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Draft v1: DavidFarning

[rephrase - not from Ubuntu's perspective]

Introduction

One of the great strength of open source is the ability for everyone to improve and modify their software as they see fit. Ubuntu can benefit from this by developing a healthy ecosystem of derivative distributions which contribute back to the Ubuntu project.

It is often quoted that 'the value of a network is equal to square of the number of nodes.' The value of a software distribution also grows at a rate that equal to the square of the number of installations.

There are a number of factors that contribute to this nonlinear growth.

1. As the number of knowledgeable users of grows, so does the developer base.
2. As the number of computers running the distribution growths, so does the hardware support.
3. As the number of installed systems grow, so does the third party software support.

The freedom to take a piece of software and modify it is both an asset and a liability. Forks encourage experimentation and creativity. They can also result in fragmentation. One way to counter fragmentation, is to foster the growth of derivative distributions.

Derivatives distributions are different from forks in three ways.

1. Derivatives have a common code base.
2. Derivatives collaborate on patch management.
3. Derivatives collaborate on issue tracking.

Common Code base

Currently, the single biggest source of friction in maintaining a derivative is merging changes with the base distribution. This friction can be reduced by sharing an easily extendable base of common code.

Additionally, establishing a common code base will allow hardware and outside software vendors to develop products knowing that they work across all distributions.

Patch Management

Collaborative patch management will help maintain the common code base.

The kernel development process has shown how well distributive version control systems such as git and brz can work.

Issue Trackers

Collaborative issue tracking will increase the number of knowledgeable developers available to fix reported Issues. Initial triaging should be done by the derivative and escalated to where they can be most effectively handled.

Team Mission

There three areas that Ubuntu can start collaboration with it's derivative distributions: Bug handling, patch pushing, and developing a code base that is easily customizable.

1 Bug handling. Make our bug process as compatible as possible to ease the flow of information back and forth. This includes both triaging and automatic crash reports systems.

2 Patch Pushing. Clean up our patch system so that the Ubuntu specific bits can be identified and replaced with Derivative bits. Combine our resources on the common bits so that we can develop good patches to push upstream.

3 Customizing. Insure that for the most part we are using the same code base. There is no sense in all of us dragging around huge patch sets. Instead we should take steps to insure that a derivatives value added bits integrate closely with Ubuntu's base.

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