> I can't believe that it's the embedded nature of the project that is attractive.
For other users, maybe not (there may be some attractiveness in avoiding to deal witch such an upstream, or just to shake things up). But for the Debian project, the Ulrich Drepper's un-willingness to cooperate on basics embedded needs is a real problem.
So much that the DPL (Debian Project Leader) had to (unsuccessfully) ask the "GNU C Library Steering Committee" for help/mediation on this topic.