Copying Ubuntu Bug No. 1

Published on: 23-September-2010

Tel Aviv, Israel: “Ubuntu can’t have all the fun only for itself”, open source distributors are saying as they rush to copy its Bug No. 1 titled “Microsoft has a majority market share”.

Debian, Ubuntu’s parent distribution, has set up Debian Bug No. 1 which also reads “Microsoft has a majority market share”. Mandriva, another competing distribution has set up Mandriva Bug No. 1: “Microsoft has a majority market share and Ubuntu has a majority market share on the Linux desktop”. Fedora, Gentoo, Archlinux, Slackware and other distributions are expected to follow suit.

Mandriva’s Bug No. 1.

In the meanwhile, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) have decided that they won’t stay out of the game, and have unveiled their brand new web-based bug-trackers, with “Microsoft Windows Bug No. 1: Windows does not have a 100% market-share”, and “Microsoft Internet Explorer Bug No. 1: We are losing market-share to Firefox and other browsers.”. Among the enthusiastic responses from commentators on the bugs one can find “Why is this a bug, FFS???” by “MS-must-Die” and “If this is a bug then I’m a Jackalope, though you should fix many of the f***ing bug dependencies.” by “Slashdot Anonymous Coward”.

Some prominent open-source projects such as youtube-dl, abcde (A Better CD Encoder) and bashdb (the Bash Debugger) have decided to duplicate Ubuntu bug No. 1 with all of its comments as their own “Bug No. 1”s noting that “Microsoft’s dominance of the market threatens the very fabric of our existence, and it is our utmost priority to fight it”.

youtube-dl’s Bug No. 1.

Ubuntu’s Bug No.1 proved to be a good publicity stunt for Ubuntu and a focus of active (and often tangential) disucssion. However, now it seems that Ubuntu are not alone in this, and it remains to be seen how their competitors will benefit from copying it.

Ubuntu’s former CEO Mark Shuttleworth is pleased with the ongoing popularity of the “bug No. 1” meme. “We believe that Ubuntu’s bug No. 1 was the key differentiating factor in the success of Ubuntu, and we are glad other open source projects finally realise that. Hopefully, we will soon open more bug No. 1s (different bugs with the same number) for ‘Ubuntu has an equal marketshare to distribution X’”.

Meanwhile, some voices on Ubuntu bug No. 1 have called for converting its status from “critical” to “release critical”, which will make it block a new Ubuntu release until the bug is resolved. “I am positive that we should not release a new version of Ubuntu while Microsoft still has a majority market-share” said an anonymous commenter. “It certainly must block new releases, and Ubuntu releasing new versions with such a grave bug still open only amplifies the problem.”

Licence

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (Unported) License (or at your option any greater version of this license). Copyright holder is Shlomi Fish and year of copyright is 2010.

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