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Re: (seemingly) declinging bug report numbers



On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 10:13:51PM +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-10-11 at 13:40 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> > I wonder: did upstream developers start to worry when the number of bugs
> > report they received *directly* started to decrease, due to Debian
> > distributing their software?
> Well but that's a different situation isn't it?

No, it isn't.

> I mean Debian typically doesn't "duplicate" what upstream is doing,

No. However, Debian is an upstream to many other distributions, just as
upstream developers are to us.

> but in your example rather serve as some intermediate layer for bugs,
> either directly solving them (and then hopefully push that upstream)
> or simply forwarding the bugs.

How is that any different from downstream distributions?

> With derivatives, it's not only that (don't know how much of the bugs
> e.g. reported at Ubuntu are then forwarded to Debian, if they manage the
> respective package themselves)... the really copy and make the same
> work...

Not in all cases.

[...]
> And I can't quite believe that this doesn't ultimately take users and
> manpower away from Debian.
> 
> An example is that, especially stuff from the commercial- (or at least
> non-open-source-) world seems to drop out Debian from their supported
> major distros and replace it by *buntu (given that it must be "better"
> for its "commercial support").... well at least in my experience.

On the whole, commercial entities cooperate better with other commercial
entities than they do with volunteer organizations, just as much as
volunteer organizations cooperate better with other volunteer
organizations instead of other commercial entities. There may be
exceptions, however, though strictly speaking canonical isn't one of
them (otherwise we wouldn't have be having this discussion yet again).

I don't expect most major corporations to see Debian as something they
can work with, mostly because Debian is something so far removed from
what such entities are used to be dealing with that it's not something
they can wrap their collective minds around. That's a pity, but it's not
the fault of our commercial derivatives. The fact that they can take
Debian, make some changes so it does something they think is important,
and then offer that to major corporations in a way that these
corporations will be interested in the offer is a good thing, and in no
way threatening to Debian.

I don't think Debian is losing ground to Ubuntu. If anything, Ubuntu is
gaining ground on non-free software. You can't be angry about that.

-- 
Copyshops should do vouchers. So that next time some bureaucracy requires you
to mail a form in triplicate, you can mail it just once, add a voucher, and
save on postage.


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