Looking at the list of categories on Eduforge.Org I think there are a few others that would be reasonable as well: "Real Life" and "Moodle" both seemed to be missing, so I've added them. "Debian" is conspicuous by it's presence in the list, and no doubt I will be using that one in due course...

In fact why not talk about Debian now. And Ubuntu. And how the two projects are having interesting effects on each other. At Debconf5 recently Mark Shuttleworth gave an interesting talk where he tried to present his view of the interaction between the two projects.

There are interactions happening between the two projects on a number of levels though, and I don't think Mark was covering all of them (there wasn't time - even with the talk going over time we still had many other non-recorded sessions at Debconf where the interactions were discussed). Some other things that I find interesting are really obvious things: Debian can be a great system, but the effort to polish it for naive users can sometimes be unexpectedly haphazard. I installed Ubuntu "Hoary" onto an old laptop for my wife yesterday and I could see the extra polish on things. The street appeal that Ubuntu adds to Debian is really powerful, and I think that it must concern RedHat to see the reverse of their Fedora approach sneaking up. Debian has always been a great server OS, and for some things (like the really superb upgrade-in-place capabilities) have really benefited from being a distribution crafted from the ground up by an organisation comprising many experienced systems administrators.

Fedora's community has had a somewhat rocky road to gain credibility, with people necessarily finding reason's to mistrust Red Hat's motives and to be uncertain as to whether there really is separation between Fedora and Red Hat. Of course in Debian "There Is No Cabal" and even if there were, they wouldn't all be Canonical employees, would they? It's nice that Mark has indicated that Canonical will never employ the Debian Project Leader, although I imagine that SPI will eventually have to. The project is only going to increase in scope, if it's success is to continue, and it will need to move to have full-time staff - fairly soon, I should think, if it isn't already the de-facto situation, with the DPL's employer effectively paying the salary with only limited control over what that person is achieving during their term of office.

It's nice to see the Ubuntu Foundation launched, although it is interesting to see a comment on the press release that suggests that Canonical's focus is "commercial support and certification programs". Does this warrant paranoia? Mark is undoubtedly an astute businessman, and certification programs will be useful to the future of both Debian and Ubuntu (I can't see how one that would apply to one would not apply to the other, either).

Commercial support is also an interesting proposition to me. Of course many people (me included) provide "commercial support" to Debian (and Ubuntu), but few have the resources behind them that Canonical does, which could mean there is a significant concentration of the people who really do power Debian employed full-time by Canonical, and necessarily the goals of Canonical will affect Debian's direction.

In the end I don't think this matters though. Debian has got where it has through the personal energy and leadership of some very driven individuals who have provided a framework of standards and policies which guide people in the right paths (is it any wonder that most of them seem to violently disagree with each other?). Combine this with the strong (if unusual) society of Debian and the consequent normative effects, and I can only believe that Debian will be strengthened by these things.

Just as it is hard, sometimes, to give away the fruits of your labours, giving away significant amounts of money without retaining substantive control over its use is also hard. This means that Ubuntu is very well funded (at least USD$10 million) compared with Debian (SPI holds around USD$60 thousand or so). I imagine that this has been thought through in a lot of detail though, and it is hard to see in what way Mark could successfully donate to Debian through normal channels. If he gave SPI even USD$100k it would overbalance the pot completely, and would probably only really mean that something which Debian currently gets donated would begin to get paid for. Not a desirable side-effect.

When all is said and done though, and as Mark so forcibly points out in his talk: Ubuntu could not have come into existence without Debian, and neither can it continue without it. Debian will need to stand on it's own, and will in some circles be eclipsed by this shiny public-facing edifice, but early reports of it's impending demise are greatly exaggerated.