Greg Kroah-Hartman終於忍不住發飙了。他在最近的Linux Plumbers Conference 2008的主題演講中，直言不諱的指責Ubuntu社區的背後公司Canonical，認為他們對Linux社區貢獻微弱，特別是在內核方面幾乎為零。
在他的演講ppt中，他指出，Ubuntu社區對內核的貢獻非常少，在過去的5年中，僅僅提交了100個左右的內核補丁。而在此同時，Linux內核小組收到了差不多10萬多個內核補丁提交，Ubuntu的貢獻只是占到0.1%。遠遠落後於其他兩個Linux發行版廠商Red Hat和Novell，這兩者分居Linux內核貢獻的前兩位。
對此，Ubuntu社區運營公司Canonical坐不住了，Ubuntu CEO Matt Zimmerman站了出來。他認為，Greg Kroah-Hartman的言論實在令人作嘔，他的統計方法不科學。此外，Ubuntu並沒有說他們在內核方面做得比Red hat和Novell好。
Ubuntu內核大部分是由原始的Linux內核源碼組成。Zimmerman還提到了 Kroah-Hartman定義的“Linux生態系統”概念，他認為，後者的定義實在太奇怪了。Kroah-Hartman定義的“Linux生態系統”中包括了GCC、binutils、X.org和Glibc等，但是卻無視那些普通Linux用戶的認知，因為普通用戶一直習慣認為，比如桌面環境系統GNOME和KDE、桌面和服務器應用程序等等這些都應該是Linux組成部分。
不僅如此，Zimmerman還指出，Kroah-Hartman和Novell直接存在聯系，而Novell正式Ubuntu的競爭對手之一。Ubuntu 的CEO還不屈不饒的指出，應該就此事在會議主題發言下展開一個討論，考慮所有必要的因數，為Ubuntu的貢獻要討回一個公道。
Greg Kroah-Hartman：目前的Linux內核主要維護者之一，主要負責Linux架構下USB, PCI, I2C等設備驅動維護，目前供職於Novell。經典的《Linux Device Drivers》第三版的作者。
The Linux Ecosystem, what it is and where do you fit in it?A few months ago I gave a talk at Google about the Linux kerneldevelopment process. During that talk, someone asked me aboutCanonical's kernel contributions as they did not show up on the listthat I was showing. I offhandedly remarked that they did not show up as they had onlycontributed 5-6 patches in the past few years. Now this comment didn'tgo over very well with the Ubuntu developers, and they called me out onit as they felt it was wrong. They were right, I was wrong, so here is my public apology. In the past 3 years, from the 2.6.15 kernel to 2.6.27-rc6, Canonicalhas had 100 patches in the Linux kernel. I appologize about my previous statement and would like the world toknow the correct number here. But as the Canonical employees seemed so eager for me to get the numbercorrect, let's look a bit closer at it. What does 100 patches reallymean? From the 2.6.15 kernel release to the present, there have been 99324patches made to the Linux kernel.
