Robert Pogson

The community of Ubuntu has reflected on its roots and its future and developed new logos and themes. It looks pretty good but the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There is a discussion of the changes and the vision of Ubuntu on their Wiki. I know that it pays to advertise and that the visual impression affects people in subtle ways. I expect this is an improvement over the “muddy brown” theme but the real test is delivery on the promise of free software, on-time delivery and quality. Ubuntu is known for working towards a friendly user-interface and with Mark Shuttleworth concentrating more on that, perhaps this is just the beginning of more changes. Good luck to them.

I intend to stick with Debian for the forseeable future as I care little for show. I need reliable software in production and I am not convinced that the world can deliver new release on ubuntu’s schedule. Look how Debian struggles to bring bug-counts down to acceptable levels. How is releasing on a particular date going to work? Surely this means releasing with more bugs unfixed, not something I relish.

I don’t know where we are in the rate of change of software in FLOSS but I expect it is near an inflection point where it will soon slow a little. It’s hard to say because as the popularity of FLOSS grows so does interest in contributing to it. Maybe we need another layer in the chain of acceptance into distros, say, software that has been release-quality for a year or so. Then it will arrive in distros in more stable form and releases of distros should have acceptable bug-counts. Only then will releasing on a schedule work. Last time around, Debian added nearly 50% to its number of packages. When is enough, enough? I can build really great systems with a tiny fraction of the packages.