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Former Red Hat employee and Fedora community architect Greg DeKoenigsberg set off a firestorm when he blogged a rant criticizing Ubuntu’s seemingly meager contributions to the GNOME desktop, “Red Hat, 16%. Canonical, 1%.” He apologized afterwards but couldn’t “unring” that bell. In less than four days, the blog entry elicited more than 300 reader comments — both pro and con — reflecting how strongly the free software community feels about Ubuntu as a Linux distro and Canonical as a commercial company.
In his Datamation.com breakdown of the issues raised by DeKoenigsberg’s blog, Bruce Byfield discusses whether Ubuntu contributes its fair share to free software projects. The dispute over this issue reflects a clash of changing values about the future of open source.
