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Ubuntu: derivative or fork?

Posted by Libervis on · 13 comments
Libervis.com; By Charles Schulz 		Mail this story
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Ubuntu is based on Debian, and is intended primarily for Linux newbies who use it mainly as a desktop. In short, it's a well-polished Debian distro, with fewer customization capacities and an excellent hardware detection. But Ubuntu is much more than that. Ubuntu never positioned itself as a Debian derivative, like Xandros, or Mepis, or Knoppix.

As promised I have written down my views and doubts concerning Ubuntu, the leading desktop distribution based on Debian and its odd relationships with Debian.

I have no evidence of my thesis, except for the few points I'll mention clearly in the article. I wish that this article can be the starting point of a healthy discussion, and I don't want it to be an end. I may have harsh words against either Ubuntu and Debian, but they are meant to stirr up thinking not unfairly criticizing people or projects.

In any case, thanks for allowing me to express myself freely on this topic.

Ubuntu is a beautiful word in one african language. It means something close to "connected humanity" or more exactly "the interdependent human community". With this name, the Ubuntu Linux Distribution, created by Canonical, the company of Mark Shuttleworth, the deep-space zillionaire from South Africa, has managed to take over the Distrowatch Billboard of GNU/Linux distributions and remain as the number one distribution for more than 6 months.

Ubuntu is based on Debian, and is intended primarily for Linux newbies who use it mainly as a desktop. In short, it's a well-polished Debian distro, with fewer customization capacities and an excellent hardware detection.

But Ubuntu is much more than that. Ubuntu never positioned itself as a Debian derivative, like Xandros, or Mepis, or Knoppix. Ubuntu publicly acknowledges its relationship with Debian, and Canonical, through its recently founded Ubuntu foundation, hires some Debian developpers.

All this should be good news; but for some it's not. Wether on Distrowatch or on community forums, voices whisper that Ubuntu has a dirty secret you may not want to hear: they don't keep the compatibility with Debian, and they want to fork away from their mother distribution. Now, nobody could even care because we may find ourselves in the following scenarios:

- Ubuntu is a very small distribution nobody pays attention about - Ubuntu is criticized by jealous people - Ubuntu released a 1.0, but never managed to release a 2.0

All this is wrong, indeed. Ubuntu is the first, or one of the first distributions in the world. Some people may be jealous, but I know some who aren't and who criticizes Ubuntu anyway. Ubuntu releases often, and has no problems in terms of motivation or human ressources.

So, what's the fuss with Ubuntu? Does it want to become THE distribution for everybody? Does it want to fork Debian?

Let's move to these points. Ubuntu has something special that no other distribution ever had before. It shipped its own CDs to you, anywhere in the world for free. It has money (10 million USD from Mark Shuttleworth) and can afford that. For Linux newbies out there, Ubuntu is like Windows. In much the same way they have believed for years that Windows was included for free with their computers, they now have the same kind of facility with Ubuntu: they order CDs for free and it lands in their postal inbox. But much in the same way that they paid for Windows without knowing it, somebody has to pay for the free shipping. And since it's not the users, it's somebody else, namely, the resources of Canonical, or put simply Mark Shuttleworth.

To everyone who thinks this guy is a saint, let me tell you: I hope I'm wrong, but although he's doing a lot for FLOSS I'm sure he could do much better, and I'm going to explain you how.

Here's somebody who wants to help the Free Software movement, and what could be better than helping the holiest of the holy projects (for some, at least), the Debian project? At this stage, I'm all with Mark and Ubuntu. So if you wish to contribute your 10 millions to Debian, make a donation to the Software in Public Interest (www.spi-inc.org) the non-for profit corporation legally covering Debian.

But Mark Shuttleworth did not do that. He instead funded Ubuntu, its own distribution with both commercial and community interests in it. If you read this page, you will notice that Ubuntu acknowledges its relationship with Debian but openly gets away from it, by stating things about "what Debian is not good about". My poor fellows. What is really Debian, if not the single most important NON-DISTRIBUTION in the world? Debian has no product line, it maintains packages and one single big system (these days, it's called Sarge) and you create your own system on it. That's the Debian way, and let's not forget this. It's so true that its founder, Ian Murdock, started a business on this concept, called Progeny (www.progeny.com) and sells a custom Debian distro called "Componentized Linux". So if Ubuntu wants to be pictured as the coolest debian desktop ever (and it is positioned this way actually), then why not arrange something in the Debian community? Why not leave its name, "Debian for desktops"?

Because Ubuntu has commercial interests too. Aha. Of couse, these are not bad, but where it starts to get bad is when you mix the two, community and business.

Ubuntu sells services, such as support. It's also looking for commercial partners Ubuntu has community forums and sends its CDs for free everywhere in the world. Now that's not what I call philanthropy anymore, I call that a damned smart business plan. So is it a community or a commercial distribution?

It seems to be both, but it does not stop there. In fact, it seems that Ubuntu does not keep the compatibility between Debian and its own distribution. I don't need evidences here, just browse the Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux forums and you will see that it's true. One of my business partner installed it and has trouble going back to Debian through the daily packages of updates (which, and that's the first, was feasible with Mepis or Knoppix). The problem is that these incompatibilities can only grow with time, as it should have been of perennial concern for Ubuntu before these could ever show up, and not after. So in doing this, Ubuntu breaks its uncousciously-propagated promise of a true Debian desktop. And in doing this, Ubuntu is now able to offer support not for Debian-based systems, but for Ubuntu only.

There is even worse. When the Debian Core Consortium was launched, any single Debian reseller/service provider/linux distributor out there rushed to join the alliance . But Ubuntu refused, for the sake of its own business, and for the sake of its own foundation... So Ubuntu declared that day to the world that it would separate itself from Debian. It may sound overreacted, but it's true. If you refuse to join a consortium that is grouping the commercial and community players around Debian and is working withing the Debian project, you are simply saying that you're not part of this community.

Ubuntu may have had other commercial objectives, and that I can't prove nor criticize. It's just a pity that the largest Debian distributor out there decided to fork not only its bytes, but also its community from its mothercommunity.

Now, Ubuntu is trying to imitate Debian; Since it refuses to integrate inside the Debian framework, it captures its own community, and takes all the goodwill of volunteers who used to travell from and to projects like Knoppix and Debian for itself.

It's rather shameful to do this in my opinion, but I hope it is now clear that Ubuntu has at least an agenda. It is now progressively forking from its Debian core base, and is also forking its community.

Thanks to the millions of Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu became the number one distribution for desktop by giving away CDs to the masses and living in parasite on the Debian core base.

Well done Mr. Shuttleworth, well done Ubuntu, you have showed us how to take power inside a community and turn it to your own advantage.

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Comments (13)

rht ·
This story is rubbish.

This bloke is treating his own delusional conclusions as fact so that he can prove a conspiracy of one. If MS wants to spend his zillions in philanthropic ways then by what moral authority does this chap demand the right to mandate the objects of MS's charity.

Ubuntu is what it is. At the very least, it has introduced a lot of people to The Debian Way.

I hope that MS lives long, for he has already prospered.
Libervis Story submitter ·
It is true that you could sense a bit of authors disapproval of Ubuntu being separated from Debian as a "fork", but the article at least doesn't put that as a final conclusion. It is more of a call for discussion.

If Ubuntu is a fork, community deserves to know that and establish that as a fact, instead of Ubuntu being listed side by side on sites listing debian variations (fully compatible) while it's compatibility is questionable.

There is nothing wrong with Ubuntu being a fork, at least in my opinion, but it is wrong to hide that fact from the community and instead keep riding on the "debian native" wawe..

Ubuntu is Ubuntu and Debian is Debian. The question remains, is Ubuntu Debian or not?

Thanks Daniel

TxtEdMacs ·
rht - My sentiments too.

I think Ubuntu has had a positive effect upon Debian. That is, it may have forced Debian be a bit more focused and to release a bit more often even if it's for fewer platforms.

Another reason I have come to appreciate Ubuntu more is that they treat even the "ignorant" more gently, hence, they are the more likely ones to get individuals to stick to their Linux efforts than a hundred (or more) RTFM epihets. Initially I was quite skeptical of Ubuntu (I run Debian), but my views have altered and I consider Ubuntu to be a mostly positive trend. Moreover, I wish them well (I will be adding Ubuntu for the experience).
devnet ·
I agree with Libervis.

Is Ubuntu Ubuntu or is it Debian?
jimf ·
Far from being paranoid, Libervis is more than conservative in his assessment. Between Canonical's commercial interests and Ubuntu's 60's style Pepsi generation promotion, they may have forked us all.
Libervis Story submitter ·
Jimf, just as a note, the author of the article is not me, but Charles Shulz..

But I would agree that Ubuntu is more of a fork than a variation of Debian and I think people should be more aware of that.

The only (but significant) issue I have with Ubuntu being a fork is that binary incompatibility breaks coherence that has been common in the Debian sphere of distros, one thing that has differentiated Debian from RPM based distros (installing RPM from RedHat to Mandriva and vice versa is risky, for example, while in Debian world, all distros maintained nice compatibility).

Ian Murdock speaks of this himself: http://ianmurdock.com/?p=167

Thanks Daniel
jimf ·
Sorry Daniel, I stand corrected.

From it's inception I've not been sure which aspect of the Ubuntu project bothers me the most, but, the forking aspect is obviously the most important one. Beyond that I see their juvenile rhetoric as a thinly veiled attempt the hide the true commercial nature of the Distro. I don't mind the commercial part, but the deception is less than acceptable. I'm also appalled at the number of people who buy into it.
richo123 ·
There is some rather odd semantics going on here:

Facts:

1) Ubuntu source in the universe repository is entirely derived from Debian and is synched every 6 months with sid i.e. unstable Debian.

2) Much source development in Ubuntu is fed back into Debian. xorg is a recent example. Another example is gcc-4.0 development.

3) Many Debian "derivatives" are binary incompatible with sarge. Example: knoppix

The real potential issue it seems to me is whether packages in the "main" (as opposed to "universe") repository of Ubuntu can be used by Debian users. If they cannot and this repository gets very large (it isn't now) then there may be a potential problem. This could be raised with Shuttleworth or the distro manager Matt Zimmerman as they are pretty open to discussion.

On the other-hand Ubuntu IS contributing source code back into Debian so is not acting as a parasite. Likewise because it is regularly synching with unstable this backward feed of source is likely to remain useful to Debian.

All in all you could call that a fork if you had a jaundiced eye but I don't ;-) so I won't ;-)

Mind you if main get huge and Ubuntu starts acting in a commercially obnoxious manner then I would have little hesitation in switching to Debian.

One other point that is overlooked often in these anti-Ubuntu rants is that Ian Murdock even though he founded Debian is hardly a disinterested observer on these issues. He runs Progeny which has a commercial interest in this situation which is in competition with Ubuntu. I would read at least some of his comments through this self-interest prism.
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Libervis Story submitter ·
Well, yeah, but Ian's observations on binary compatibility coherence over all debian based distros does make sense..

Anyway, this article was basically a call for discussion as author himself points out:

I have no evidence of my thesis, except for the few points I'll mention clearly in the article. I wish that this article can be the starting point of a healthy discussion, and I don't want it to be an end. I may have harsh words against either Ubuntu and Debian, but they are meant to stirr up thinking not unfairly criticizing people or projects.

So, he says that he doesn't want the article to be an end, a conclusion, but does admit that he may have harsh words, as he did.. and those words may have disturbed some spirits, but generally, this was a call for discussion of an issue still not "cleared up" in the community and I think we should accept it as such.

In that sense, I think it is good that someone brought this issue up, no matter what his style of doing it was. ;)

I suggest we as a community take it, discuss it, review the facts and spit another article that'll be more conclusive, clear some misconceptions and confusion and maybe kind of make peace between the two communities (debian and ubuntu).

If you think the issue isn't of much importance to be further discussed then consider the fact that Ubuntu today is the most popular GNU/Linux distro and that Debian is one of the greatest influences both within the GNU/Linux community and to the rest of the world, so if we don't manage to clear things up and "make peace" between the two, it certainly wont play out very well for anyone.

I mean, if we can't agree if our currently most popular distro is or isn't a fork, then what are we? :P

Thanks Daniel
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jimf ·
As richo123 says, the project has contributed to the Debian repos and as long as Ubuntu walks that line I don't believe that we can say one way or another whether or not Ubuntu is a real fork. It is my observation that Ubuntu / Canonical promotional's have created the impression of a hidden agenda.... To be fair, maybe it is just a really dumb add campaign, but the impression remains. I will continue to monitor the progress, but only time will tell for sure what is really going on here.
richo123 ·
Libervis,

I agree that discussion of these issues is a healthy thing however there has been a lot of FUD tossed around lately so I find it better to elucidate clearly what is a fairly complex relationship rather than resorting to emotive labels like fork. I think you have a priori grounds to be sceptical of Shuttleworth's motivation in this whole business. He is a very smart, very rich guy who is pouring money into a Debian derivative so one should be wary, I am. However I have followed the whole development very closely and I think it more than likely that Shuttleworth is acting from egotistical/philanthropic motivations rather than controlling/Gates like motivations. As jimf says time will tell. I don't think it serves anybody's interests however to jump the gun on this and create hostility within the FOSS community when at present there is no need for it.

Another way to look at this is through how Ubuntu has affected Debian: Shuttleworth has hired a bunch of very good Debian developers so they can spend a lot of time working on Debian-like packages. Some claim this is a bad thing because it dilutes the Debian effort however if they are spending more time on development and contributing major source back to the project how is this diluting the effort? Seems like a net (small) positive to me.

Libervis Story submitter ·
I agree that discussion of these issues is a healthy thing however there has been a lot of FUD tossed around lately so I find it better to elucidate clearly what is a fairly complex relationship rather than resorting to emotive labels like fork.

Yes, I'd agree. We need to clearly define what kind of relationship it is and build on it in the best way possible.

However I have followed the whole development very closely and I think it more than likely that Shuttleworth is acting from egotistical/philanthropic motivations rather than controlling/Gates like motivations.

I've read the slashdot interview with Shuttleworth and I would also say that his intentions are good and in that genuine.

I've further read the comments to this story on libervis.com and I'd say I'm beginning to better understand the whole compatibility issue. It may be something that comes out of neccessity, something that maybe cannot be effectively avoid since Ubuntu is based on sid, not sarge and sid has to be polished and this polishing might result in slight incompatibilities. However, it is possible that the issue will be resolved with further versions of Ubuntu, maybe starting already with Breezy Badger 5.10 release.

Ah well.. I guess I'll join the "see what happens" club too..

EDIT: I'd say the story, spurring discussions over libervis, here on lxer and linuxtoday at least gave a chance to say some things, present certain facts so that everyone can finally see what is and what isn't. A good step further I think would be to write another article comprising all these arguments and presenting what is and what isn't. In other words, many people may have been in confusion about the issue, and while it would seem this article contributed to it, we can make it have the opposite effect; resolve the issue in minds of people. It did for me. ;)

EDIT: I made a poll on the issue here: http://www.libervis.com/modules/xoopspoll/index.php?poll_id=... asking "Do you think Ubuntu is a fork or a derivate of Debian?". If enough people take it we could see what general community opinion on this is. It's something that can be taken into account in potential follow up article.

Thanks Daniel
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mjjohansen ·
I think that the Canonical advertising machine through Ubuntu has done a great service to the Linux community with offering the free CDs (never underestimate the promotional effect of professional wrapping) and supporting various projects. While I do not understand people who claim that the Debian installer is difficult while the Ubuntu installer is not, the fact remains that people have positive experiences with using Ubuntu as their first distribution. This is a good thing. What I do not appreciate, however, are the rumors that a lot of Debian developers have gone over to Ubuntu. Debian has a proud tradition and a social contract which should be preserved. Also, I find it curious that Ubuntu is not part of DCC.

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