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LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystemLPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystemPosted Sep 18, 2008 0:58 UTC (Thu) by Burgundavia (guest, #25172)Parent article: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem
Ugh, this is pretty poor reporting by LWN. It is overtly biased and mentions nothing that what Greg is saying is controversial. I hope there is a followup based on mdz's blog post: http://mdzlog.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/greg-kh-linux-ecos...
(Full disclosure: I have been an Ubuntu user since 2004 and sit on the Community Council)
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Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 1:06 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Of course it's controversial. I was just reporting on what he said, though. What else do you think I should have done? I have expressed other opinions about Ubuntu elsewhere; I didn't feel the need to inject that into Greg's talk.
Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 1:52 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
What timeframe does the statistic table span?
Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 2:00 UTC (Thu) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link]
The analysis is for the past 3 years
Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 2:03 UTC (Thu) by tseaver (subscriber, #1544) [Link]
Perhaps it would have been useful to note Greg's employer, as a tool to help readers evaluate his possible bias (I didn't know offhand that he was a Novell employee, for instance, untill reading mdz's followup).
First slide Posted Sep 18, 2008 7:30 UTC (Thu) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link]
I'd of thought his email on the first slide gave it away. And anyway he's showing the numbers even when Novell doesn't come up as high as certain distros.
First slide Posted Sep 21, 2008 0:27 UTC (Sun) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]
If you saw the slides you'd seen the suse.de email on the first slide, but if you were an LWN.net subscriber who read the article and didn't read the comments, you wouldn't have known the rest of the story. I like to think that the comments section is additional info, and not a place to be visited for a notable piece of the story that is missing.
First slide Posted Sep 22, 2008 0:50 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I agree, it's unusual for a LWN piece to be this one-sided.
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 2:03 UTC (Thu) by mmcgrath (guest, #44906) [Link]
No worries corbet, you did right by the write up as far as I can see. Though it is natural that the Canonical folk would want to save face. One day they'll learn, patches speak louder then words.
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 11:40 UTC (Thu) by mkflint (guest, #50223) [Link]
> patches speak louder than words
Yes they do! But so does artwork, integration, innovation, documentation, marketing, blah blah blah.
The primary goals, as I see them, are to create a great quality product and to increase usage of Free Software. And the kernel is just one part of that whole experience.
While each individual kernel developer has a preferred distro, the project as a whole should be distro-agnostic. I hope Greg KH made it clear that he was speaking as "Greg KH", and not as "Linux Kernel Representative".
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 24, 2008 0:02 UTC (Wed) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
I find GregKH's statement overtly offensive with no possible excuse. And just to be clear, I am not aligned with any Linux Vendor. However, such ill considered public behavior reflects poorly on Suse, not just GregKH.
Regards,
Daniel
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 24, 2008 1:46 UTC (Wed) by mmcgrath (guest, #44906) [Link]
So you're saying he's right, he's wrong or that he just shouldn't be expressing his opinions / organizing metrics?
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 24, 2008 3:46 UTC (Wed) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
I am saying you are wrong to applaud that sort of antisocial behavior.
Regards,
Daniel
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 25, 2008 14:05 UTC (Thu) by SEMW (guest, #52697) [Link]
> "patches speak louder then words"
True, but I do wonder how many patches Canonical GregKH feels would speak loud enough.
Canonical has ~130 employees; Novell has ~4100. So, considering the table for kernel contributions at the top, this works out at ~0.77 patches per employee for Canonical, and ~1.77 for Novell; a touch under 2.5 times as many.
But now consider that SuSE Linux has been around since 1994*, and Ubuntu, since 2004. That's around... Well, 2.5 times as long.
So it seems to me that Canonical doesn't actually do too badly out of the comparison.
* I am assuming that the table at the top doesn't distinguish between contributions from Novell SUSE and S.u.S.E.
(I admit that that's a slightly dodgy calculation, in that neither Novell nor S.u.S.E will have had anything like 4100 employees in 1994 -- but then, neither will Canonical have had 130 in 2004. I'm not aiming for a scientific comparison, only pointing out that presenting the raw numbers with no context of company size, as Greg did, is rather disingenuous).
Re: Controversial Posted Feb 1, 2011 14:09 UTC (Tue) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Those numbers don't make much sense - most of Novell doesn't have anything to do with SUSE. The SUSE labs have about 500 employees, I believe - then there is some marketing and sales. That is surely 5-6 times what Canonical has, in total - but far from 130 vs 4100.
Disclaimer: I work for SUSE/Novell.
Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 3:31 UTC (Thu) by Burgundavia (guest, #25172) [Link]
My comment was that other people have pointed out that Greg's analysis is flawed well before he made this speech. I suggest Ben Collin's (head of the Canonical server team) post: http://blog.phunnypharm.org/2008/07/canonical-and-linux-k...
And for the record, I don't work for Canonical.
Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 6:51 UTC (Thu) by mdz@debian.org (subscriber, #14112) [Link]
Factual correction: Ben Collins is not the head of the Canonical server team.
Controversial Posted Sep 19, 2008 6:15 UTC (Fri) by nealmcb (subscriber, #20740) [Link]
Correct. Rather, Ben Collins leads the Canonical Kernel Team.
Controversial Posted Sep 19, 2008 16:52 UTC (Fri) by mdz@debian.org (subscriber, #14112) [Link] That's not quite correct either. Pete Graner now leads the Canonical Kernel Team.
Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 15:41 UTC (Thu) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]
> What else do you think I should have done?
I completely agree with another response to your comment, that it should have been obvious that the speaker works for a different distribution. In the future, please note who they're working for!
Also, I don't know if they were available at the time of article publication, but a link to presentation slides would be handy and appreciated:
LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 3:36 UTC (Thu) by mcopple (guest, #2920) [Link]
His bias does not change the ultimate fact, which the referenced blog acknowledges:
"Canonical is primarily a consumer of the Linux kernel. It is one of the building blocks we need in order to fulfill our primary mission, which is to provide an operating system that end users want to use. It is, on the whole, a good piece of software which meets our needs well. We routinely backport patches from newer kernels, and fix bugs which are particularly relevant to us, but our kernel consists almost entirely of code we receive from upstream."
The Linux "ecosystem," whether that contains just a few pieces or every piece of software ever made for Linux, only works if everyone contributes. Eric Raymond spent quite a bit of time making this point in Cathedral and Bazaar. We know that in practice, only a small proportion of the user base actually contributes back to the community; therefore, it is even more critical that major distributors, of which Canonical is undeniably one, need to do their part to give as much back to the community as they take away from it.
Greg is saying, with a lot of justification, that Canonical is letting other distributors, especially RedHat and Novell, carry its water. The referenced blog post admits as much, but then goes on to try to cast it as a virtue, to opine that Ubuntu is about the whole operating system, not the kernel alone. Fair enough. But RedHat and Novell are in the business of putting together operating systems that "...end users want to use..." as well. What happens if, on Monday morning, they decide to follow the Canonical model, and become "...primarily a consumer of the Linux kernel...?"
Greg made it clear that, whatever your opinion on RedHat et al vs. Canonical, the majority of kernel hackers are doing this for a paycheck. If RedHat and Novell decide to pay their hackers to do something else, then the kernel process gets a lot slower and probably, a lot less functional.
It is time for Canonical to step up. I see claims all over the 'net that ubuntu is the most popular Linux desktop; it is time for Canonical to put some money behind that reputation. Step up, or shut up.
LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 7:06 UTC (Thu) by gregwilkins (guest, #515) [Link]
I think this criticism of canonical represents a pretty one-eye view of how what constitutes a contribution to open source. Patches are not the only way to contribute.
Canonical has put a huge effort into ubuntu and have made it one of the most easily consumable distributions of a vast amount of open source software. This exposure to users is the lifeblood of many projects.
It would be a fool who would try argue that the open source eco system would be better off without Canonical and ubuntu. If we are better off with them, then they must be contributing in somehow! So is the criticism that they are obliged to contribute more because they benefit from support contracts with users?
All users of open source software benefit from using it. We don't demand payment in cash or kind from our users, so why should we hold those that contribute in other ways to a higher standard?
To say that anybody is obliged to contribute back just devalues the gift that all contributions (code or otherwise) are!
To say that canonical is under some moral obligation to contribute developer time, is paramount to saying that we license our software freely so long as you don't get too big a benefit from it, in which case you are obliged to give in cash or kind! This is like the old ext.js license which was LGPL (unless you mades lots of money or were competative to ext.js)
That's not the deal! it's free! FREE F R E E !
Free as in freedom and that includes being freedom from moral obligations or guilt trips at the hands of those that think that only the kernel commits counts!
Canonical do contribute and even if they didn't it is wrong to say that they should.
LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 7:44 UTC (Thu) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link]
"Free riding happens with open source, news at 11". It would be great if Canonical poured even more of Mark Shuttleworth's money into various projects, but I think they're doing a pretty fine job in terms of making a product that is winning a lot of converts to Linux and open source. If they do less kernel work and more work on the distribution, isn't that simply taking advantage of the open source model? It's the concept of "comparative advantage": concentrate on what you do best.
Comparative advantage Posted Sep 19, 2008 18:34 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Clarification of the economic principle of comparative advantage: it isn't "concentrate on what you do best"; it's "concentrate on what you do most better (than others do it)" So even if Canonical can submit kernel patches better than it can distribute Linux, and even if Canonical can submit kernel patches better than anyone else, and even if Canonical can't distribute Linux as well as others, it may still be best for everyone if Canonical concentrates on distributing Linux. What you compare is the difference between Canonical's and others' patch-submitting ability and the difference between Canonical's and others Linux-distributing abilities.
LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 12:53 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Possibly Canonical prefers to spend its effort developing components which aren't in the rather small set Greg checked? Things the users can actually see? Things like, oh, GNOME? (Or KDE, I suppose, although Ubuntu isn't KDE-focussed.)
The Linux kernel and infrastructural stuff is very nice, but not everyone who uses it as a basis needs to enhance it, nor is there anything immoral or unethical about choosing to enhance non-infrastructural components instead.
RE: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 14:38 UTC (Thu) by mmcgrath (guest, #44906) [Link]
"Possibly Canonical prefers to spend its effort developing components which aren't in the rather small set Greg checked? Things the users can actually see? Things like, oh, GNOME?"
Yes, surely thats the ticket! Tell yourself whatever lies you have to, the work Ubuntu does, is for Ubuntu. If you think not... Go get the source and prove me wrong. Greg mentioned he looked at more then just the kernel but left it open enough that someone could tell themselves "Oh, they must just not work on the kernel."
I'd challenge anyone with Ubuntu/Canonical to post their own numbers _from an upstream repo_ and show where Ubuntu/Canonical commit count is at vs other distributions.
RE: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 16:43 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
I'm not a Ubuntu user and are not connected to Canonical in any ways. I have it tried once and deleted it a few weeks after. (It's not my style of distribution; I guess I'm too used to the old-fashioned Unix way, being a (literal) grey-beard Unix user since 1984 and a Linux user since 1994.)
But even I can see the value that Ubuntu (and Canonical, by paying the salaries of Ubuntu developers) provides to the Linux community: Packaging code into a coherent and *nice looking* whole, targeted towards desktop usage, that appeals to new users that have never used Linux before. And for that target audience their distribution is better than Debian or Red Hat, and arguably better than SUSE or Mandrake. In my book, this is a big win and a big contribution for the Linux community.
If they don't contribute code upstream to core infrastructure projects in addition, too bad. It mostly irks the developers in that projects; but other members of the rest of our community might see that providing packaging and user attraction (and also marketing) is a value in itself. At least, I do.
(To put that into context where I'm coming from: I use Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, and SUSE (in alphabetical order :), and almost all other Unix systems. As a developer, I belong to the TeX development community, and am active there since 1982.)
RE: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 19:14 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]
> Tell yourself whatever lies you have to
I appreciate that your feelings are running strongly here, but after that little outburst I can't take you seriously.
Back on topic: Slackware contribution count, anyone? And unlike Canonical, Slackware sell copies of their distribution. Yet nobody's slagging off Pat Volkerding for freeloading (have they ever done so, even when Slackware was the most popular distro out there?).
This is "tall poppy syndrome" at its worst; if I'm alone in finding it kind of disgusting, then so be it, but I do.
RE: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 19:44 UTC (Thu) by mmcgrath (guest, #44906) [Link]
"I appreciate that your feelings are running strongly here, but after that little outburst I can't take you seriously."
And why would you. I've asked for someone to provide numbers, facts. Why do that when they can just attack the person requesting them. ad hominem anyone?
RE: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 22:37 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]
> I've asked for someone to provide numbers, facts.
Maybe so, but the bit I quoted and responded to was
> Tell yourself whatever lies you have to
which is aggressive and rude, and makes your response of
> Why do that when they can just attack the person requesting them. ad hominem anyone?
amusingly ironic (although a little sad).
RE: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 23:18 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] OK. I will then politely ask: can anyone provide statistics on how much Ubuntu employees have contributed to Gnome, as compared to other contributors like Red Hat, Novell, and Sun?
RE: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 23:48 UTC (Thu) by chromatic (guest, #26207) [Link]
I'm not sure that information would be useful or interesting either, unless there should be some metric of goodness based on an amount of contribution upstream.
In my mind, the question is *does* a project contribute upstream, not *how much* does a project contribute upstream.
RE: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 19, 2008 11:19 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Ubuntu employees The difference between a company and a distribution is, well, key. Maybe this comes close to answering your question, maybe it is better to go here for the datamining software, download the latest Gnome tarball and answer it yourself.
LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 8:18 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
Greg is above all a kernel contributor. Ubuntu may have won the hearths of many users but Canonical's insistence on directing the entities that do the work while contributing little didn't earn it a lot of goodwill from people like him. After Launchpad's "let us manage your projects for you" Canonical's hubris has reached such ridiculous levels it seriously proposed that other distributions synch their releases with its own (and Greg's numbers show clearly it had precious little to contribute to such a project).
Thus, of course there is a backlash. Canonical is behaving like it had lots of credits to spend, while doing precious little to earn them.
PS. On the exact count subject please remember that all the volunteers loosely affiliated to Fedora or OpenSuse don't contribute to Red Hat's or Novell's numbers either.
LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 19, 2008 17:09 UTC (Fri) by talisein (subscriber, #31829) [Link] Canonical's hubris has reached such ridiculous levels it seriously proposed that other distributions synch their releases with its own...I mention this only for the sake of the facts, but I'm afraid you have this backwards. The offer was to change Ubuntu's own release schedule to match up with others.
LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 22, 2008 8:17 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
Well the real "offer" comes into sight when reading the full original:
"There’s one thing that could convince me to change the date of the next Ubuntu LTS:
For me this sounds like: if the others do the coordination work of picking a date and the
LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 26, 2008 5:36 UTC (Fri) by turpie (guest, #5219) [Link]
"For me this sounds like: if the others do the coordination work of picking a date and the
corner stones of the distribution, Canonical may want to use the results. In other words: offloading their core work. I wouldn't call that a nice offer." Be fair, that is a rather biased way of interpreting Shuttleworth's statement. What he said is that if the other major players agreed on a schedule, he would be willing to change Canonicals to match theirs. I'm sure that if the other distributions expressed an interest in his idea he would be willing to work with them on organising the synchronised schedule.
It is fair enough to criticise the amount of code Ubunutu contribute to the wider community, but I dont think it is fair to twist Mark's words that way.
LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 18, 2008 8:23 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Here's one point that I think was missed from the debate.
In this article, he writes:
> our [Ubuntu's] kernel consists almost entirely of
(He goes on to list other potential reasons that he considers improbable)
I can't speak for Greg or anyone else. But I think that this reason is valid.
Ubuntu's users surely run into problems with, say, the kernel. They use some newer hardware, they do some unpredictable things. Being the "non-kernel-developers", they surely don't work out those problems directly with upstream. This is why you have a distribution. Some of them will report bugs. Ubuntu developers respond to those bugs and fix them. Some of them result in code fixes.
So if we see very few contributions from Ubuntu in the upstream kernel, what can it mean. I don't really know which of those is actually responsible for the problems.
(And note that Ubuntu != Cannonical)
1. Ubuntu's users run into relatively few bugs. Can't be. Where there are users, there are bugs :-)
2. Ubuntu's users don't report enough bugs. This would mean Ubuntu is very buggy. This is a problem for Ubuntu.
3. Users report issues, but the Ubuntu developers fail to solve most of them. If so, this is a problem of the level of support Ubuntu's users get from their developers.
4. Ubuntu's developers fix problems, but don't forward enough of the fixes upstream. If so, Ubuntu is not a good community member, and its developers create themselves maintenance issues.
We all agree on the impact of (1) and (2). We all do our best to increase the number of bugs (develop software) and help users report bugs. So let's focus on potential reasons (3) and (4).
If (3) is an issue, it impacts Ubuntu's name. Specifically, it impacts Cannonical's ability to provide professional support services on top of Ubuntu: if they do a bad job maintaining a distribution, why would I bother paying them for it?
(Note: that's an *if* there)
LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 21, 2008 9:40 UTC (Sun) by Jonno (subscriber, #49613) [Link]
You are missing one possibility (which is the most common one in my limited
experience).
5) Ubuntu users report bugs, the ubuntu developers wait for upstream to
In this senario, bugs are reported and fixed, but few patches goes from
LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Posted Sep 22, 2008 4:00 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] That would just mean that they haven't got the manpower to give support to a "enterprise" distribution... You need engineers that know intimately what is going on upstream (i.e., are inmersed in its development) if you want to be able to fix problems in a reasonable timeframe (least of all, in the time your support contract promises).
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