On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 06:38:57PM +0200, Simon Richter wrote: > One of them is that Ubuntu developers get paid. That makes a huge > difference, as they can devote a lot more time each day to their work > than, say, a student who also needs to work besides his university duties > to stay afloat, and can only dedicate a few hours on a weekend to Debian.
A majority of Ubuntu developers are also volunteers, and there are in fact Debian developers who are paid for their efforts, both in whole and in part. I wouldn't be at all surprised if more people in total were paid to work on Debian than on Ubuntu, especially given that many developers contribute to Debian as at least a part of their professional responsibilities. While Canonical's sponsorship does represent a huge contribution to Ubuntu, the difference between Debian and Ubuntu is much more than simply funding. > This is one of the cases where different interests come into play. A lot > of modern hardware requires binary-only firmware to operate. A > distribution with a clear end-user focus such as Ubuntu can easily > strike a deal with hardware manufacturers to get the necessary > permissions; it may not be allowed to derive a distribution from Ubuntu > that also includes these drivers as the license on them prohibits > redistribution. Ubuntu does not obtain special licensing terms for any firmware. All of the firmware included in Ubuntu is freely redistributable, and in fact, I believe all of it is available either upstream in Linux or in Debian non-free. > > E. Mr. Hess has a nice supermarket argument but can't see that Debian > > needs to steal a few things from Ubuntu, ie it goes both ways. > > Not quite. Ubuntu's big advantages are specifically in places where it > has been adapted to specific use cases; stealing those would lead to the > exact same problems that I outlined above under "taking suggestions". Yes, many of the differences between Ubuntu and Debian fall into this category. > > Unfortunatly I think you just aren't smart enough to read > > the writing on the wall that there is a reason Ubuntu has been for a > > while now such a more popular distro then us. > > Yes, it's called "marketing". I think you were much closer to the mark above. -- - mdz -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
