A lot of debate today about “community” vs “corporate”-driven distributions. I (think I) understand the basic difference between the two, but what confuses me is when I read, for example:

…distro X is a community-driven distribution based on Ubuntu…

Now, from what I understand, Ubuntu is corporate-driven (Canonical). So in which sense is distro X above “community-driven”, if it’s based on Ubuntu? And more concretely: what would happen to distribution X if Canonical suddeny made Ubuntu closed-source? (Edit: from the nice explanations below, this example with Ubuntu is not fully realistic – but I hope you get my point.)

Possibly my question doesn’t make full sense because I don’t understand the whole topic. Apologies in that case – I’m here to learn. Cheers!

  • stravanasu@lemmy.caOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Thank you. So in theory the community-driven derivatives are always free, at least in theory, not to depend from the upstream corporation-driven ones. So it’s more a matter of possible implications in the workflow, than in not being really community-driven.

    • QuazarOmega@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, I think so, sometimes a foundation is also established to ensure that things don’t take a corporate turn