Re: Why does Ubuntu have all the ideas?
On Sun, Jul 30, 2006 at 05:17:22PM +0300, George Danchev wrote:
> On Sunday 30 July 2006 16:21, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > 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.
>
> You can't have it both ways; it is either competition or cooperation. I tend
> to agree with your previous message that it is some sort of cooreration,
> since it is hard to compete with yourself being Debian and Ubuntu developer
> at the same time (well unless one is living in some sort of splitted
> personality ;-). ... or you claim that it is cooreration is some areas, and
> competition in others ?
I don't think it's so simple. It's difficult to characterize such a
relationship as purely competitive when everything we create is free to be
shared, and we're not playing a zero-sum game.
Is the user who prefers Ubuntu a loss to Debian? I don't think so. Is the
developer who prefers to contribute to Debian a loss to Ubuntu? Certainly
not. Are there developers who contribute to both Debian and Ubuntu, in
different ways? Absolutely. This doesn't mean that they're competing with
themselves, though their contributions to one may compete with others'
contributions to the other.
Debian will appeal to some more than Ubuntu, and vice versa. They will
innovate in different ways and for different reasons. Sometimes they will
choose different approaches to solve the same problem, and in this respect,
they are in competition. In some cases, one of the approaches will be
proven superior overall, while in others, each will be better suited to its
parent. This applies to social behaviour as well as to technological
pursuits.
The metaphor of an ecosystem is apt: in some areas of overlap, one strategy
will dominate, while in others, an equilibrium will develop. The diversity
of the system is a source of strength, as it lends a resistance to attack
and starvation.
--
- mdz
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