It could be taken as pretty demeaning, I accepted that as I wrote it, and I don't think of it in demeaning terms. They do a fantastic job, they have as you say pushed Linux forward a lot, I have nothing but respect for them.
I won't however change my opinion. They did push the state of it forward, but so did Knoppix in many ways, and a fairly large amount of other distros. Are they all products? No, they're projects, with varying levels of success. It's a great platform, but I don't think that classing it as a product is helpful. It's a community project, approaching it like RHEL wouldn't work, they have completely different aims.
My argument isn't that Ubuntu is a quick paint gloss improvement, it's that they've taken the core work and improved it rapidly (although Unity could be argued) and teamed it with their biggest marketable quality which is that they've built a community around their work.
Do they deserve money? Yes, of course, thats why they take donations. Should they sell it as a product, as an actual thing? I don't think so.
(if you're working for Ubuntu, I love you and I'm not being mean!)
I don't work for Ubuntu, I'm just a satisfied user, who moved from Debian to Ubuntu and noticed how big of a step change that was. That of course doesn't mean I don't appreciate the value of Debian and the rest of the community. In fact the value of Ubuntu for me is really "Debian with a lot more polish". And the value of Debian for me has always been "a huge collection of free software neatly packaged".
I actually wasn't arguing if they should charge for it or not, I don't really have an opinion there. My objections to your comment were:
1) Ubuntu isn't just a community, it's also a product and a successful one. You can download their new distribution every 6 months and get a lot of value out of it directly without ever engaging with the community.
2) If Canonical were to charge for Ubuntu, that does not mean they need to distribute money to any developers. It's certainly not required by any of the licenses of the software they package or even any of the customs of the community (see RHEL).
I won't however change my opinion. They did push the state of it forward, but so did Knoppix in many ways, and a fairly large amount of other distros. Are they all products? No, they're projects, with varying levels of success. It's a great platform, but I don't think that classing it as a product is helpful. It's a community project, approaching it like RHEL wouldn't work, they have completely different aims.
My argument isn't that Ubuntu is a quick paint gloss improvement, it's that they've taken the core work and improved it rapidly (although Unity could be argued) and teamed it with their biggest marketable quality which is that they've built a community around their work.
Do they deserve money? Yes, of course, thats why they take donations. Should they sell it as a product, as an actual thing? I don't think so.
(if you're working for Ubuntu, I love you and I'm not being mean!)