Re: Why does Ubuntu have all the ideas?

[Matt Zimmerman <mdz@ubuntu.com>]

On Sun, Jul 30, 2006 at 10:34:12PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 11:49:07AM -0700, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 12:58:15PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> > > When Ubuntu leads to users having ideas like the one in the parent post,
> > > this is manifestly false.
> > Rather than blaming Ubuntu, it's more constructive to educate the user
> > community about the (useful) role that derivatives play.
> 
> Personally, I think it's fair to say Debian and Ubuntu are in
> "competition" in some areas, and I don't think it's something to be
> ashamed of on either side. Why shouldn't Ubuntu and Debian compete with
> each other to better serve their users, both actual and potential? As
> long as it's done in a cooperative manner, and with both of us willing to
> share our successes with each other and learn from each others mistakes,
> how is a bit of friendly competition anything but a good thing?
>
> For comparison, debootstrap and cdebootstrap are "competing"
> implementations of the same idea, and both try to win over users by doing
> the same job better, according to various criteria. I don't think
> cdebootstrap would've existed without debootstrap, and debootstrap's
> certainly benefited from copying some of the features cdebootstrap has. I
> think there's room enough for that sort of competition in Debian, and I
> think there's room enough for derivatives to try competing with official
> Debian releases in various manners too.


I agree with you that there is this kind of technological competition among
derivatives, and so long as it is all free software, Debian and its
derivatives all stand to gain from it.

I was objecting to Joey's assertion that "Ubuntu leads to users having ideas
like the one in the parent post".  The theme of the parent post was that
Debian doesn't care about the needs of its users.  I feel that this is an
inaccurate characterization, firstly, but it's unreasonable to blame Ubuntu
for a user getting this impression based on the fact that Ubuntu met their
individual needs better than Debian did.

-- 
 - mdz