Linux Plumbers Conference 2008 Keynote

Greg Kroah-Hartman's keynote at the Linux Plumbers Conference this week has (among other things) called out Canonical for not participating in the Linux kernel development process:

"A few months ago I gave a talk at Google about the Linux kernel development process. During that talk, someone asked me about Canonical's kernel contributions as they did not show up on the list that I was showing.

"I offhandedly remarked that they did not show up as they had only contributed 5-6 patches in the past few years. Now this comment didn't go over very well with the Ubuntu developers, and they called me out on it as they felt it was wrong.

"They were right, I was wrong, so here is my public apology..." See more...

But Matt Zimmerman, CTO of Canonical, has taken issue with Kroah-Hartman's comments:

"There were, let’s say, a few elements of it which I found objectionable.

"The central issue, of course, was that he devoted a large portion of the talk to showing that Canonical contributes fewer patches to the Linux kernel than many other companies.  While it’s somewhat flattering for Canonical’s role in the community to be a headline topic for a conference like this, the message that he chose to deliver was a negative one.  He presented list after list of contributors, ranked by number of patches, and pointed out how low Canonical was on each one..." See more...