Re: Is Ubuntu a debian derivative or is it a fork?
On Wed, Jun 01, 2005 at 11:47:46AM -0700, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> Ubuntu developers already participate in team maintenance in Debian, and
> this works well, but in the traditional Debian maintainer model, there are
> just too many obstacles for this kind of direct participation.
I think it is high time we revisit the traditional Debian maintainer
model. We have been aware of its weaknesses for years, and are most
biting in the areas of nonresponsive maintainers. I think we should
devote some thought to declaring a permanent bug-squashing party and
relaxing the rules for NMUs (for instance, let them happen for any
documented bug of any severity so long as they are uploaded to the 5-day
delayed queue and patches are posted to the BTS at the time of the
upload). One small step down that road, anyway.
> Derivatives are a fact of life, and have been for some years now. It would
> be better to learn how to cooperate effectively than to wish that they would
> go away. There will always be some level of divergence in a derivative,
> even an official Debian subproject.
Well put. We all (Debian and the derivatives) still suck at this, and
there's no reason that we have to.
-- John
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