Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes
On Mon, Aug 03, 2009 at 04:13:03PM +0200, Bernd Zeimetz wrote:
> > There seems to be an assumption here that Ubuntu would benefit from bugfixes
> > from Debian developers, but that the reverse would not be true. Is this
> > what you believe? Does that mean you don't think Ubuntu developers
> > contribute fixes back to Debian today?
> > While never committing to keep any given package in sync with Debian, Ubuntu
> > developers certainly are actively engaged in pushing their changes upstream
> > to Debian.
> Oh, really? Within the last year I looked at about 20-30 bugfixes/changes
> which were made in Ubuntu. Here are some statistics (no, I didn't properly
> count them):
> 3 of them were reported back to Debian (yay!) - and they were really useful.
> About 5-10 changes were utter bullshit, like disabling regression tests instead
> of fixing the real problem when they start failing due to other changes in the
> distribution.
> All the others I had to pull from launchpad...
> Often there were .ubuntu versions introduced, although it would have been
> easy for the person (DD, member of the right teams) to change these things
> in Debian and let it migrate to Ubuntu.
My proposition was that "Ubuntu developers are actively engaged in pushing
their changes upstream to Debian." It was *not* that all changes made in
Ubuntu are forwarded to the Debian BTS. That you choose to equate the two,
and furthermore that you complain about the quality of the changes which
were *not* forwarded to Debian (did it not occur to you that the lack of
forwarding of ugly hacks might have been a conscious decision?), tells me
that you are predisposed to dislike Ubuntu and that you found what you
wanted to when looking at Ubuntu changes.
Changes that Ubuntu has not submitted to Debian are not proof that Ubuntu is
not actively engaging with Debian. Changes that Ubuntu has made that you
disapprove of are not proof that Ubuntu is not actively engaging with
Debian. Nor is any of this proof that Ubuntu's contributions to Debian are
insignificant.
I'm sorry that you have a negative impression of Ubuntu's relationship with
Debian, but there's plenty of data available that contradicts your
conclusion (including BTS reports that have been posted to this very
thread). Since you don't appear interested in helping to *improve* Ubuntu's
relationship with Debian, I'm not going to waste my time arguing with you
about it.
> I rarely hear anything positive from Ubuntu, except that more and more people
> who are active in Ubuntu realized that it is much better to do things in Debian
> directly.
Which I'll note you manage to not give Ubuntu credit for here, even though
this is also something that's actively encouraged in the Ubuntu community
when it's appropriate. <shrug>
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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