Both Red Hat and Ubuntu have been in the press a lot lately because of changes they are making in their distribution.  What everyone seems to forget with both companies are just that companies not communities.  While they do a great job of being great community members, people will always complain about them.  Here is what we gleaned from the posts I read:

For Red Hat the change is just how the distribute the kernel itself.  They are now shipping just a completely patched Kernel.  This is instead of shipping a patch set for each and every bug release that was available.   Who does it affect?  The folks that want to look in the kernel.  As far as we can tell that’s it.  We at Linuxinstall.net don’t think that this is an issue for them and more just a reason for people to complain and wish things were better the old way.

For Ubuntu the problem is more one of a lack of change.  They want to push some enhancements into the upstream Gnome package that are being rejected:

Here are the details as described in a ZDNet article:

“The technical problem behind the dispute is that GNOME rejected theUbuntu Ayatana system status indicators. These indicators, and their messaging application programming interfaces (APIs) would be used on the Linux desktop to convey such information as “Whether you are connected, what the time is, whether you are online, whether your battery will last long enough for you to finish your work, whether you have messages,” etc.”

Again it seem like something that shouldn’t be that big an argument.  When you are poring your heart and sole into a project though it’s not always that easy.  We can’t always make a reasonable counter offer when we feel like we are being attacked.

Hopefully everyone will soon see that these aren’t bad choices just ones that we all may not agree with.  We as a community need these companies need to survive and thrive.  If they don’t protect their future and go under then we all loose.  Both companies are spending a lot of time and money on Linux and it’s desktop.  It would be a very different Linux world.