Cooperating With Canonical Employees
On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 01:42:23PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:
> On Monday 09 January 2006 10:02, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> > This is fair. After all, that's what Free software is about. But I know
> > for sure that "contributing back to Debian" stuff is 100% talk and 0%
> > reality.
>
> There is at least one area where there is a substantial contribution from
> people working on Ubuntu and that is Debian Installer. I also think that
> X.Org maintenance has benefitted a lot from work done earlier for Ubuntu.
>
> So 0% is just not true.
An important point about both of these cases is that it comes down entirely
to the people, not the technology. It's not arch or launchpad or Scott's
patchlist that lets these two examples happen. It's that Colin has decided
to remain heavily involved with the d-i team and Daniel and I have decided
to collaborate closely on Xorg.
Note that in the Xorg case Daniel very publicly wanted nothing to do with
the XSF (I'm not going to dig up the ugly link for this) but I've made an
effort to do more than just take his work, but instead to reach out and
establish a strong tie with him. I think we've both benefitted from it.
The way to collaborate well with Canonical employees or MOTU remains the
exact same as it does for collaborating with anyone else inside or outside
of Debian. Establish a good working relationship with them on a personal
level by asking questions, soliciting advice politely, and rolling up your
sleeves and getting some work done. Free software on the scale that Debian
exists is fundamentally a social activity, and if you want it to work you
have to make an effort on the human level. All this crap about launchpad,
arch vs svn, and other such tools is entirely the wrong debate to be
having.
- David Nusinow
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