Assesment

I agree with everyone here, syncing up release dates doesn't do much to improve collaboration between debian and ubuntu. What is need is collaborative bug tracking and package source control.

The Ultimate Debian Database helps show ubuntu/debian package relationships.
http://udd.debian.org/
http://wiki.debian.org/UltimateDebianDatabase

Unfortunately Debian and Ubuntu use incompatible bts systems. Currently Ubuntu's launchpad based bug tracking system _bts_ is lacking accessible package version information. Bug tracking information tied to package version is essential for debian where packages go through many version iterations between releases.

This was part of the original design for Launchpad Bugs, but it never came to fruition. The very earliest bug still open on Launchpad Bugs asks for this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/malone/+bug/424

Up to and including Hardy, ubuntu used apt-listbugs which referred to debian's bts with package version tracking. Even though this pulled bug information from the debian bts, it gave a reasonable indication of what packages contained significant bugs. apt-listbugs was withdrawn, because ubuntu package customization increasing has made the related debian bts irrelevant.

Topic branches and trees are ways by which package customization can be tracked.

In order to meet the Debian Collaboration Team's objective the launchpad bts must interface with the debian bts. Only this way developers benefit from the topic branches, trees of distributed package source control. To collabate bugs must be tracted across both debian and ubuntu and be accessable to both native debian and ubuntu developers.