On Tuesday 30 September 2008 06:14:31 Manoj Srivastava wrote: > > I don't think that anyone is arguing that canonical, and > ubuntu, do not provide a useful product, nor that the product they > provide is popular. > > The point is whether they are good citizens in the free > software community, and part of _that_ ethos is feeding user feedback > (positive or negative), and code changes, back upstream. > > I can't say I am impressed by canonical's efforts in that > arena.
I don't see a reason why every company needs to contribute in the same point of an OS stack. If the focus of Ubuntu is to build upon an existing OS stack and provide usability at the top most level - that is a compelling product strategy as well. Criticizing it for not contributing as well to the kernel is like saying LUGs don't serve a purpose because it's people don't send kernel patches. Also remember, that this is the only commercial backed distribution which is completely free - you cannot compare it with Redhat, Novell/SuSe, Linspire, etc. because they all work with a different business model. I find it laudable (till now that is, I have had a heart break some years back with RH) that a commercial company bases its complete viability on a product which is actually Free. As far as being a good FOSS citizen, I have always believed that helping fixing bugs upstream is better than having distro specific patches. I must admit, I cannot say how well Ubuntu does in this regard, however I have seen many launchpad bugs referencing the fact that a bug has been filed upstream. Unless I see proper data (and not merely opinions/hunches misrepresented as facts) as to whether the Ubuntu's community has not helped in fixing these bugs (and not merely reporting them - which isn't bad per se), I cannot accept that they haven't been of much help to the FOSS world. And as far as open sourcing of components like Launchpad is concerned - it is a branded service for goodness sake. Is it being distributed without source code? Isn't there a commitment from Canonical to open source it? Why don't you go ask other companies provide online services to the community to open source their server software? Quite a few of those come to mind! I actually find this kind of intra-community bickering in the Linux community very disturbing. What is the problem with all you folks ? this is a Free Linux distro which has improved visibility of Linux in the OS market. This distro is on your side of the Free software revolution. It hasn't compromised Free principles like what Linspire did, and yet faces more widespread criticism from the FOSS community. What is it that truly disturbs you? - Sandip _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [email protected] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
