"Ubuntu and Canonical's relationship poses an interesting dichotomy. On the one side, is Ubuntu, a community-supported distribution. In a briefing with us on Wednesday, Shuttleworth said some 150 regular volunteer coders are involved with Ubuntu, compared to the 20 full-time Canonical developers. On the other hand, shifting to a long-term support framework means Canonical must do some serious growing, since according to Shuttleworth, the bulk of the support will necessarily be picked up by Canonical itself.
"We will be very interested to see how this relationship is maintained. As commercial vendors move into the enterprise arena (Red Hat and SUSE come to mind), they have struggled to keep in touch with their vibrant developer communities. (Though the openSUSE Project seems to be faring better than the Fedora Project in terms of community strength.)
