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What is enough?What is enough?Posted Sep 19, 2008 11:33 UTC (Fri) by grantingram (guest, #18390)In reply to: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem by jspaleta Parent article: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem
It's about which companies are contributing "enough." Is Canonical contributing enough? That is a good point but Canonical is currently a loss making Linux start up. A well funded and high profile start - but it still is not turning a profit. How much contribution do you expect from them? What level of contribution and where would satisfy you? Shuttleworth has been very public about challenging core upstream projects like the kernel and X.org to do things differently for Canonical's benefit. Well the idea of coordinated releases is not just being sold on the basis that it is good for Canonical but also good for everyone.... The real work and challenges are in front of the upstream projects themselves. As downstream integrators, we should work on increasing the available upstream development manhours, or else we we'll run out of new things to integrate. Here I disagree! The remarkable success of Ubuntu demonstrates that applying large amounts of "polish" to existing software can have an enormous effect on the success of the free software ecosystem as a whole. Clearly we need upstream development efforts but "polish" is also very valuable!
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What is enough? Posted Sep 19, 2008 16:37 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Here is what I expect from Canonical. I expect Canonical's CEO to spend far less time publicly speaking about what he thinks upstream projects and contributors should be doing with their time. I think the vast, vast majority of the criticism that Canonical is getting, and why Canonical is being singled out, is because Shuttleworth has made it a point to go to the press and to conferences and talk about interactions with upstream projects as the CEO of Canonical, to better meet Canonical's business interests.
By doing these sorts of things, Shuttleworth has himself raised expectations on Canonical's own participation in the upstream process.
You don't see him singling out other companies by name, no Tivo, or Linspire or Nokia or YellowDog or whomever. There are probably a ton of companies out there trying to build a business around some sort of linux "distribution" in some shape or form and making small but targeted contributions to upstream projects. That's not the issue.
The issue here is is that the very outspoken CEO of Canonical is out making public statements, challenging upstream projects to change how they are doing their work to benefit Canonical...without providing additional resources to those projects.
If Tivo's CEO decided to be as public as Shuttleworth about seeing upstream processes changes, I would fully expect Tivo to be challenged to provide manpower as well. It's really as simple as that.
Canonical is in the spotlight, because Shuttleworth put Canonical in the spotlight.
-jef
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