[dundee] GNOME Census - Who Writes GNOME & the start of a Flame War

[Andrew Clayton]

On Sun, 1 Aug 2010 10:34:04 +0100, Kris Davidson wrote:

> On 31 July 2010 23:08, Andrew Clayton <andrew at digital-domain.net>
> wrote:
> >
> > Also it's not just hype, they are actively doing some questionable
> > things.
> >
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/543617/
> >
> > Hmm, OK. So Ubuntu dev's can't solve this.
> >
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=588930
> >
> > OK, lets set up a Fedora install, replicate it there and file a bug
> > in Red Hat's bugzilla. Hopefully they will fix it for us. (See
> > comment #2).
> >
> > Andrew
> 
> Okay that bug thing, is just a bit too conspiracy theorist for my
> liking, I've seen bugs filed under multiple headings before. Perhaps
> the filer uses both Ubuntu and Fedora and wanted them both to get on
> at upstream, both distributions seem to appeal to the same demographic
> so it would make sense to me.

OK, what I provide below is fact not theory.

The person who filed that bug is Kees Cook. He is a Canonical
employee. His email signature lists him as "Ubuntu Security
Team". Specifically he seems to deal with the Kernel. 

How did I find out about this? It was on Dave Airlie's (hacks the X
server and drivers for Red Hat) blog
http://airlied.livejournal.com/72817.html

Did you read Ted's response in the launchpad bug?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/543617/comments/20

Some very good insights in there. So Dave's "Update" is quite accurate.

And there in lies the problem. For all of Canonical's hot air, where's
the contributions? Sure they've genuinely done some things of their
own, such as Upstart (which btw looks like it will be supplanted by
systemd). They are currently making a push to get AppArmour (though
they weren't the originators of it) into the Kernel, looks like it might
make it in for 2.6.36. They have a new font in development which will
be released under a free license.

Now we're not having a go at them because of their lack of core
contributions. There is simply no way they can compete with the likes
of Red Hat who alone have a metric boatload of core Kernel engineers.

But that's not why people are having a go at them. How much core
contributions does Slackware make? Very little I'd imagine. Yet they
don't constantly get hammered. Why? Because they aren't claiming this
that or the other. Same with any other distribution that isn't Red Hat
or SuSe.

It's like Canonical is claiming they are taking on the world single
handedly which is doing a disservice to all those whose work they are
based on.

Andrew