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Well, the point you are missing is clearly demonstrated in the above quote. Ubuntu is, indeed, far and away the most popular desktop Linux distro. And it has expanded the boundaries of what the Linux desktop market means.

You like Debian? Fine.

"A rising tide lift all boats."

That's what Bob Young kept saying, over and over again. Till we were sick of it, even. But he was right. We are all better off because of the name recognition that Red Hat has achieved in the server market. Our tide has risen with Red Hat's

Debian was never going to become a wildly successful desktop distro. And if you thought it was, you were dreaming. Debian has lot's of greatness about it. But it needed something else to really take off in popularity among the "non-elite". Ubuntu has been that something else. Ubuntu has been a reminder that there is more... much more... to winning the game than just developers.

Which brings us to the concrete point that you raise, which is a good one. Can Canonical contribute enough paid developer time, strategically targeted, to allow Debian to meet an accelerated schedule for this release while still maintaining quality?

Debian may have scads of developers on their developer rolls. But being on the developer rolls is Debian's substitute for "payroll". And I'd wager that the *strategically targeted* bit that the *paid developer* factor affords can offset any difference in total number of developers handily. Because cats are awfully difficult to herd. And Debian has a *lot* of cats.

Popular Linux distributions achieving some sad number one status on Distrowatch (all that Ubuntu has achieved) over the past ten years have been two a penny. By any metrics that actually matter we're not seeing browser usage stats from Ubuntu desktops increase, Canonical can't rattle off a list of software vendors who are writing software for their desktop and we're seeing zilch overall that indicates any adoption beyond the current average Ubuntu user. Nobody, in other words.

After all these years and in view of that mountain to climb, what are we arguing over that is now going to tip the balance and is so, so important to the general Linux 'ecosystem'? A coordinated release schedule between Debian and Ubuntu. That's it. It's so stupid it ceases to be funny.


I'd love to see that 'something else' that Ubuntu is doing that other distributions aren't. No one can ever come up with anything when that gets asked though.


The more interesting and amusing question is why, if Canonical are maintaining their own distribution that has diverged greatly from Debian, are they eager to contribute developers to a cousin distribution to coordinate releases? Would those developers not serve Ubuntu better directly?

It makes little sense until you conclude that Canonical might be doing this to share more development work with Debian. Why now? Well, the only conclusion you can draw is that Canonical might be finding it difficult to maintain their own distribution. Notice that it's an aligning of Debian with Ubuntu schedules. From the replies to that mail most Debian developers are rightly puzzled as to what they get out of it.

I can only see this 'alliance' that I haven't seen the wider Debian community agree to as anything other than a vague, attempted takeover of Debian by the back door for Canonical's own benefit. I think most Debian developers only learned about this from their own press release.