<br>[1] <a href="http://mdzlog.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/greg-kh-linux-ecosystem/">http://mdzlog.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/greg-kh-linux-ecosystem/</a><br>- thanks for this one, and I notice that Matt links to Greg KH talk - which is the original source of this controversy. And this is of course much better than my attempt to "remember" Greg's talk.<br>
<br><a href="http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/lpc_2008_keynote.html">http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/lpc_2008_keynote.html</a><br><b>Jonathan Corbet</b> report <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/298864/">http://lwn.net/Articles/298864/</a><br>
and Greg KH reply: <a href="http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/lpc_2008_law_and_gospel.html">http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/lpc_2008_law_and_gospel.html</a><br><br>[9] <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarkShuttleworth" target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarkShuttleworth</a><br>
This is also a great URL - and Mark explains why ubuntu does NOT post patches upstream to the main kernel. Greg is trying to explain why Greg thinks it better to patch the main kernel. Mark disagrees - I don't understand why - but others will no doubt understand Marks reasoning. All in the FAQ - thanks again. <br>
<br>And thanks to all the other replies as well.<br><br>The internet is just great - you can easily get to original documents - and decide for your self - no need to just listen to opinions of opinions - I just love it. Now if I could just figure out how to do the same in politics in a reasonable amount of time ...<br>
<br>PS - [5] - <br>I think this is the original source of JeOS <a href="http://www.nexenta.org/os">http://www.nexenta.org/os</a><br>(the idea isn't all that new, just that these guys put it together in open source project style)<br>
And it seems many are now following:<br><a href="http://lizards.opensuse.org/2008/07/16/opensuse-gets-the-jeos/">http://lizards.opensuse.org/2008/07/16/opensuse-gets-the-jeos/</a> <br><a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/JeOSVMBuilder" target="_blank">https://help.ubuntu.com/community/JeOSVMBuilder</a> <br>
I'm sure RedHat and most others are doing as well - especially for VM and appliances<br><br>Thank you for your thoughtful replies - I learned a lot. <br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 6:07 PM, Bryan McLellan <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:btm@loftninjas.org">btm@loftninjas.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div>On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 6:06 PM, Brandon Fouts <<a href="mailto:brando.fouts@gmail.com">brando.fouts@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> point of interest, to me anyway, was how little ubuntu contributes up stream<br>
> to the kernel <br></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
><br>
> for details you might check out:<br>
> <a href="http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.php" target="_blank">http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.php</a><br>
<br>
</div>I would rephrase that to be something like, how little Greg KH (who is<br>
paid by Novell) feels that Canonical (Ubuntu) contributes to the Linux<br>
Kernel and core utilities. Of course one should start by reading Matt<br>
Zimmerman's (CTO of Canonical) response to the whole fiasco. [1]<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
> Individuals are - as you'll read at above URL - by far the biggest<br>
> contributors at almost 27% and you will note that ubuntu does not make it<br>
> into the top 30 - I think they Debian was at least twice perhaps three times<br>
> more patches over the last 2 or 3 years. Now this all gets complex, and only<br>
> those that have real open source interests - like in licenses or software<br>
> patents or copyrights - might want to understand why Mark Shuttleworth is<br>
> taking but not giving back to the "community" and I'll let you investigate<br>
> that on your own. small hint: something to appartantly with vendors that<br>
> won't open up drivers to open source, but will license to ubuntu.<br>
<br>
</div>I don't see debian or ubuntu mentioned anywhere at that link. I see a<br>
list of companies, sponsoring work, but Debian isn't there. That is to<br>
be expected, as AFAIK I know there is not an Debian Project entity.<br>
The trademark is owned by SPI. [2] I think you'll find most<br>
individuals in that list are paid employees of the companies listed in<br>
a later table. Many, if not most, of the companies listed in that<br>
table are hardware companies. Of course they'll need developers to get<br>
kernel support for their hardware. Canonical sells no hardware, nor<br>
tries to market to the enterprise like Redhat with features like GFS.<br>
<br>
I would argue that the goal of Ubuntu has not been to make it run on<br>
SGI hardware, but to make Linux more friendly and usable for many<br>
people. According to DesktopLinux.com's 2007 survey [3] they're<br>
certainly achieving that. How do you calculate the benefit the Linux<br>
community as a whole gets from all of the new people and interest<br>
Canonical has gathered?<br>
<br>
Bringing up Debian is interesting. Many of the Canonical people I've<br>
worked with directly on IRC were Debian Developers to begin with. See<br>
Colin Watson for instance [8]. Debian and Ubuntu are closely tied and<br>
from what I've seen the majority of Ubuntu work get's pushed back<br>
upstream to debian. It's part of the philosophy of Ubuntu [4] and it<br>
certainly makes sense (Avoiding Not Invented Here/NIH).<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
> The general take, from the developers at LPC was that it was best to support<br>
> those distros that actually contribute and are trying to make Linux better<br>
> for us all - and note, IMHO, about 50% of the developers were running ubuntu<br>
> on their personal laptops - but after learning these facts, that number is<br>
> probably lower.<br>
<br>
</div>I think if you look you'll see that Canonical paid developers do a ton<br>
of work in the Linux Community. Probably not in the Kernel, but I know<br>
in my personal experience I see as much work in virtualization come<br>
out of Canonical [5] as I do from Redhat [6]. Redhat owns qumranet<br>
now, but you won't see many kernel (api) changes in KVM, which is<br>
exactly the point of the approach. Try to get libvirt/kvm running on<br>
Debian, then try on Ubuntu and come back to me.<br>
<br>
There's lots of work being done in Canonical from the user<br>
perspective. I don't pay any attention here, but it's essential in<br>
solving LP bug 1 [7] in my opinion and I congratulate them for doing<br>
it.<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
> I only mention this, as I hope ubuntu will be "shamed" into becoming a<br>
> better contributor to the kernel code work - or at least stop bragging about<br>
> how much of a contributor they are, when clearly they are not.<br>
<br>
</div>Please link to bragging. Pics or it didn't happen.<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
<br>
> Sorry to have posted such a long message on such an esoteric topic, and I<br>
> know many will not really care - and I must say I often recommend Mac to<br>
> non-power users if they can afford Apple prices, and to newbies, I also<br>
> recommend ubuntu as the most potentially "trouble free" and now you may have<br>
> some insights as to why ubuntu seems to get some drivers right that other<br>
> distros miss. BSD another fine choices - it is nice to have choices.<br>
<br>
</div>Ubuntu is willing to release binary drivers. Many distributions<br>
aren't. There's strong reasons for not doing this, but if you want to<br>
increase the user base of Linux you're going to have to reduce the<br>
number of people saying "I installed Linux but my video<br>
card/wireless/etc didn't work". Until Linux has a high user base, one<br>
really can't force the hardware makers into writing decent open source<br>
drivers for their gear.<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
> Novell/SUSE (and some would include openSUSE) and Microsoft is of course<br>
> yet another complex situation - but at least RH and Novell don't just take<br>
> care of their own corporate distros, they both have fedora/openSUSE AND they<br>
> actually pay developers to write code/patches for the kernel. They know<br>
> helping the community helps improve the code base which will eventually end<br>
> up in their corporate distros.<br>
<br>
</div>I don't really know what to say to this paragraph. The accusation that<br>
Canonical is somehow working in it's own self interest is pretty<br>
absurd and I would have to ask to what ends? Support? Redhat, Novell,<br>
others, they HAVE corporate distributions which cost money. Canonical<br>
does not, and won't. Please, please, read Mark Shuttleworth's FAQ on<br>
this subject [9].<br>
<br>
Bryan McLellan<br>
<a href="http://loftninjas.org" target="_blank">http://loftninjas.org</a><br>
<br>
[1] <a href="http://mdzlog.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/greg-kh-linux-ecosystem/" target="_blank">http://mdzlog.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/greg-kh-linux-ecosystem/</a><br>
[2] <a href="http://www.debian.org/trademark" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/trademark</a><br>
[3] <a href="http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey.cgi?view=archive&id=0813200712407" target="_blank">http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey.cgi?view=archive&id=0813200712407</a><br>
[4] <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/debian" target="_blank">http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/debian</a><br>
[5] <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/JeOSVMBuilder" target="_blank">https://help.ubuntu.com/community/JeOSVMBuilder</a><br>
[6] <a href="http://et.redhat.com/page/Main_Page" target="_blank">http://et.redhat.com/page/Main_Page</a><br>
[7] <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1" target="_blank">https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1</a><br>
[8] <a href="https://launchpad.net/%7Ekamion" target="_blank">https://launchpad.net/~kamion</a><br>
[9] <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarkShuttleworth" target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarkShuttleworth</a><br>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<br><a href="http://www.psnug.org">www.psnug.org</a><br>Puget Sound Network Users Group<br><br>Building Technical Skills Through Teamwork And Education.<br>
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