and invest heavily in infrastructure and technology that Debian also uses. If Canonical was to say "screw you Debian, stop treating us this way" and take their toys to go play with say openSUSE instead Debian would suffer a major setback.

Debian depends a great deal on contributions from Ubuntu as well as new developers coming their way via Ubuntu.

Debian absolutely needs Ubuntu these days.

I believe that Canonical has employed several former Debian developers, but AFAIK Canonical does not pay a single one of the many hundred active Debian developers. They grab their work and do not even mention Debian on the main page of www.ubuntu.com. That is a nice way to appreciate their hard work.

All that Ubuntu gives back is monolithic patches (http://patches.ubuntu.com/) that explain the differences between the packages in Ubuntu and Debian. (Canonical did open source launchpad, but that is a different story.)

Debian does not depend on contributions from Ubuntu at all. The project existed long before Ubuntu and was doing just fine without it. It is still doing just fine and will be doing just fine even if the entire Canonical team dies in a plane crash.

Without Debian, Ubuntu would have to find a different distro to make a spinoff from.

[mcduck]

Exactly, which is why I don't understand why Debian is not hot to this idea. It makes a ton of sense. Like someone said earlier Ubuntu people said it...scratch that our benevolent dictator said it, which automatically tunes them all out.

I kind of doubt that the responses would have been so negative if the suggestion had came from, say, Red Hat.

I suppose some Debian people are just bitter about the way Ubuntu became "Debian that normal people can actually use" and gained more popularity than Debian itself ever did.

This is still opensource, and Ubuntu would have every right to take code and develop it's releases based on that without contributing anyting back. Based on that they should be happy for what they get. And definitely not complain when somebody actually suggests closer co-operation and even offers to give direct aid in development.

[Hallvor]

“I kind of doubt that the responses would have been so negative if the suggestion had came from, say, Red Hat.”

I agree. But that is because Red Hat actually give something back and appreciate the open source community instead of just riding on their shoulders and selling closed source software.

“I suppose some Debian people are just bitter about the way Ubuntu became "Debian that normal people can actually use" and gained more popularity than Debian itself ever did.”

I can`t rule out that some people may be jealous because Ubuntu isn`t giving them credit for their work. But more importantly the suggestion of a time based release for Debian was probably made to stabilize Ubuntu LTS with the help of all the Debian developers, and then grab a larger share of the server market from Debian. Canonical gets the work done for free instead of spending time working on their own fork.

“This is still opensource, and Ubuntu would have every right to take code and develop it's releases based on that without contributing anyting back.”

Correct. But it would be nice if they stopped pretending. Their patches can`t be cleanly and directly applied to Debian.

“Based on that they should be happy for what they get. And definitely not complain when somebody actually suggests closer co-operation and even offers to give direct aid in development.”

And that is close to nothing. Canonical use the Ubuntu trademark and slap their own volunteers in the face to promote a commercial service like Ubuntu One or closed source Canonical Landscape Dedicated Server.

If they want to help Debian development, fine. Time based releases where the Debian developers make Ubuntu LTS servers for free is imho parasitic undermining of the open source community by a commercial company.

[issih]

Judging an idea based on its source rather than its merit is stupid and divisive.

It seems to me that some people need to be at war with someone else in order to define themselves. To prove they have an identity of their own they must vociferously and completely hate everything else. Its very sad, but very human, and is at the root of a great deal of the pointless fragmentation and internecine warfare that occurs within the OSS community. Far more happens in our community because of personal politics rather than technical excellence.

This is a sensible plan, one that would aid ALL distros, but because the grandees are all more concerned with proving how red, green, blue or swirly snail they are to the core they can't see merit and can only see trojan horses.

Frankly its pathetic.

More coordination in establishing a solid common foundation will make linux a better, more stable, easier to develop for and simpler to maintain platformm, and better still those skills will transfer more easily from one distro to another.

It is time to get off the high horses and have a peace conference, and for all fanboys to shut up, there is no use for them on any side.

[pelle.k]

I've always thought Debian as one of the greatest distributions around. After reading through the messages on that list I'm really not too sure how much I have respect towards them any more.

I feel the same way. They completely missed the point of marks suggestion, and turn the thread into a "ubuntu doesn't contribute enough" flamewar.
I can understand that they feel that way, and if there was a rule of free software that one has to give back equally as much as one has taken from a project i think most GNU/Linux users should feel ashamed. Thankfully though, thats not the case.
Ubuntu has indeed much to gain from the proposed move, however, mark was suggesting other linux distros (and upstream) do too. That should have been the debate on the debian mainling lists.

Frankly its pathetic.

More coordination in establishing a solid common foundation will make linux a better, more stable, easier to develop for and simpler to maintain platformm, and better still those skills will transfer more easily from one distro to another.

It is time to get off the high horses and have a peace conference, and for all fanboys to shut up, there is no use for them on any side.

Amen to that!