Is Ubuntu (Mark Shuttleworth) blocking Gnome development for Debian?
 

Some interesting accusations here about why Gnome 2.16 won't be included in Etch. http://np237.livejournal.com/11264.html

I see no problem with Mark Shuttleworth inviting developers of OpenSuse.

Nobody was coerced nor threatened.

He is presenting them an opportunity that was taken away by the Novell-Microsoft deal to FOSS OpenSuse developers - that is, the right to create income stream from the contributions they made.

It's not Suse vs. Ubuntu. It's about community and ecology. This is about everybody having a home in FOSS.

;)

If it was true that Mark Shuttleworth is halting release of GNome - there is no problem.

First : He (maintainer) was hired. He can always resign his post to somebody he thinks that can make judgment that is not affected by Mark Shuttleworth. I see a conflict of interest on the maintainers part.

Second: I think he just missed the opportunity for Debian here. Debian can become an ad-hoc standard of all distro's based from it. Because of his whining he missed a good opportunity.

From the Reply of JS Rosevear of Suse:

You know from the tone of JP Rosevear; it sound's like "It's payback time."
This is not how a FOSS contributor acts. JP Rosevear thinks that they can laud the MicroNov deal while they allow both parties to tear what FOSS ecology is all about.

So much for their complaint on a simple letter from Mark Shuttleworth.

I read the issue about the Debian GNOME developer a few days ago and it seems to confirm some peoples suspicions that Shuttleworth "poaches" developers from Debian and was trying to do the same for the openSUSE project. Whether this observation is right or wrong, such articles certainly make uneasy reading and make other people question Shuttleworths ethics.

JP Rosevear (Suse developer) makes several accusations against Ubuntu, including (loosely quoted):

If Ubuntu just kept it's employee too busy to work on Debian's Gnome package, that's not unreasonable. If Shuttleworth instructed the employee to delay Debian work until Ubuntu released it, that's a problem.

Certainly some of the antagonism between Ubuntu and other distros can be attributed to jealousy (Is that too strong a word?) at it's success. Every Debian derivative is, to some degree, hoping to profit from the work of the Debian community. I'm convinced that Mark Shuttleworth has poured a lot more money into Ubuntu than has returned. If that situation should begin to change, I certainly hope he will reconsider the policy of not doing any significant development work, and that any source code for the project would be open-sourced.

Ubuntu's contribution to the Linux community, so far, consists of introducing it to mainstream media, and public conversation. That's not a bad thing. Incorporating proprietary drivers into a "free" OS to make it more attractive to Windows users is a bad thing.

Ubuntu (aka Mark Shuttleworth) is still an ungraded project to me. I'm intrigued, but so far not interested. We'll just have to keep watching.

Did not mozilla complained to the debian community to not continue using their trademark because they have made changes that were not religiously contributed back to mozilla for approval?

The behaviour of JP Rovespear was uncalled for. He did not do so on balanced reasoning but based it on character defamation.

I do not claim that the Debian community, as a whole, hates Ubuntu. But sometimes their demands goes more than the realm of having ubuntu contribute back code; they want ubuntu to place those changes back to their code and do the conflict resolution for them. Also, the debian community demands that ubuntu should include their logo in every package that they distribute. Well, if that is the case they should also have that same condition to all debian-based distros.

http://www.xandros.com/about.html
http://www.morphix.org/

It's a pity that they single-out Ubuntu because of it's success.

My point is simple, nobody is perfect, everyone have/may commit faults; like you and I. The contention between debian and ubuntu are being worked out by Mark Shuttleworth and his team with the debian leaders.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/so...ly/008134.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-proje.../msg00278.html
http://blog.madduck.net/debian/2006....ntu-and-debian
http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/...ket_thing.html

I have high hopes on the teams behind Ubuntu and Debian that they are rational and mature individuals and will take things in the right direction.

"If Ubuntu just kept it's employee too busy to work on Debian's Gnome package, that's not unreasonable. If Shuttleworth instructed the employee to delay Debian work until Ubuntu released it, that's a problem."
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An employee of Ubuntu is ubuntu's. His/her priority should be Ubuntu then ubuntu takes care of their responsibilities toward debian.