Greg KH, Linux kernel developer delivered a keynote in the Linux plumbing conference about the health of the ecosystem. His message was essentially that distributions that don't contribute to the ecosystem have to rely on the whims of others which is unhealthy for them. Here is an introduction the development model and some interesting statistics about the Linux kernel code. Update by TH: Rebuttals are appearing all over the web, like this one by Canonical's Matt Zimmerman ("He's refuting a claim which has, quite simply, never been made. [...] When this sort of thing happens on mailing lists, it's called trolling."), or this one by another Canonical employee, Dustin Kirkland.
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Member since:2005-11-11
Did you not follow the news? http://osnews.com/story/20282/Canonical_to_Fund_Upstream_Linux_Usab...
It was even on OSNews.
Or is it that you can never be pleased no matter what they do?
Edited 2008-09-21 10:41 UTC
Member since:2005-11-12
Member since:2008-09-21
Member since:2008-05-27
"Ubuntu is a great distro but they need to put more effort into contributing more back to projects code,it's really that simple considering how popular it is."
Projects need more than "code". Publicity ain't free, exposure ain't free.
Also, DOES ANYONE HERE BELIEVE THAT UBUNTU/CANONICAL IS MAKING MONEY? Not me, I think that they're bleeding money (I believe even Shuttleworth announced it)...
Member since:2007-02-17
They are bleeding money and Mark has had to contribute money to the project three times as far as I can count. That's 30 million dollars out of his own pocket to a project which has still to make a red cent. Suse and RedHat have the luxury of having rich parent companies that had infused them with cash. They both sell their distro commercially while ubuntu has stuck to their guns that their distro would always be free. They could have capitilized on the popularity of the brand a long time ago and sold the distro. In-fact only recently have they started packaging Ubuntu in retail locations.
Canonical has one guy giving away his own money to a project he believes in, Suse has Novell, RedHat had TimeWarner at some point. He decided to focus his distro on what they can do best which is packaging and they seem to be doing it rather well. They don't have to contribute all that much to the kernel because they use almost the exact same kernel that Debian does, they contribute bug reports and fixes to the debian and they in turn contribute patches back to the kernel in necessary. I don't see the issue here.
This is a stupid argument, and just shows sour grapes. So what if Ubuntu is more popular, instead of complaining about how about doing something about it. How about seeing what exactly is it about Ubuntu that makes people new and old want to use it.
Member since:2008-09-22
130 work on Linux....do you mean Linux the K]kernel or do you mean 130 total work on porting Symphony and Lotus and all their other software to Linux? I really doubt it's the latter. They've probably got a lot more people than that working on the userspace software. And that's most of what Canonical does too. They just can't do it on the scale that IBM does.
Member since:
2005-11-12
Well what millions is that then, where, into what FOSS?
The fact of the matter is ordinary developers of their free time contribute more than them. Ubuntu is a great distro but they need to put more effort into contributing more back to projects code,it's really that simple considering how popular it is.
I'd like to point out about in the update that person puts up employees, which is completely wrong. If only 130 people contribute to Linux at IBM then it's about the same, it's about how many contribute in the company not how many are employed.
Whats how many years it's been going got to do with it, it only takes a few people to contribute patches at a fast rate.
Edited 2008-09-21 10:43 UTC