Ubuntu damaging Debian?

[soul_rebel]

I had the feeling that Ubuntu's great popularity could someway harm Debian the rock on which Ubuntu and many other distros are built and the incarnation of the true spirit of free software.
I don't have a definitive opinion about this, BUT...
today I have read this
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20050418#3
and this
http://internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3496541

I wanted to share this with you.

I hope in a better cohesistance between Debian and Ubuntu.
bye

[KiwiNZ]

I do not believe that Ubuntu harms Debian in any way . I believe the opposite , It will enhance Debian.

[YourSurrogateGod]

Imo, distros will come and go (there are bad ones that will simply fade and more popular ones that will emerge), but the overall Open-source community/project will survive and that's what is important.

[Glanz]

I believe the only thing that can harm Debian is Debian itself, and that the only thing that can harm Ubuntu is Ubuntu itself. Neither of these things are likely to happen, albeit Debian seems to have gone through a period of autodestruction of lates.

Debian and Ubuntu are mutually complimentary, no matter what Murdock might think. Being the founder doesn't make him any more "god" than Stallman.

[totalshredder]

Ubuntu isn't harming\damaging debian, but it is definitely killing it's poplularity. Debian is now trying to get back the popularity it lost by starting a quicker release cycle etc. I think it's good for debian, because it's causing them to work harder. We will see though.

[TravisNewman]

Ubuntu is healthy cooperation and competition with Debian. It'll cause Debian to create a better product, which will then in turn cause Ubuntu to be a better product.

[jdong]

Ubuntu and Debian have excellent, fair code flow. It's not an issue of Ubuntu sapping Debian's work and calling it their own.


The issue is that Debian users are making a shift towards Ubuntu. This can be interpreted positively or negatively.


I personally see many positives of this. Not only does it bring out the best in Linux (the power to choose) ,but it also gives Debian a little hint that maybe users want slightly more frequent releases

[Leif]

OK, this stuff is all over /. etc., and the debian side of it seems to be a worry that ubuntu will lead to a fork and incompatible packages. The ubuntu side says that ubuntu is contributing, and the current work done will be used for the next debian release. Can someone familiar with the development process please comment on this ? Will ubuntu packages really be useful to debian ?

[jdong]

Ubuntu got a lot of dirty work out-of-the-way for Debian --- udev, hal, KDE 3.4.x (which compiles fine on Sid), GNOME 2.10.x, etc.

The problem is in binary compatibility, and that's not a first: Just because it has a .deb extension doesn't mean it works on every Debian-derivative. Do Fedora Core 4 test 2 GCC-4.0 compiled KDE install onto SuSE 6.4? No. So what's wrong with Hoary packages not running on Sarge?


Warty was very similar to Debian, but now the two are starting to diverge, so binary incompatibility is expected.

[bigzak]

This is healthy competition, and to be honest it sounds like sour grapes from Debian. Expecting the entire Linux world to backtrack to pre-Ubuntu just because it does Debian better than Debian did is rather childish, to be honest. It should just be a cue to the Debian management team that, just maybe, relying on the Debian project continuing _just because_ it's the Debian project, and for no other reason, just ain't gonna cut it any more.