Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes
On Thu, 30 Jul 2009, Marc Haber wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:37:46AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > What we're speaking of is synergy between both distributions. You know the
> > it's the principle behind “the combination of both is worth more that the
> > sum of individual parts”.
>
> What kind of synergy could Debian get from Ubuntu which it couldn't
> get in the past? I surely haven't seen any in the past.
As you might have noticed, Ubuntu is used by lots of people and
they start having some influence on upstream projects. Those projects do
some effort to ensure that Ubuntu has a good version of their software
(sometimes by using a version that does not come from Debian sid).
If Ubuntu and Debian used the same version, the incentive would be even
bigger to publish a really good version because it's going to be used
very widely in the next 3 years.
Also in many cases, Ubuntu and Debian teams can't fully collaborate
because they do not target the same upstream version, freezing at the same
time should make it possible to achieve this goal.
There are certainly challenges to turn this possibility in a reality but
if we don't do the efforts to even make it possible, we're sure to get
nothing out of what would be possible.
We certainly have to see whether Ubuntu is going to do some efforts to
go in the same direction, but I certainly hope that they will.
> > We'll keep our user base
>
> That's what I doubt. Ubuntu LTS will be better than Debian stable in
> all aspects, why should anybody continue using Debian stable?
Why are you using Debian and not Ubuntu?
For me:
- Debian is where we shape the future
- Debian's goals/principles are in sync with my own values
- Debian can be used on embedded targets
- Debian is stable and more tested (even if we freeze at the same time, we're
likely to release after Ubuntu with way more fixes than Ubuntu)
This is not going to change and as long as that's true, Debian won't die
as we will keep an active development community.
I'm also quite convinced that by doing better communication/marketing
that explains what we are, we can continue to attract new users and new
developers.
World domination does not start with "competing with Ubuntu" but with
competing with all the proprietary systems out there and for this
we would certain benefit from more cooperation with Ubuntu.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
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