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!
Even in community driven distro there are often many contributors that do so because parts of their livelihood depend on it. So it is not quite fair to say that there are no financial incentives behind it.
Its basically a question of relative scale. If there are lots of smaller companies and some hobbiists contributing it is called community driven, but if a single large company or their employees run most of the show, it is not.
Large gray area to be honest.