GobuntuAndGNewSense

I was reading the latest DistroWatch Weekly, and I came across an email from Mark Shuttleworth about Gobuntu and gNewSense. He is questioning the usefulness of Gobuntu, and wonders how the gNewSense community feels about this project. Here is the text of the email:

<i>The "current and future" thread on this list has got me thinking. Perhaps we really are on the wrong track, that the only way to meet the needs of the gNewSense folks is to have completely different source packages to Ubuntu. If that is the case, then I think it would be better to channel the energy from Gobuntu into gNewSense.

I had hoped to see more participation and collaboration around Gobuntu because of the benefits of keeping up with the standard Ubuntu (regular releases, security updates etc). However, it seems that the audience for a platform like this is willing to accept infrequent releases and less maintenance in return for a platform which can be modified more radically. That's OK, it's just a bit unexpected - I thought we could get the best of both worlds, with six-monthly releases of something that excluded *binary package* that were controversial in the eyes of the FSF, but retained access to everything else in Ubuntu.

I don't mind having been wrong in that expectation, I can see the arguments in favour of less collaboration in the case where it is more important to be different than to have infrastructure in common, and from what I've seen on this list, the desire to be different (have different source packages as well as binary packages) is stronger than the desire to collaborate (share infrastructure, release cycles etc).

I'm not sure that the current level of activity in Gobuntu warrants the division of attention it creates, either for folks who are dedicated to Ubuntu primarily, or to folks who are interested in gNewSense. I would like us to have a good relationship with the gNewSense folks, because I do think that their values and views are important and I would like Ubuntu to be a useful starting point for them. But perhaps Gobuntu isn't the best way to achieve that.

So, I would like to hear from the gNewSense guys how they would like to be involved in Ubuntu, to help ensure that Ubuntu is a useful starting point for their important work. If Gobuntu is not the best way to achieve that, then I think we should stop working on it and encourage folks who want that to focus their efforts on gNewSense, while at the same time figuring out how Ubuntu can be more useful for gNewSense.

Mark</i>

so, i guess the question is: how is "the gNewSense guys" responding to this?

i remember reading a post by what i assume was a gnewsense developer on the gobuntu list (before the thread in question wandered off into something else), but i don't know if it came to a conclusion?

are there discussions going on, on a developer level, between gnewsense and gobuntu?

Maybe is part of a complete answer, not only the gNS guys, the Gobuntu team should say what are their intentions if the Gobuntu branch disappear.
It would be great to have more people helping to achieve the goal of freedom, but i'll prefer to have gNS sense away from the "fashion", i hope that if gNewSense catch all the attention from the Debian/Ubuntu based distros "as the 100% free" it can handle all kind of people that could join and enforce this movement :)

Gobuntu developers think their distribution as a "base for a fully free future GNU/Linux distribution"

BUT

a) they are including Firefox (which is non free and suggests non free plugins) and they think it's right;

b) they think that in the future the kernel developers will pull out all the non free parts from the kernel. AFAIK Linus Torvalds and co. don't seem to care about having non free firmware in the kernel so they will not remove it. Never. Gobuntu itself missed the point and Mark Shuttlework itself says this in his email: "Perhaps we really are on the wrong track, that the only way to meet the needs of the gNewSense folks is to have completely different source packages to Ubuntu. If that is the case, then I think it would be better to channel the energy from Gobuntu into gNewSense."

I'm waiting all the Gobuntu developers to join gNewSense and help us building a better, more free, more stable GNU/Linux distribution. GOBUNTU DEVELOPERS WE NEED YOU. JUMP ABOARD. :)

To be fair, Gobuntu has switched from Firefox installed by default to Epiphany in Hardy. I'm guessing this is the reason that deltah is being released with Epiphany as the default browser. Unfortunately Gobuntu Hardy hasn't been released yet, the latest release is a daily from the 21st of April.

If gNewSense had a 64 bit version that would be great... I would file bug reports ;).