oneline article: "Debian Alliance on The Horizon"

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Thu, Aug 18, 2005 at 11:24:02AM -0400, Ed Cogburn wrote:

> Like I said last time Jeff, you have a different idea of what "official
> support" means then John and I do.  No offense, but if Canonical truly
> supported KDE as an equal to GNOME then a) Kubuntu wouldn't need its own
> name, b) Kubuntu wouldn't need its own website, c) someone could order
> "Kubuntu" from Ubuntu's website, a.k.a. "Ubuntu-KDE", and d) Ubuntu
> wouldn't refer to Kubuntu as a "partner project", which clearly implies
> Kubuntu is *not* part of Ubuntu... "officially".

Official support, in this context, means things like:

- Timely security updates provided by the Ubuntu security team
- Coverage under commercial support contracts
- Inclusion in first-class QA efforts (no uninstallable packages,
  release-critical bugs, etc. at the time of release)

It doesn't necessarily mean identical branding or the availability of
pressed CDs, which seem to be the things which concern you.  These things
are not support issues.

(note that there are official, pressed Kubuntu CDs, but they have not been
distributed on the same scale as Ubuntu CDs)

> Canonical doesn't have to support KDE, I actually understand why Canonical
> is favoring your baby over KDE right now, but don't pretend that allowing
> the Kubuntu people a few hundred megabytes of storage space in Ubuntu's
> repo is the same as "official support".  It isn't.

I hope I've helped to clarify what support means.

-- 
 - mdz