Quality assurance and Linux?

There isn't enough bug fixers, unless eg. you are one who also fixes bugs in addition to
filing them. Maybe one thing then is that Ubuntu has not yet raised enough new volunteer
developers, even though the user base is very big. There are quite a lot of vocal users who
blame Canonical for not fixing a bug (mainly affecting very few persons) filed a year ago, but
the sad truth is that no developer has probably even looked at it - too little information in
the bug report, no patch provided to ease releasing a fix, no discussion ignited (with
solution proposals) on mailing lists etc., and hundreds of these similar bugs which would
require a lot of tinkering because the default user-reported bug is that "it does not work".
There are plans to improve on this, but clearly it needs people fixing bugs, not only
reporting them. Fortunately more of them are appearing too all the time.

Stable release updates also require an amount of testing volunteer developers do not have
resources or willingness to do, except for "now it works for me" which isn't acceptable.

I do think the "Free software only" option is appealing to many, since it brings "Debian main"
level of freedom to Ubuntu in an easy way. Because Ubuntu is based on Debian, and has received
criticism for the driver-related compromises, it's a good thing to be able to show that
"select this and you've essentially DFSG-free distribution".