After the enourmous amount of work to release the new Debian GNU / Linux 3.1 Sarge, with 15490 packages, 14 cds, 11 ports, and all difficults envolved, some new ideas sparked around about HOW to work at the next release.
The amount of work needed to get this package quantity running on 11 ports is very big.
This helped to delay the release.
See how the new installer had to work at the 11 ports. Since hand helds up to mainframes.
And each package has its own development cycle at upstream (original developers), wich Debian Developers try to make compatible with the Debian GNU / Linux development cycle.
Remember that the Debian Project is not a commercial for profit entity and did all with minimal funds.

Some interesting articles with ideas:
Debian: where we should go from here? Very important to read the user comments too.
Debian Core and Universe

But then appeared rumours of a negotiations between companies to group around a Debian Linux based core, the Debian Core Consortium.

We will analyze by pieces.

Rumours:

The Debian project allways debates its directions and trends at its discussion lists. Openly. Without secrecy. There is no commercial competive advantage to leverage with secrecy. Progeny, a company, started the Debian Core Consortium (DCC).
They invited some others, even Mandriva, that declined, to group around a minimal core based on Debian and componentize its sub systems.
You could read some more about this at these articles:
Details emerge about Debian Linux Plan.
Debian Linux: Living in interesting times.
Debian Core Consortium continues to come together.
Editor's note: Band of brothers.

Companies to group around...

Companies have their own agenda: solve their own problems (profit, market share).
The Free Software movement has another agenda: solve PEOPLE problems (at work, at school, at home).
Each company, for start, wants to be in control of everything possible.
Because of this issue it is so difficult for standards organizations to get an agreement over any standard.
It is a long and difficult negotiation process. There are many conflicting interests.
Even so, some honorable initiatives like Linux Core Consortium and Linux Standards Base go ahead faster than other standards bodies.
What I want to emphasize is the difference between companies agendas and FOSS agenda.

The initiative may accomplish sucess when it finds the intersection between the two agendas.
But if one of the companies, or a small group, get caught milking some advantage, the initiative dies too.

There are more about this on the brazilian portuguese articles in the boxes below. You should read at least the links:

1. Only the pronoid survive .
2. The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source .
3. The UserLinux white paper (manifesto) .
4. How not to kill the golden goose .
5. Predicting the Future: Choose Software From Column A or Column B .
6. Open source and the commoditization of software .
7. Some programmers motivations.
8. More programmers motivations.

Core based on..

This is the key point of this article.
Instead of participating in the Debian Project to solve the weak points, the group took some nice ideas (and some not so good) and is trying to group around a fork of Debian looking to minimize costs and get more market share.
The lead company of the movement is Progeny, that already tried something similar and almost went broke, as you can see here and here.
Instead of unify around Debian Linux, these companies want to unify around a Debian Linux fork. This will fail because of the resources needed to mantain a fork so huge and interests involved.
The Debian project is already strong, with a strong an big human resource and a social contract that keep it together and attracts more people.
Beyond the tens of thousand upstream developers (the original program developers) the Debian GNU / Linux project has more than 1500 official Debian Developers and many more regular and occasional contributors.
Becoming a Debian Developer is not trivial. The open process is documented at the Debian Linux site for the candidates study.
Today there is little market space to a enterprise launch a off-the-shelf boxed Linux distribution and becoming a viable business.
Even the big stabilished commercial distributions got the idea that is needed to agregate services.
The ones that made more money with Linux, IBM and HP, does not even sell Linux distributions.
They sell support services.

These grouping initiatives, as well as Ubuntu, started as companies fast reactions to omissions, lack of fast actions, that Debian project is still slow to address.
As the Debian Project is an organization with colective decisions and meritocracy based, the trend changes are slow until convergency.
But the result are smart actions, strong, incisive and that can not be blocked, due to the group critical mass.

With these principles, the Debian GNU / Linux project created a stable distribution, rock solid, with good management tools, good performance.
With the proud of excellent programmers seeing their names at a very good work done, that solve real problems.

Conclusions

One of the Debian Linux project pillars is its socal contract.
Being Debian GNU / Linux a strong non commercial distribution, the way to go is work to make it sronger, evolving, solving its weak points, preparing it for more growth, agregating more good ideas, and around it, participating, develop more business plans models.
What is working today are agregated services. (There is more on the brazilian portuguese article boxes.)
The UserLinux manifesto is the one that still have the more reasonable proposal.
Because it does not try to "get in control".
Does not try to fork Debian, but it is a CDD, Custom Debian Distribution.
It is an organization proposal to group around Debian without forking it, only adopting a subset of packages to support.

These keep costs down, leveraging the Debian community, spreading risks.

It is very good that companies group together, but for solving Debian GNU / Linux project problems and and theirs. Not for milking Debian to solve their problems.
A few days ago, Canonical Ltd, donated US$ 10 millions to create the Ubuntu Foundation, that is making a good new desktop distribution based on Debian GNU / Linux, but is progressively deviating from it.
This amount is more than the SPI Foundation, of Debian Project , likely received at its entire history.
But Canonical could made a smarter move, on the long way, in donating to Debian Project, that is the foundation of its distribution and giving an impulse to the Debian at Desktop task group.
The Canonical Ltd. has 38 excellent developers.
The Debian GNU / Linux Project has more than 1500.
As Ubuntu deviate from Debian Linux, more and more it will rocket up its development costs.

A company is not smarter than the community.
It will accomplish success if being smart WITH the community.
Who has the control?