A lot of debate today about “community” vs “corporate”-driven distributions. I (think I) understand the basic difference between the two, but what confuses me is when I read, for example:
…distro X is a community-driven distribution based on Ubuntu…
Now, from what I understand, Ubuntu is corporate-driven (Canonical). So in which sense is distro X above “community-driven”, if it’s based on Ubuntu? And more concretely: what would happen to distribution X if Canonical suddeny made Ubuntu closed-source? (Edit: from the nice explanations below, this example with Ubuntu is not fully realistic – but I hope you get my point.)
Possibly my question doesn’t make full sense because I don’t understand the whole topic. Apologies in that case – I’m here to learn. Cheers!
You are correct, distributions like Kubuntu are not TRULY community-driven as they are still subject to Canonical’s influence. Anyone saying otherwise is merely being pedantic.
However it’s not Canonical who’s running Kubuntu, it’s the community, they have the power to revert Canonical’s bad decisions, sadly by giving themselves an increasingly higher workload. Most distributions will simply give up at some point, for example VanillaOS’ next release will be based on Debian as it was getting too tough to remove snap and all the bad things Canonical adds.
Kubuntu uses snaps which are largely disrespected by the community, that’s the end result of being under Canonical’s influence. They can’t rebase on Debian without effectively killing their raison d’etre and they don’t want to remove Snap, perhaps because it would be difficult but most likely because they’re deep under Canonical’s influence, they look up to Canonical to some extent.
This is, in fact, the very meaning of “influence”. It’s even worse, in fact, much, much worse for Fedora, they have been culturally enslaved by Red Hat, sorry for the strong word.
Nice summary. One minor, but important, addition to your post:
Not just culturally - Redhat legally own Fedora too. Legally owning Centos was how Redhat managed to kill Centos Linux. One of the key things Greg wdid when creating Rocky two years ago was set the legal status so that Rocky could never be taken over in the way Centos was.
Interesting legal ramifications that I wasn’t aware of. Does Canonical own Ubuntu? from what I gather in the other comments, it doesn’t really?
@pglpm @digdilem
If by Ubuntu you refer to brand, trademark Ubuntu then absolutely yes.
I didn’t know about the Rocky legal structure. Thanks for the pointer
Yet he exercise something beyond his right, to make CIQ parent company of Rocky for profit… What is the different with Red Hat, they even won a lot of EL contract because it’s cheaper…
Alma is better, they are non profit and driving fedora in some SIG…
Red Hat is sponsor of Fedora not only on paper, but also on reality. Rocky is sponsored by CIQ on paper, but in reality owned by CIQ… Single person…
Not quite but it’s not black and white. Rocky is owned by Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation, but that is owned by Greg Kurtzner because a legal entity needs to be owned by /someone/ in law.
I personally trust him because I know a little of his story and his involvement with Centos before Rocky (ie, he cofounded it), but I appreciate that might not be enough for everyone. I’ve followed the project closely since its inception and am very happy with its progress and outlook so far, solely from a non-commercial aspect.
And Alma is NOT better. That’s like saying Cheese is better than Apples, or Titanium’s better than Lead. They’re different distros with quite different approaches. It’s fantastic both of them entered this market and both of them are doing well, choice is the absolute best thing about Foss.
(More detail about Rocky’s legal makeup here, if you’re interested) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Linux - I also have no commercial interest in it other than a user)
Thank you for the clarification! – And for the extra info about snaps, which was something else I was wondering about too (I use Kubuntu at the moment)!