At LinuxTag, Libre Software Meeting and What The Hack, I gave different versions of a developer-oriented talk on the way that Ubuntu is developed and the reason folks from a wide range of different Free Software projects might be able to learn something from it. I will export and post the slides and notes for those talks in one big lump at some point in the next week.
However, the best way for those that missed the talks to get informed on the issue may be to read the article titled To Fork Or Not To Fork: Lessons From Ubuntu and Debian (the same as the talks) which was published in the LinuxTag conference proceedings.
In the essay I explore the experience of the Ubuntu project in building a distro on top of Debian. I argue that the scale of certain free software projects are forcing developers toward a new kind of forking using technologies like distributed version control and host of other technical and social tools and processes and look at some of the early successes and failures of Ubuntu in this regard. I also describes some of the techniques in question and argue for the techniques’ applicability and importance in a wide range of free software projects.
If others think it’s a good idea and if I can find somewhere appropriate, I may be interested in publishing a version this article in a magazine or journal. If you know of a place where this article might be welcomed, please contact me.
You can can currently pull the article down in the following formats:
you can also get (bittorent) a video recording of the presentation at what the hack here
and there’s an audio recording of the LSM talk here (along with other talks in the same directory).