Re: Is Ubuntu a debian derivative or is it a fork?
On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 12:18:50AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Matt Zimmerman <mdz@ubuntu.com> writes:
> > Regarding your specific example, I know of no reason why Debian couldn't
> > use Ubuntu's X.org packages when Debian is ready to make the transition,
> > but in the end that will be the XSF's decision, not Ubuntu's.
>
> There appears to be a bunch of work going on around this right now,
> without a ton of fanfare. (Pretty much the ideal situation, as far as I'm
> concerned. It's usually a good sign when matters get to the point that
> people are committing things rather than talking about what to commit.)
I'm working very hard to minimize the delta between the Ubuntu and Debian
packages in this particular case. This will be problematic so since there
are essentially two re-packaging efforts planned for the future, and they
are almost completely different.
In a lot of ways, this particular codebase is a worst-case scenario, but
it's not dissimilar to the problem that started this thread: collision
between completely different efforts between Debian and Ubuntu packagers.
For something like wifi-radar this isn't a big problem, but for X.org this
is potentially a huge issue.
While I'm happy that Canonical has done the work on X.org and made it
available to Debian, Debian can not become beholden to Canonical for such
work in any way. If we do, we become like Fedora. The same goes for any
other Debian-derivative (spork?). I, for one, refuse to let that happen,
which is one reason why I'm working on minimizing that delta in every way I
can and hopefully I can get both the Ubuntu X folk(s) and Debian X folks
hacking on the exact same source tree. I can't play politics forever
though, and at a certain point there needs to be some more coherent
statement of policy (if just for practical purposes) than what we've seen
so far.
- David Nusinow
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