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!

  • AlexEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that. Both flatpak and snaps use similar technologies but have divergent visions on the user experience. It’s not like RedHat fell in line and adopted upstart rather than developing systemd. There has to be space for competing approaches to the same problems rather than forcing everyone into an open source monoculture. I know people decry the wasted effort but it’s not like you can force open source developers to work on your preferred solution.