Ubuntu probably includes a newer kernel than Debian. We'll be adding a newer kernel in lenny-and-a-half.

Python 2.6 wasn't released when the freeze for Debian lenny began. I'm sure there will be backports as soon as it gets into testing/squeeze.

Mindshare is important, you need it to get an influx of developers which you need to keep up with the growth of the distribution. Personally I believe Ubuntu has been both detrimental and helpful to Debian (and FOSS in general).

It was also mentioned on the dev announce list:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2009/01/msg00002.html

IIRC you need to use jigdo to assemble them from the packages. This page hints at that:

http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/debian-installer/

TS3 will be probably released before squeeze, we still have no shortage of names.

The Debian KDE team would love any help people can give, perhaps from Kubuntu guys!

Speaking as one of the people who packaged it for Debian, and now has upstream commit access, synfig has lots of crash bugs and other bugs. Synfig needs more people working on the code. The original developer doesn't have time for it, and I have commit access, but not time or knowledge of the code to reduce memory usage, fix crashers and so on.

http://www.synfig.com/2006/01/26/new-developer/ [synfig.com]
http://wiki.synfig.com/Roadmap [synfig.com] (not decided on or posted yet)