http://blog.ibeentoubuntu.com/2009/07/m ... -pans.html
This article caught me by surprise!"Of course," compained Lefebvre, "[focusing on consolidation instead of cutting-edge features] wouldn't make sense for Ubuntu unless we became an upstream component of their distribution. I'm really happy with what Ubuntu is doing, and if I were to change anything… it would be the commitment to a release schedule and the return of a 'release when ready' policy to guarantee a stronger level of quality against regressions."