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 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).