In defense of Ubuntu reproach

Fedora makes use of an entirely open software stack for its infrastructure.
People can replicate the entire build system and mirror manager and so on and so on. As long
as people can find the hosting bandwidth and the iron, the software that grinds the sausage
isn't proprietary and there is no secret sauce anywhere in the build system.  In fact to grow
out additional architecture support, people in the Fedora community do in fact find that
additional hosting and bandwidth and iron.  Why? because... its a community effort... whose
entire framework is open so that motivated community members and even other business interests
can contribute beyond the bounds of what Red Hat can sustain.  Honest sustainable development
where multiple interests can co-exist without anyone being asked to support more than what
they feel they can sustain.  I can just imagine the pressure some Canonical employees feel to
make sure they continue to live up to the perception they've marketed...without a sustainable
bottomline to build resource allocation budgets around.

Fedora's build system is setup to allow motivated Fedora community to work on interests other
than those that Red Hat feels it can sustain on its own.  Doing things that way was a
deliberate choice.. a sustainable choice made by Red Hat empower the community as partners in
the process and not just consumers.  

How open is launchpad? How critical is it to the inner workings of Ubuntu distribution
development? If the launchpad service disappeared with Canonical..would it be replicable? If
Canonical decided to drop support for an arch(sparc or arm just as examples) because it was no
longer deemed potentially profitable to support.. is the Ubuntu development framework flexible
enough to allow the community to take over those sorts of things? Or would Canonical feel
burdened to continue supporting arches even though it was a negative on their business? Very
important questions for the Ubuntu community to ask of Shuttleworth.

-jef