Better collaboration with distributions

[Frederic Muller <fredm gnome org>]

Dear list readers,

Following November foundation IRC meeting it was decided to improve our 
collaboration with distributions and reach out to find out what could be 
done in that matter. Brian, Dave, Og, Andreas, Stormy and myself started 
to look at who and what to ask initially, gather initial feedback and 
then maybe design a short survey once we have an idea of what people 
feel about it.

The 5 questions that were asked are the followings:
1. What version(s) of GNOME do you maintain in a stable fashion?
2. How much work does this represent?
3. Do you feel there is duplication of work between what you do and what
other distribution do?
4. How do you see a potential collaboration between all of "us"
(upstream and downstream projects)?
5. We are definitely aware that today each of us use a different bug
tracking system. Do you see any possible technical solution that could
address this specific issue?

and we initially agreed to contact:
- Canonical
- Debian
- Novell
- Oracle (2 departments)
- Red Hat

So far Novell and Debian have replied (I'll forward the emails in 
response to this one) and both Oracle and Canonical are looking into it. 
I still need to ping Jonathan (Red Hat) on IRC as my Action Item and get 
his feedback.

So now that the effort has been properly introduce expect answers to follow.

Thanks.

Fred