just because it's important for this topic i want to copy&paste Clem's answer to Jesse654 comment in the blog
Edit by Clem: Hi Jesse. You raise a lot of valid points. First, the definition of a CE: A “community” edition matches the same quality standards and is released and tested in the same manner as an “official” edition. The main difference here is commitment and delays. We can indeed work with Schoelje and consider LMDE Xfce and LMDE KDE “community” releases. Regarding the stats, you’re right, 4% is indeed a LOT of people, but it’s also ONLY 4%. Regarding my statements, they make perfect sense. I know we’re ahead of schedule. But we’re there because we’re making a push to develop more than before. If you followed our activity on github you must have seen Autarkper work really hard on Cinnamon and Mtwebster work really hard on Nemo at the very same time we were missing sleep trying to get Mint 14 released. Another thing is that we’re getting more and more efficient at what we do, so editions get implemented, designed, tested and released faster than before. What you don’t see though, are all the projects we have which we didn’t even start. I talked about net-discovery in the past.. and it’s still vaporware. I talked about R&D on the package base and all we’ve done so far is port our technology from Ubuntu to Debian. I look at software-properties, jockey, ubiquity and I want us to do better. I look at our communication, website, community and everywhere I see signs of resources being stretched. I work 7 days a week and I don’t want to burn, I don’t want to continue to see aspects of Mint being neglected and important projects not started simply because we diversified into a myriad of niche editions. We learnt that very early in the project when it came to partners: we need to focus on what we’re good at. Sure, we could make a netbook edition, of course we could try our luck at a server ISO but these would be better done by other projects and they’re not where our expertise is. When an edition only represents 4% and so many aspects of the distribution require more attention, it’s our duty to prioritize and focus on what is in the best interest of Linux Mint. I don’t want the Mint release cycle to be 6 months of re-spinning ISOs, testing, QA, and releasing. You like Mint because it’s more than that. And it’s more than that thanks to development and taking the time to think of how to improve things. Any distribution can spin ISOs with all the latest DEs, add codecs on top and fill their release cycle doing just that. That’s not good enough for us, there were hints of it when we developed on top of GNOME 2 and it was made clear when GNOME 3 didn’t match our expectations. I want to please as many people as we can, and we will do so if we find the time, but I don’t want that to take our focus away from our main mission. When something doesn’t fit or if we think Mint would be better by developing a new project then we need to be able to be in a position where we just do it, where when something is identified as being in the best interest of Linux Mint we’re empowered to just make it happen. And for this, development has to be a priority, and time within that release cycle has to be kept free. If we’re always stretched, we neglect the little things, we don’t do our R&D, we don’t plan ahead and when it’s time to make a difference we’re not always ready to do so.
interesting to say the least