[PLUG] Canonical Not A Great Contributor

[Devendra Laulkar]

Hi,

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 9:57 PM, Swapnil Bhartiya
<swapnil.bhartiya at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just learnt from a friend of mine that I should stop using Ubuntu as
> Canonical is not contribiting to the developmemt of GNU/Linux systems as
> compared to other players.

How do you define "contributing" ? If you define it in narrow terms
like number of patches submitted to the kernel, then it is a biased
view.

>He also suggested that since most of its stuff,
> or nothing, is upstream so we cant trust it.

I am not quite sure what your friend is trying to say. How is trust
affected by using upstream packages?

> Also his argument was, being
> run by one man, who may tomorrow change his mind and stop support to Ubuntu,
> then what?
>

Firstly -> http://www.canonical.com/aboutus/team
Granted it is not a publicly traded company as RedHat/Novell.  But
historically looking, all of these organizations were once privately
held companies. Also, since it is free software, people can always
fork if any single person disagrees/changes his mind.

The replies on various blogs has been interesting.

-Devendra Laulkar.