Debian and Ubuntu: uneasy coexistence continues

Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 04 August 2009 07:36

Business IT - Technology

The Ubuntu factor didn't take long to surface. When a non-developer, Tshepang Lekhonkhobe, wrote , "How about using this opportunity to help fulfill the Shuttleworth dream of freezing both Ubuntu LTS and Debian at the same time?", the answer came back in a flash from Bernd Zeimetz: "The only reason for this dream is to make sure that Debian fixes the Ubuntu bugs for free."

Another developer, Peter Samuelson, wrote: "There've been a lot of rumors (sic) that the 10 months until squeeze freeze has more to do with trying to benefit Ubuntu LTS, than anything about "momentum". This unfortunately sounds a lot more plausible to me."

Others raised the point that if Debian and Ubuntu made releases at the same time, Debian would have much older software in its stable release compared to the Ubuntu release - and this would probably mean that when it came to choice, the number of people opting for Ubuntu over Debian stable would increase.

Debian has three branches of development - the stable branch receives only security updates, the testing branch receives new packages from the unstable branch and finally becomes the next release, and the unstable branch, which most developers use, is the entry point for new and updated packages.

No doubt the Ubuntu project was aware of the backlash the announcement would provoke. Which is why the chief technology officer of Canonical, Matt Zimmerman, was out there spinning the line that the announcement did not mean that Debian was planning time-based releases.

But Zimmerman did not explain what people mean when they say "freeze by year-end" and "release by spring" if not time. He is not in any position to speak for the Debian project, anyway. His weak explanation, that a time-based release meant the announcement of a particular release day like Ubuntu, was just that - weak.

Any hint that Debian is doing something that would benefit Ubuntu more than itself is sufficient to bring all the old anger to the surface - and Zimmerman doesn't want this, given that Ubuntu, despite being nearly five years old, has still not forked enough from Debian to stand on its own feet as most forks do.

To go back to the history of the Debian announcement, the project leader Steve McIntyre told iTWire that it all began with a release team meeting back at the end of May, "where there were a lot of discussions on a lot of topics in this area.

"All the RT (release team) folks were invited, but unfortunately not quite everybody could attend. Since that point, we've had some unfortunate problems with timing of vacations and people being busy with exams etc. which is why we had not made any announcements thus far.

"We discussed possibilities for the next release, and quite a few options were suggested. The most favoured proposals included working with the Ubuntu folks to see if we could sync up with the freeze of their next LTS release, but no firm decision was made. The plan was to bring proposals forward to the rest of the project to allow for further planning before a decision would be made."

"Luk Claes presented his proposal for a 2-year "freeze cycle" plan at DebConf... and that was well received in general. He also proposed that we could freeze quite soon for Squeeze, specifically to allow the sync to happen quickly. That also seemed to be well-received at the time, so he thought it would be a good plan to go ahead with it.

"Later discussions on the project mailing lists show that quite a large number of people don't like that specific piece of the plan, as it doesn't fit in with their own plans for Squeeze. Others are unhappy about the way the plan itself was announced, or that they were not consulted more about the ideas in advance. I have some sympathy with these people, and we're discussing things some more at the moment.

"A couple of people have seen the Ubuntu name mentioned and immediately criticised the idea of closer collaboration. That's a real shame, but unfortunately not entirely unexpected.

McIntyre's comments were made before the decision to freeze in December 2009 for Squeeze was rescinded.