Thanks to Colin and Evan’s efforts we now have daily images of a freedom-focused flavour of Ubuntu, “Gobuntu”.

In a few days, both the gNewSense and Gobuntu project will release a new version of their distributions. Based on Ubuntu Hardy Heron, they will aim at satisfying the most exigent users in terms of freedom. This apparent duplication of work may not perpetuate. Indeed, some developers behind Gobuntu (including Mark Shuttleworth himself) think of "channelling the energy from Gobuntu into gNewSense".

The Gobuntu development team would like to announce that after 8.04 release of Gobuntu, the project will aim to merge many of the Gobuntu changes into mainline Ubuntu, such as our “Free Software Only” installer option which only installs software considered free by the Free Software Foundation’s definition of software freedom.

"Hi all, The Gobuntu development team would like to announce that after 8.04 release of Gobuntu, the project will aim to merge many of the Gobuntu changes into mainline Ubuntu, such as our "Free Software Only" installer option which only installs software considered free by the Free Software Foundation's definition of software freedom.

"It has nothing whatsoever to do with Freedom," argues one of Gobuntu’s contributors. The contributor, Keith G. Robertson-Turner, is a longtime, passionate advocate of free software. Before joining Gobuntu, he was among the first package maintainers on the Fedora project. Yet recently he opted to leave the Gobuntu project after what he sees as continued disappointment.

Gobuntu is a just like Kubuntu or Xubuntu, a flavor of the Ubuntu distribution that has a very strict set of restrictions on the licenses of code and content.

"This weekend I upgraded my machine to Gobuntu, the entirely-free-software (but see below) version of Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon. Since I’m specifically named as the use case (!) it seemed like the right thing to do. First, the good news: it all seems to be working fine.

"The 'current and future' thread on this list has got me thinking. [...] I think it would be better to channel the energy from Gobuntu into gNewSense. [...] If Gobuntu is not the best way to achieve that, then I think we should stop working on it and encourage folks who want that to focus their efforts on gNewSense..."

According to the Ubuntu development team and Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu derivative Gobuntu has been sucking up too many resources and will therefore be dropped in favour of an installation option in Ubuntu that installs only free software.