ubuntu does not give back to community

[Vivaldi Gloria]

I hear once in a while that "ubuntu does not give back to community". Debian guys said such a thing (sorry - I forgot where I read it). Now the kernel guy says such a thing:

http://excess.org/article/2008/07/oclug-june-kernel-walkthrough/

Is there any truth behind this? Does ubuntu/canonical contribute little to upstream?

[Bachstelze]

I guess that's true. For example, Ingo Molnar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingo_Molnar) is a RedHad employee, but works on the kernel full-time, and does not actually do anything on RH. I don't think Canonical does such things.

[ssam]

http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Website/Content/UbuntuContributions

linux-image-2.6.26-4-generic is installed on ~900 machines according to popcon.ubuntu.com. that implies that there are several thousand people testing intrepid already. So that thousands of people testing the next version gnome. during the hardy dev cycle ubuntu testers found some pretty nasty bugs, and these got fixed.

[fatality_uk]

I am sure I heard Mark Shuttleworth say in an interview that Canonical work upstream with Debian guys. But remember, Ubuntu's "mission statement" isn't really, that contribute across the development spectrum, they are interested in putting out a top class OS.

[castrojo]

For the kernel:

http://blog.phunnypharm.org/2008/07/canonical-and-linux-kernel.html

As far as debian goes: Myself, Jono Bacon, Mark Shuttleworth, Celso Providelo, Matthias Klose, Steve Langasek, and Kees Cook are currently attending DebConf (the debian conference) and having good discussions with Debian Developer's on how to improve collaboration with Debian.

Obviously there's always places to improve but yes, contributions to upstream and Debian is important to Ubuntu.

[Vivaldi Gloria]

For the kernel:

http://blog.phunnypharm.org/2008/07/canonical-and-linux-kernel.html

As far as debian goes: Myself, Jono Bacon, Mark Shuttleworth, Celso Providelo, Matthias Klose, Steve Langasek, and Kees Cook are currently attending DebConf (the debian conference) and having good discussions with Debian Developer's on how to improve collaboration with Debian.

Obviously there's always places to improve but yes, contributions to upstream and Debian is important to Ubuntu.

This is what I was hoping to hear. Thanks.

[Dremora]

Trying to maintain patches outside of Debian over the long term will just lead to needless headaches, duplication of effort, and Canonical will be getting bugs back for things that are already fixed in the last version.

They're really just shooting themselves in the foot if they don't give back.

[Brunellus]

Trying to maintain patches outside of Debian over the long term will just lead to needless headaches, duplication of effort, and Canonical will be getting bugs back for things that are already fixed in the last version.

They're really just shooting themselves in the foot if they don't give back.
Debian's development cycle is unbearably slow for Ubuntu. The usual Debianista retort of "well just effin' use Sid" simply isn't good enough. Ubuntu has usually managed to be just ahead of Debian Testing, with a fair bit of support.

In any event, "giving back" isn't really as relevant as "following the express terms of the license." So long as Ubuntu (or anyone else for that matter) continues to make their source code available under the terms of the GPL, they can proceed however they want.