This is the "downside" of Free Software - people can take what you do and do it better and in a way that might not suit you down to the ground.
Debian's major problem at the moment is not technical; all the cool kids don't care about Sarge's release because they're tracking unstable anyway. It's political and a PR disaster. Sarge couldashouldawoulda been released nine months ago and been vaguely on time. Now it's just embarrassing.
In these circumstances, Ubuntu was an inevitability.
My first reaction to the Vancouver proposals was "NO! HERESY! ALL PLATFORMS OR NO PLATFORMS!" and then I had a sit down and a cup of tea and thought it over some more. In reality, having Sarge stalled because (for example) the ARM port has insufficient autobuilders is, frankly, ludicrous.