On 29 January 2012 10:49, Mark Shuttleworth <[email protected]> wrote: > On 25/01/12 17:28, Iain Lane wrote: >> This is where we have problems. As far as Ubuntu developers are >> concerned, these packages are very much not as much of a part of >> Ubuntu as the rest of the archive. > > Which Ubuntu developers? Please avoid a simplistic us-and-them response ;-) > >> They live on archive.canonical.com, not archive.ubuntu.com. They're >> managed by Canonical employees, without (as far as I am aware) any way >> for the community to get involved. Most importantly, there are >> (secret) commercial agreements in place between Canonical and the ISVs >> in question that govern distribution. The rights that users receive >> are not the same as those they get from software in the main archive. > > Most of those things are true, but the whole misses the point. > > We have actively steered a course of open-ness when it comes to software > in Ubuntu, modulated by a clear constraint that we should ship only > non-free applications in the image of standard Ubuntu editions. So, we > include binary drivers, but not Flash. > > Some of the applications that are important to that whole ecosystem may > not be redistributed. Partner serves as the vehicle to make those > available on Ubuntu. Rather than going down the road of seeking to > marginalize Canonical's role, with prejudicial language like "(secret) > commercial agreements", please recognise that this is precisely the > point of building a project which has both community and commercial > teams working together. Our goal is not to compete with Debian for > Debianness, we cannot do that and it would not be constructive. Our goal > is to offer a platform that combines those values with access (easy but > optional) to the full range of what's possible on Linux. > >> Don't get me wrong, partner is a valuable service to its users, it's >> just that it is fundamentally different to the Ubuntu archive as far >> as I can see. It's a service that Canonical provides for Ubuntu, sure, >> but that doesn't make it a part of Ubuntu itself. > > Yes, yes, and no. Yes, it is different to the standard Ubuntu archives. > Yes, it is a service provided by Canonical. And no, we disagree, it *is* > part of Ubuntu. It's a good reason for people to choose Ubuntu, and a > good reason to recommend it to friends who want the benefits of a free > and open system but who must also, for whatever reason, have access to > items that cannot be in the Ubuntu archives.
Mark, you were surprised that a significant number of developers don't consider the partner repository part of Ubuntu. In addition to what Laney has pointed out, /etc/apt/sources.list has for years said: ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner The python-apt template says nearly the same thing: Suite: precise Official: false RepositoryType: deb BaseURI: http://archive.canonical.com MatchURI: archive.canonical.com _Description: Canonical Partners Component: partner _CompDescription: Software packaged by Canonical for their partners _CompDescriptionLong: This software is not part of Ubuntu. http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/precise/python-apt/precise/view/head:/data/templates/Ubuntu.info.in Also, because redistribution of partner apps is "not possible", I could make a remix of any of the official Ubuntu flavors but I could not remix a Ubuntu Business Remix with partner apps pre-installed. That alone is an indicator that this is a major change. Jeremy Bicha -- technical-board mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/technical-board
