Majority of Ubuntu community servers compromised, servers were using clear-text FTP ...

[Rahul Sundaram]

Bryan J. Smith wrote:

> Fourth, as I have repeatedly stated, Conical will find itself in the
> same positions as Red Hat has more and more.  Conical will address
> those situations much like Red Hat, and suffer the same, misguided
> but not so uncommon, "demonizations" as a result -- especially as it
> becomes less and less "new" to people.

I noticed that you always misspell Canonical as Conical. You might want 
to fix that before anyone mistakes it as some sort of deliberate 
insulting slang.

I agree with the basic assertion that Red Hat is better off because it 
already gone through the transition pain and succeeded in creating a 
business and larger community model that worked for the advantage of 
both. Whether it is the "best model" for either is anyone's guess. The 
things that touch upon control (be it for business, security or any 
other reasons) vs enabling enabling the community are just details of 
the larger view. The merge of core and extras has turned the level of 
package wrangling from repository management to ACL's as an current 
engaging example of this.

What Canonical is striving for is not something new and they have 
deliberated followed a Red Hat Linux like business strategy of a single 
product with optional support and services. It wins over a substantial 
number of users but unless the market is substantially changing they 
might end up rediscovering that pure support without product tie-up 
isn't very sustainable.  It is good that they have the luxury of 
experimenting with this without the pressure of a being a public 
organization. We will get to know the success (or lack of it) in a few 
years.

Rahul