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IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering
IBM has announced
the availability of a new desktop offering based on Ubuntu Linux.
"This solution runs open standards-based email, word processing,
spreadsheets, unified communication, social networking and other software
to any laptop, browser, or mobile device from a virtual desktop login on a
Linux-based server configuration." Only $49/user in quantities of
1,000.
(Log in to post comments)
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 17:02 UTC (Thu) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888) [Link] "Virtual desktop provided by Virtual Bridges called Virtual EnterpriseRemote Desktop Environment (VERDE);"At least they didn't call it Mobile Enterprise Remote Desktop Environment.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 17:16 UTC (Thu) by SimonKagstrom (subscriber, #49801) [Link]
Merde! That would have been beuatiful :-)
// Simon
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 18:21 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Isn't the Virtual Bridges technologies entirely proprietary? Both client and server side software which you have to run to make this work? Sure the service runs on linux and solaris servers, and the clients run on windows/mac/linux...but the virtualization layer is all proprietary still isn't it? Isn't even the API between the server and client even proprietary still?
I find it ironic that a Canonical exec is quoted in the announcement talking about using open standards to break proprietary lock-in, when the network enabled virtualization technology behind VERDE is itself completely proprietary. That's nice. Real nice.
Is this the sort of desktop-oriented web services that Shuttleworth has been talking about when he's spoken of 'webplications' in the past? Proprietary technologies that locks the linux desktop into a proprietary on-demand service? In any event, I hope Canonical is getting a cut of the per user fees that Virtual Bridges is charging for this. Though there is no obvious reason to assume Canonical is...unless the licensing fees include some sort of support contract agreement with Canonical...which isn't mentioned. Is this an actual revenue vector for Canonical into small business or is all the per-user money staying with Virtual Bridges and IBM?
Just one last question, did Canonical have to patch components in Ubuntu specifically so Virtual Bridges tech could serve Ubuntu? I think its important to know if Canonical is spending manhours patching in support for proprietary services instead of using those same manhours to grow open technologies.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 18:41 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]
The sun rises in the east. Sets in the west. Death and taxes are with us still. And Jef Spaleta's personal vendetta against Ubuntu continues...
I wonder why he doesn't simply work on the distro he prefers (and which I also like) rather than feeling such a compelling need to attack other distros, and this one in particular?
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 19:04 UTC (Thu) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]
When I first saw this message I wanted to write something like:
"A Ubuntu success story on LWN.net. Guess who is going to make a negative comment?"
.. but I already it that once and _for me_ things get boring pretty fast.
I just wish we would get the desperately needed jspaleta-spam-filter.
Editor? Is there hope?
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 19:39 UTC (Thu) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545) [Link]
> .. but I already it that once and _for me_ things get boring pretty fast.
> I really don't know how the fedora people are able to tolerate that guy. He just does not stop.
> I just wish we would get the desperately needed jspaleta-spam-filter.
Jeff "call-a-black-kettle-black" Spaleta was critical to keeping fedora focused in the early days. He is an expert at raising the bullshit flag and he does it in an interesting, witty, and sometimes cutting way. Without him all of us would need to waste our time doing it.
One of the issues we faced (and still face) is Ubuntu fan boys posting on the fedora lists and causing developer distractions. This also happens on announcements of fedora things---so much so and so systematically that it seemed to be an active Ubuntu marketing technique: "Anywhere the word "red hat" or "fedora" appears, "UBUNTU" must appear also."
Finally, Jeff has taken it upon his shoulders to turn his amazing talent to raising the Ubuntu bullshit flag. The rest of us can sleep easy knowing he is on the job.
Doesn't it sting when he points out those obvious facts that you have been trying so hard to ignore?
Cry
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 19:45 UTC (Thu) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545) [Link]
Jef "I'm not Jeff" Spaleta
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 20:00 UTC (Thu) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]
if you look at the fedora/RedHat announcements here on LWN you do not see a jef equivalent bashing fedora in every thread.
if you want to annoy people who post Ubuntu things on fedora articles by posting fedora things on Ubuntu articles, at least have the decency to do it on the forums where the people are misbehaving.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 20:04 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]
"""
One of the issues we faced (and still face) is Ubuntu fan boys posting on the fedora lists and causing developer distractions. """
I call "bullshit" on that. I keep a casual eye on fedora-devel-list and have not noticed what you claim. (fedora-list is already such a realm of chaos that I'm not sure that anyone would or could notice if it was problem there.)
One of the problems that Ubuntu advocates face are false claims like the one quoted above. An inordinate number of them (in my opinion) coming from the direction of the Fedora community.
Just to provide some context... I consider myself to be a member of both communities... CentOS, Fedora, and Ubuntu (roughly in that order) being the distros I rely upon to serve my customers' needs, and my own, too. I think that sometimes people here peg me as an "Ubuntu guy". And I do have an "Ubuntu hat" that I sometimes wear here. But my ties to the Red Hat world go back to 1997 and Red Hat 4.2, and are still strong today.
I just call 'em as I see 'em.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 21:01 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Just for the record,
I do not encourage nor do I participate in the disruption of internal project channels or forums that are task oriented such as help forums or task oriented tools like bug trackers. Even if those discussions are being held in public, its not appropriate for me to wade into them. In-process discussions in bugtrackers or mailinglists or forums where I am not a stakeholder...I'm not going to walk into and poke people in the eye.
But I do encourage and participate in the discussion and debate of personal blog postings, press releases or another announcements which are disseminated to the press or otherwise intended to be seen by external individuals. Anything that makes its way to LWN is fair game. Anything that ends up on CNet or other laypress news sites that has a comment section is fair game. Anything which gets posted on a personal blog is fair game.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 21:32 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]
"""
I do not encourage nor do I participate in the disruption of internal project channels or forums that are task oriented such as help forums or task oriented tools like bug trackers. """
Did someone make a claim on that either way?
"""
Please just call a spade a spade, Jef. You troll every Ubuntu related thread you see here. To the point that if you missed one I (and I expect others) would be concerned for your health and welfare. You might consider that behavior "advocacy". But it's bad advocacy. Meaning that people who might already agree with you might nod their heads. But people who don't happen to agree already just tune you out and your message is not heard. What does that accomplish? I guess you think that you are "exposing" Canonical or some such. But outside of that clique which already agrees with you, it's just bad advocacy for your cause. Bad advocacy for Fedora. And bad advocacy for Linux and FOSS. Others have called for a 'spaleta-filter'. I am opposed to this idea because I believe it is important to keep tabs on the damage you do. If your goal is to effectively persuade others to your cause, you are, in my opinion, going about it all wrong. You might want to pause in your crusade for long enough to think about that.
Steve Bergman
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 21:40 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I'm pretty sure I don't troll the Ubuntu security update announcements in LWN....yet.
If you think this is bad then you aren't really watching the Fedora communication channels... I do far more damage to Fedora when I talk in the Fedora dedicated communication channels.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 21:52 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]
"""
I'm pretty sure I don't troll the Ubuntu security update announcements in LWN....yet. """ No. But if you did, I suspect that I would be in favor or your being banned for some period. It would be *completely* improper behavior.
"""
What you say and do in Fedora-specific channels is your business and your responsibility. For a number of reasons, it would not be appropriate for me to show up to criticize.
-Steve Bergman
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 5, 2008 12:43 UTC (Fri) by Ze (subscriber, #54182) [Link] But I do encourage and participate in the discussion and debate of personal blog postings, press releases or another announcements which are disseminated to the press or otherwise intended to be seen by external individuals. Anything that makes its way to LWN is fair game. Anything that ends up on CNet or other laypress news sites that has a comment section is fair game. Anything which gets posted on a personal blog is fair game. -jef Trolling like you are puts a bad reputation on RedHat/Fedora and linux in general. I hope your not employed by RH because that would be quite unprofessional of them to tolerate that behaviour. I've got quite a lot of respect for a lot of people at RedHat and my first introduction to linux was through RH4.2 , However in any future distribution choices for myself and products I work on, it can't help but be negatively affected by your trolling especially since you are a Fedora Board Member. The simple fact is that negative behaviour is it's only bad reward. It doesn't matter who started trolling first , or what somebody's intention is when trolling. I can understand there being some troublemakers in both communities but all you are doing is making it worse. What you are doing is making you look like a spoilt prat , furthermore it makes absolutely no sense to further divide the developers amongst distributions and not work together. When someone makes a mistake amongst the development community then you explain that to them , help them understand why they are wrong and how they made the mistake and then move on otherwise you alienate more people. Yes shuttleworth made a crucial mistake thinking that user numbers counted towards deciding the goals of open source projects. When it comes to open source projects , it's not about the users but about the contributors. If you want to change the direction of something then you work on that direction and contribute it. I'm sure some people are jealous of the users Ubuntu has gotten in it's short life. That is a short sighted , zero sum thinking. More users is a good thing , it can only result in more contributors to make the open source ecosystem better.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 6, 2008 1:01 UTC (Sat) by jonasj (guest, #44344) [Link] Yes shuttleworth made a crucial mistake thinking that user numbers counted towards deciding the goals of open source projects.When/how did he do that?
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 6, 2008 1:29 UTC (Sat) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
This is why I like uses direct quotes as much as possible. I'm not sure I can find any actual Shuttleworth commentary which goes as far as to say that users numbers are more important than contributor numbers. I've certainly not going to suggest Shuttleworth said anything like that unless I can find an actual quote.
However, It's reasonable to assume that usage numbers do matter to Canonical's business plan...even if the majority of those users are paying for support contracts. Just enough of them need to. So more users should bring up the odds of getting enough paying customers. I do have issues with the numbers Canonical quotes with regard to the Ubuntu userbase, because they haven't explained how they get that number.
It's also reasonable to assume that usage numbers do matter to the larger ecosystem. Contributors come from somewhere, they don't grow on trees. If Canonical is expanding the linux userbase with Ubuntu then they are most likely indirectly helping to grow open source contributors.
Even if Canonical employees are doing a particularly bad job of being good upstream citizens (Dustin Kirkland excluded for his upstream ecryptfs work, which should show up next time there's a review of the linux plumbing contributions) the more important question is this. Is the culture Canonical created inside the Ubuntu community helping to turn users into contributors at a faster rate than other distributions?
If you are a Ubuntu user are you more or less likely to be an upstream contributor than if you are a Fedora user or a Foresight user or a Mint user or a Gentoo user? Has Canonical really created a way for people to get involved in the larger open source ecosystem or have they found a way to get people contributing to a Canonical controlled walled-garden?
Translations.... how is Canonical fairing there? Have they made it easier or harder for Ubuntu's community translators to contribute upstream compared to users in other distributions? Translations should be an absolute slam dunk if Canonical really was building a better way to contribute to the ecosystem. And yet, Ubuntu translator contributions into upstream projects are frustrated by the process flow that Canonical has created for the Ubuntu translation community.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 7, 2008 1:19 UTC (Sun) by Ze (subscriber, #54182) [Link] Firstly I want to say that this is a much better comment than one of your trolls. It's the sort of comment that others respect , sure it has a few tiny flaws and biases but then so do most comments.This is why I like uses direct quotes as much as possible. I'm not sure I can find any actual Shuttleworth commentary which goes as far as to say that users numbers are more important than contributor numbers. I've certainly not going to suggest Shuttleworth said anything like that unless I can find an actual quote. Your right Shuttleworth didn't say that, and more so that's not what I was saying above , furthermore I said he thought that users counted towards the direction of the project , now I'm only inferring his thoughts from his actions and I could be wrong. Understand I think that Shuttleworth's heart is in the right place. What I was talking about earlier was when Shuttleworth spoke of a direction for a group of large projects , where canonical wasn't a large contributor to them (or even a small one in some cases). That irked a lot of contributors. In the end it's the contributors who decide the direction of the project and if any company wants a project to go in a particular direction then they need to throw contributors at that direction. It's also reasonable to assume that usage numbers do matter to the larger ecosystem. Contributors come from somewhere, they don't grow on trees. If Canonical is expanding the linux userbase with Ubuntu then they are most likely indirectly helping to grow open source contributors. Yes they make a difference but only indirectly , contributors come from them and they make support demands on companies which focus contributors on that problem.the more important question is this. Is the culture Canonical created inside the Ubuntu community helping to turn users into contributors at a faster rate than other distributions? A bit biased Jef , now if Canonical/Ubuntu Community was helping to turn users into contributors at a slower rate we'd have a problem that the linux community should reflect on. If they are helping to turn users into contributors at a higher rate than we have something positive for the community to reflect on and for other distributions to learn from. If the rate is the same as other distributions then we simply have the status quo and there is no negative or positive implications. Translations should be an absolute slam dunk if Canonical really was building a better way to contribute to the ecosystem. And yet, Ubuntu translator contributions into upstream projects are frustrated by the process flow that Canonical has created for the Ubuntu translation community. When I've looked at launchpad and the associated process flow , I must say I haven't been impressed with it but then I haven't been impressed with the process flow in the overall linux ecosystem in general. I think that is one of the areas that can be improved for lots of projects. It's a tough problem in general though. Maybe something that better integrates wiki's+bug trackers + discussion{mailing lists,forums,newsgroups, perhaps even IRC}. In my experience hardware (specifically some input devices + 3G modems) can be a bit of a PITA to setup and then work out how to push the fixes upstream and even where to fix it.
"non-contributing" users do matter Posted Dec 7, 2008 4:51 UTC (Sun) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]
quote:
now if Canonical/Ubuntu Community was helping to turn users into contributors at a slower rate we'd have a problem that the linux community should reflect on
I disagree with you
if Ubuntu is introducing twice as many people to linux and is converting half as many to contributers they are still just as good as other distros.
or if they are introducing people to linux who would never use the other distros, but only converting 1% of those people into contributers, it's still a net win for the number of contributers
this is completely ignoring other effects of "non-contributing" users
these include
not to mention reducing the amount of money going to microsoft and other proprietary-only vendors.
do you think that there is any chance at all that Adobe would have released a 64 bit flash for linux if the only people who used linux were people that contributed directly to opensource projects?
in other words, users do matter, even if they aren't "contributers".
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 9, 2008 22:09 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
"What I was talking about earlier was when Shuttleworth spoke of a direction for a group of large projects , where canonical wasn't a large contributor to them (or even a small one in some cases). That irked a lot of contributors."
Its best to provide a reference to the exact quote so everyone reading gets a chance to read the original quotation which you are referring to in context with the personal editorializing. I'm pretty sure I know what you are referring to but its best not to assume. I try to do it as much citation as possible, but I fail to include it sometimes myself.
"A bit biased Jef , now if Canonical/Ubuntu Community was helping to turn users into contributors at a slower rate we'd have a problem that the linux community should reflect on."
I make no attempt to hide my bias, be afraid of anyone who attempts to claim they are unbiased. I do not yet work for Fox News so I still have the luxury of being biased, unfair and yes even unbalanced.
And I am in fact reflecting on this very problem. I think Canonical's approach to building a community distribution around a set of proprietary services that implement the processes of how that community is to work together shows a systemic and fundamental problem with Canonical's corporate view of how the open ecosystem is meant to work.
The fact that Shuttleworth can say that:
But then Canonical goes and builds the critical parts of the Ubuntu collaborative process, the mechanisms that grind the Ubuntu sausage, as a set of proprietary services...that is a problem. And it continues to be a problem. Even if Launchpad is opened by next November, and Canonical gives up on Launchpad's proprietary service model..its still not clear if Shuttleworth plans to take the concept of the proprietary service and wedge it deep into the linux desktop moving forward. In his vision of the "weblications" of the future, how important are open services? Will Canonical rig up new proprietary desktop services or will Canonical fully embrace the idea that the open development process is the better development process?
The Ubuntu DaD service should never had to need to exist as a separate service. Its a travesty of duplication of effort caused by Canonical's core corporate culture. The MoM service should have been an open codebase for the Ubuntu contributor community to extend if Canonical as a corporate entity really believed that that free software=better innovation.
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/DaDandMoM
That specific example is better now, as Canonical appears to have opened up the MoM codebase and DaD is going to be merged with it. But other areas are not. The services that the Ubuntu translators work with are still closed and are not open to the community to extend or adjust to better meet workflow needs. I bring it up DaD/MoM only to stress the point that I think Canonical's corporate culture has a systemic problem that goes beyond translation workflow.
Then there is also the fact that Canonical has put forward an Ubuntu code of conduct which talks about upstream collaboration as an important aspect of that code, but has largely failed to be a shining example of that collaboration is a problem. It's easy to say that Canonical is a small company and doesn't have the manpower to commit to upstream, that's a real easy excuse to use. But the reality is, they have come out and made a statement that to be a good community member you should value upstream collaboration. That is a value statement embedded in the Ubuntu code of conduct. Does Canonical as a corporate entity managing the Ubuntu community live up to the very expectations its set for that community? If they aren't a shining example of the collaboration ideals they would have their own community meet then you can't really expect that community to be better.
This "do as I say, not as I do" approach to open collaboration is a systemic problem to the Canonical corporate culture, which will only be reinforced and strengthened over time as traditional business pressures take hold as Canonical transitions from a cash-burn tolerant venture-capital mode into a profit-maintenance established business. These are corporate culture behaviors that Canonical must address to be better members of its own community as well as the larger ecosystem.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Apr 23, 2009 16:38 UTC (Thu) by kitterma (subscriber, #4448) [Link]
"That specific example is better now, as Canonical appears to have opened
up the MoM codebase and DaD is going to be merged with it. But other areas are not."
It's not ... is going to be .... It's done. DaD was shut down by the people
GPL code here:
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 5, 2008 7:12 UTC (Fri) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
The problem with Jef's posts, in my opinion, is that it is not good bullshit. Linux-hater's blog was tremendously good, for example, but Jef's posts are just ramblings. They have a point at times, often well hidden with the rambling, but the points are obvious and well known and either accepted or not accepted already without elaborating to N^10 bs level. Simply complete waste of time to have those messages here and they do harm to the general spirit around here. Partially because of the LWN comment system, they also prevent better discussion from happening.
FWIW, I love Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, FreeBSD... and used SUSE for 7 years, but switched from it when I became aware that I _can_ choose a distro where non-free stuff does not need to be used (and later it became openSUSE but too late for me).
I do not agree negative marketing is good. It might be occasionally, when it's done well like that Revealing Errors, but generally negative people suck and do more harm than good. That's my only negative opinion ;)
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 7, 2008 13:39 UTC (Sun) by duck (subscriber, #4444) [Link]
Thank you for your comment. I agree 100%, the "discussions" Jef tries to
start unfortunately prevent real discussion.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 6, 2008 16:33 UTC (Sat) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
>"Anywhere the word "red hat" or "fedora" appears, "UBUNTU" must appear also."
Adding "Ubuntu" to the mailing list engines' taboo list should take care of that.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 19:42 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]
Well, I've been thinking about this. And I think I have pretty well put it in order. Jef and I, while we agree on a lot of things, disagree on some things, as well. Looking at the landscape, which as a consultant I see every day, FOSS is hugely underutilized by the mainstream.
My goal, and I think Canonical's goal, is essentially a positive one: Increase the usage of FOSS in this world. Jef's goal is (apparently) essentially a negative one: Stamp out proprietary software. (Note that I do *not* include Fedora in that sentence.) These goals have a common ground, but it is important to recognize that they are different.
If I see a product doing well that is 90% FOSS and 10% proprietary, I see that as a good thing. Perhaps not optimal. But a net positive. When Jef sees such a thing, he apparently sees it as evil, and tries his best to eradicate it. This has, in this case, taken the form of targeted and relentless attacks disguised as innocent concern for the community.
That is a welcome development for those who oppose FOSS, because the most effective way to attack a community is to get the members to attack each other. (There was a great Twilight Zone episode about that, BTW.) And if the members do it of their own accord, without the FOSS opponent having to get its hands dirty, that's even better.
Regarding Fedora's position in all this, my opinion of which I should probably clarify, I see it as being thus:
--
(Those were my words and not a quote from anywhere.)
The important thing to note in that is that it stops short of attacking users, distros, and developers who hold differing opinions. I can respect that position. What I cannot respect is Jef taking it the further step of setting out upon a personal vendetta against anyone who disagrees with his position that stamping out proprietary software is imperative, and should be our primary goal. I simply cannot condone that attitude at all.
One other thing. Jef is, effectively, a representative of Fedora. And, rightly or wrongly, my opinion of the Fedora community has been tarnished somewhat by his campaign. Maybe I'm alone in that, and maybe not. But it's something that Jef might consider.
Thank you for you attention,
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 19:51 UTC (Thu) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545) [Link]
> regardless of the net benefits to FOSS.
It is not "regardless of the net benefits to FOSS". We believe that there is a net __loss__ of benefits to FOSS arising from ubunto's incorporation of proprietary drivers into their product line. From this point of view Ubunto is aiding and abetting the enemy.
Cry
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 20:11 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]
Which demonstrates that you are more interested, for whatever reason, in stamping out software that you do not like than in promoting software you like.
When you say "we", are you presuming to speak for Fedora? The Fedora community? Just you and Jef? Who is "we"? Do the other members of "we" agree with you?
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 21:41 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
There is a inherent tension between promoting FOSS and promoting proprietary software if your support for Free software is principled rather than just on a case by case basis. FSF has demonstrated that conflict repeatedly but there are other efforts as well.
Benjamin Mako Hill did a presentation which offers the perspective that pointing out flaws in day to day life with using proprietary software may be a better tactics than just pointing out advantages of using Free software
http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20080808-00
The website http://revealingerrors.com/ from him is very interesting. You might consider that negative marketing and perhaps it is but I wouldn't be dismissive of the effectiveness of this strategy.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 8, 2008 11:13 UTC (Mon) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
If those drivers help make the system usable, more power to them. On my Fedora-laptop, my WiFi does not work. I spent 30 minutes trying to get it to work, but no use. So I decided to replace fedora with something else (not just because of that, there were other reasons as well). So how did that benefit Free Softtware in any shape or form? I had a laptop that did not function properly. Had I been a user migrating from Windows or Mac to Linux, I would have gotten the impression that Linux is crap. Again: where is the benefit for free software?
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 6, 2008 1:15 UTC (Sat) by jonasj (guest, #44344) [Link] Jef is, effectively, a representative of Fedora. And, rightly or wrongly, my opinion of the Fedora community has been tarnished somewhat by his campaign. Maybe I'm alone in that, and maybe not.No, you are not alone in that. The fact that he is a Fedora Board member and that his trolling crusade has been allowed to go on here for so long without the rest of the Fedora Board saying something has definitely caused me to lose some of my respect for the Fedora project. And I'm almost starting to be of the opinion that he should get banned from LWN.
Banning Posted Dec 6, 2008 1:30 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] FWIW, he's not going to get banned from LWN. We've cut off a couple of really blatant comment spammers, but nobody else. I really don't want to change that.OTOH, I have been pondering the individual comment filter idea a bit. Now that we have a reasonable server, we can think about doing things like that. There's another project to finish first, then I might take a stab at it. Even then, though, I sure hope it won't prove to be a very popular feature...
Banning Posted Dec 6, 2008 1:49 UTC (Sat) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
In all fairness....
If you opened up the LWN codebase you'd probably already had several people sending in the necessary patches to implement Spaleta filtering.
If I'm going to be a broken record about the advantages of opening up Launchpad as a way for Ubuntu users to fix community facing processes without having to wait for Canonical to do it.... you're going to get a dose of it as well. Stop screwing around and open up the LWN code so LWN users can create the feature to filter me out.
Here's an idea, make a commitment to release the codebase of LWN when Canonical releases the codebase for Launchpad. Right now that's November of next year.
Banning Posted Dec 10, 2008 20:30 UTC (Wed) by net_bh (guest, #28735) [Link]
Here is replying to my favourite "waste of time". FYI, Canonical announced at the ongoing UDS that Launchpad is being opened up in July '09.
Banning Posted Dec 10, 2008 20:35 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Did they also announce which license they will be using?
-jef
Banning Posted Dec 10, 2008 20:59 UTC (Wed) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]
It will be AGPL.
But this will make you happy: Not all of it will be open sourced in july. AFAIK the build backend soyuz will stay closed. So about 95 % will be open source I guess. But that is just a very small part of LP and only very few people have the hardware to really use it.
Banning Posted Dec 10, 2008 21:26 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
That sort of rationale is a copout.
https://launchpad.net/soyuz
Whenever you upload a package to Ubuntu, or need build information for that package, or download a package from the archive, you are using Soyuz. We also consider the mirror management and other distro-related portions of Launchpad to be part of the Soyuz subsystem."
Is Canonical really saying that the processes managed by Soyuz would not benefit from open development and contribution directly from the community of Ubuntu developers? Really?
The benefits of the open development process have absolutely nothing to do with the number of people who can directly run the code on iron they own.
How many non-Canonical employees in the Ubuntu community make direct use of Soyuz? How many of those people have expressed frustration at some aspect of how it works over the years? How many of those people if given the chance would be able to submit an enhancement to the codebase that benefited every single Ubuntu community member who needed to use Soyuz to do the work that they do?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/soyuz/+bugs
Either Shuttleworth really believes that an open process is the better way to innovate or he does not. I guess if we are to believe Shuttleworth then Suyoz isn't in need of any more innovation...any more work. But the buglist suggests otherwise. Really what's the point of a public bug tracker for a closed source codebase? You can't commit a patch..all you can do is complain and complain and cross your fingers that the developers get around to fixing your bug for you. Pointless. Is that really what Canonical want's to see for Soyuz..lots and lots of Ubuntu community members filing bugs against the component but not having the ability to dig in and help fix any of it. Yeah that's a great way to manage an open community...hold back access to contribute to the very tools they have to use to build things. Awesome!
-jef
Banning Posted Dec 10, 2008 21:50 UTC (Wed) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]
I told you it would make you happy. At least you are predictable :)
And .. well .. they have to start somewhere and LP is _so much more_ than just a bug tracker like you seem to imply.
Banning Posted Dec 10, 2008 22:08 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Red Hat most assuredly uses proprietary tech for its corporate operations.
Can you point to a single pieces of closed source tech that Fedora uses in the infrastructure that the Fedora contributing community is asked to interact with? Cuz I can't.
-jef
Banning Posted Dec 6, 2008 7:09 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
The ability to comment (psuedo)-anonymously and/or send a message to a poster privately would be useful too, this thread has made me realise..
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 18:43 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Correction.. i meant to say the virtualization "service" layer.. the bits that provide the server/client networking aspects in the Virtual Bridges tech. The lower virtualization layer on the server side is KVM when running on a linux server if I'm reading the other VERDE material correctly.
ref: http://vbridges.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&...
I can't find any references to the licensing of the server/client codebases for the remote desktop "service" aspect of the VERDE stack.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 10, 2008 2:41 UTC (Wed) by EmbeddedLinuxGuy (guest, #35019) [Link]
I can't find any information about whether the client and server are proprietary but Virtual Bridges claims:
1. The client/server protocol is an open source extension of VNC.
"The VERDE Clients Protocol utilizes the Virtual Bridges VDI remote client protocol, an open source implementation combining the standard RFB (VNC) protocol with remote device access functions. This mechanism allows clients to remotely display server sessions even over low-bandwidth connections, as well as perform local device functions such as printing and audio playback... Given the open source architecture of the VERDE Client Protocol, the mechanism is completely extensible and can easily be amended to support new devices and platforms."
http://vbridges.com/docs/VERDEClusterOverview.pdf
2. You can access your virtual desktop using an ordinary open-source VNC client or X11, albeit perhaps without all the bells and whistles of the "rich client". According to a quote in The Register, the client can
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/04/ibm_linux_lotus_v...
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 10, 2008 2:57 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Thanks for the information. I'm more than happy to eat crow, publicly, if VirtualBridges is using an openly documented API for their tech.
If their client/server model is at least compatible with traditional VNC clients that would be welcome news. I apologize for not seeing that earlier. If the claim in that pdf is accurate, and the protocal is at the very least openly documented that most definitely assuages the deepest of my concerns. Even if the server and client code they sell in that deal is closed, having an open API means that an open implementation for both the client and the server can compete in the marketplace which is the most important thing.
If you able to dig up any authoritative reference that documents the protocol extension or if you find their sourcecode repository, please let me know so I can make the appropriate retraction here, but also on my blog.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 19:25 UTC (Thu) by MattPerry (subscriber, #46341) [Link]
> Isn't the Virtual Bridges technologies entirely proprietary?
It appears so from reading the marketing materials.
> I find it ironic that a Canonical exec is quoted in the announcement
True, but changing out the entire OS for a business can't be done overnight. Switching from a proprietary operating system such as Windows to something open like Ubuntu is a step in the right direction. It looks like the VERDE software is used as a stepping stone to allow users to continue to use Windows-only applications for which there is no native Linux port.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 19:52 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Read the announcement again. The announced bundle is the opposite of what Virtual Bridges has been doing up till now. Up till now, they've been letting you virtualize windows desktops running on linux/solaris iron so you could get access to windows applications from linux/mac/windows clients. Really no different than the citrix ica model, except I think citrix lets you download the proprietary clients gratis.
But this new announcement is the opposite. IBM is leveraging Ubuntu to offer their proprietary Lotus software gratis as part of the bundle in an effort to get people to use Lotus instead of MS Office. Lotus is available for Windows already. Business could choose to pay for Lotus software for Windows clients. So why the bundle? IBM is offering a predatory price cut on the Lotus bundled in this offer compared to its Windows variant. The expectation is businesses buy the bundles, setup a central linux server which hosts the virtualized Ubuntu desktop instances with gratis Lotus available. Client computers... macs/linux/windows.. run the proprietary Virtual Bridges client software and access those virtual desktops to make use of of the gratis install of the proprietary Lotus software.
The cost benefit here is that IBM is willing to give Lotus away in these bundles, whereas they are not willing to do that for the Windows version of Lotus.
Canonical is apparently getting a $10 support contract cut per user. Which is great news for Canonical as its a dedicated revenue vector out of the desktop bundle. Do we know if Canonical gets a guaranteed support contract cut from its Dell installs? This might actually be a more solid support revenue stream for Canonical than the Dell arrangement.
ref:
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 20:01 UTC (Thu) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]
Jef,
what right do you have to demand that company not spend any man-hours working on anything?
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 20:25 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Did I demand that? I certainly have no standing to demand anything from Canonical. I am not a customer, I am not an employee, I'm not even a volunteer working under their management.
But I am free to ask questions, and they are free to ignore me...at their peril.
What I tried to ask is if Canonical patched Ubuntu components specifically for compatibility with the proprietary Virtual Bridges techonology. I think that's important information considering how vocal Shuttleworth has been trying to articulate a grand sweeping vision for the future of the linux desktop.
If Canonical doesn't want to share that information, I can't make them. Perhaps other people who do have standing with Canonical will be interested in asking the same question. Maybe a Debian contributor or two might find that sort of disclosure beneficial.
But I will say this. Canonical tries very hard to blur the line between its business interests and the Ubuntu community interests. Where are we headed by relying on proprietary services with closed APIs? Is that really in the community's best interest? The fact that critism of Canonical as a corporate entity is continually intepreted as an attack on the Ubuntu community..is quite..fascinating.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 20:40 UTC (Thu) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]
for practical purposes Canonical == Ubuntu just like for practical purposes Red Hat == Fedora.
in both cases the corporate entity exercises extensive control over the distro
nothing goes in Ubuntu without approval from Canonical, nothing goes in Fedora without approval from Red Hat (if only from the Red Hat legal department)
if anything the ties are even closer for Canonical and Ubuntu, so your amazement over attacks on one being interpreted (or described) as attacks on the other doesn't stand up.
as for adjusting software to work in proprietary environments, every distro does this. that environment may be the IBM Virtual Bridges one that this article talks about, it may be the IBM S390 hypervisor environment that mainframes use, it may be the VMware hypervisor environment, or it may be the proprietary BIOS/hardware on the latest Apple server or eepc
every distro does this sort of work to some extent. Red Hat does a lot of work in this area.
If Canonical produced patches for opensource components to let them run on Virtual Bridges they should be thanked, Red Hat, Debian, and others can now benefit from this work.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 21:16 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Can you articulate the difference between excessive control and non-excessive control by a corporate entity?
In what way do you think Red Hat controls Fedora... excessively?
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 22:54 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
crap...
extensively.... not excessively...clearly a Freudian slip on my part.
The question still stands if you want to indulge me.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 22:55 UTC (Thu) by PaXTeam (subscriber, #24616) [Link]
how about explaining the august events? when it happened to debian some years ago, people were told about the details, in much less than 4 months. that clock is still ticking for fedora and one would think it's not of their will.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 23:43 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I believe Paul has addressed again in his press interviews for F10 release.
It's an ongoing investigation and he's on record as saying he's committed to making a full disclosure when its possible to do so.
ref: http://lwn.net/Articles/308176/
I specifically declined to be told about details of the breach if it meant that I would be subject to the same disclosure constraints which would prevent me from talking publicly. It wouldn't really help to have yet another person who couldn't talk, unless you are one of the people who are tired of hearing me talk.
I have trust in the people who are privy to more details than myself such as Paul. And no, I have no idea how long this sort of investigation is expected to take. When Paul can make a disclosure, I'm going to be right up front asking pointed questions about the investigation.
But this does remind me, we did have a discussion about communicating an incident response plan for future issues. I should ping people about that.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 11, 2008 18:56 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]
> Did I demand that? I certainly have no standing to demand anything from Canonical. I am not a customer, I am not an employee, I'm not even a volunteer working under their management.
So, you have nothing to do with them whatsoever, and don't even know anything about them first hand...
> But I am free to ask questions, and they are free to ignore me...
...which tends to happen to people who ask silly questions based on knowledge-free prejudices...
> at their peril.
...yeah, I bet Mark Shuttleworth is changing his trousers as we speak.
Jef, regardless of what you've deceived yourself into believing, this campaign of yours has nothing to do with Ubuntu or Canonical, and everything to do with the vastly overinflated ego you seem to have accidentally stumbled across in the street and decided to wrap yourself in. Please, put it back where you found it and get on with your life.
Quietly.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 5, 2008 8:04 UTC (Fri) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
Here's a suggestion: instead trying to tell me (and others) why Ubuntu/Canonical is crap, how about trying to persuade me why your offering is good? Becuse your current whining sounds like desperation and bitterness. It's very off-putting. And by that I mean that it's making less and less likely to use Fedora.
FWIW: I currently run Fedora 10 on my laptop (I'm going through distros at the moment, Fedora is the third distro I have tested in the last two months). I find the KDE-version of it to be pretty ho-hum, so I'll be replacing it soon.
Why don't you try to do something constructive, as opposed to spamming every Ubuntu-relted discussion with your whining? Because to me it sounds like you are crying because Ubuntu is stealing your thunder or something. So far the only thing you have managed to do in my case is to make me think "if I used Fedora, would I be associating with people like this Mr. Spatula?". And the idea of associating with you is not appealing at all.
So you mande my decision of not using Fedora that much easier. Thanks!
Jef needs Ubuntu Posted Dec 5, 2008 11:42 UTC (Fri) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]
+1
There is too much choice to use something that (superficially) seems to be a troll magnet.
Maybe Fedora needs a better code of conduct, maybe more "Ubuntu"
... yeah, Jef definitely needs Ubuntu :P
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 5, 2008 15:21 UTC (Fri) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
How about: "The Fedora/RH approach is good because it sells you on open
standards, then delivers them", as opposed to this product from IBM and Canonical that sells you on open standards, then gives you proprietary software running proprietary protocols.
I really don't see how pointing out this sort of hypocrisy and
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 5, 2008 17:39 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
As a larger open community we are running headlong into a crisis with web services. Shuttleworth is one of the most outspoken proponents of the deeply integrated network services into the desktop experience and I'm not sure he's articulated whether or not open services are important in his vision.
Are open desktop clients important to you? Virtual bridges doesn't have an open client as far as I can tell. Are open network API's important to you? Virtual Bridges doesn't have an open API as far as I can tell. Are open server codebases running on your linux servers important to you? Virtual Bridges has a closed one.
If more and more traditional desktop functionality is going to be served to us over the network, via a set of services that are themselves proprietary via closed APIs and closed server and client codebases, we as users and developers will be losing significant benefits because the access to the codebases which enable those network services will not be open for us. This is going to be a problem, especially when the CEO of a major linux distribution company appears to be pushing hard for exactly this sort of future of proprietary network services.
Now if you don't believe that continued access to the sourcecode is fundamentally important to how this linux ecosystem works then you won't share my concerns. You will most likely happily fork over cash for the Virtual Bridges technology to get the gratis IBM Lotus software, and run a virtualized Ubuntu desktop to get access to that suite. This bundle exactly targets those people who do not value the openness of Ubuntu and just care about cost. The deal sweetener..the Lotus application suite...is the most valuable portion of the bundle in terms of retail cost. Take that away, and would this be a compelling offer? Would people buy Ubuntu virtualized over Virtual Bridges without the free Lotus suite? Canonical as a business does have to make money.. and this sneaky $10 a user support fee is a way to do it. If the support fee was optional instead of mandated in the bundle cost to get the free Lotus application suite, would people pay for the "per user" support?
The customers can do the math. $10 to Canonical for support they don't need..to get $200+ proprietary IBM software for gratis. There is immense cleverness in this bundle with regard to how IBM is giving away its normally expensive Lotus software, while at the same time strong arming people into paying something for what is normally an optional Canonical support offering. Essentially IBM takes a loss and Canonical is ensured a revenue stream. It's almost like watching IBM hand money to Canonical to keep its business afloat...almost. If you want Lotus this is a really good deal. If you want Ubuntu, but don't care about Lotus...maybe not if you don't need the Canonical support.
But if you do share my concern about the future openness of deeply integrated network services, then you should encourage Canonical to find a way to build a competing technology that replaces the Virtual Bridges remote proprietary tech. This may even be something the Ubuntu community can take a lead in, and show Canonical there is a better open way to handle this sort of remote desktop service with open tech. Coupling FreeNX with KVM virtualization seems like an obvious place to start as a replacement to Virtual Bridges server and client code.
It would feel a whole lot better if Canonical made it clear that they were doing this bundle now as a stop-gap measure, while also working in parallel to bring up an open remote virtualized desktop technology.
I wonder if the bundling agreement Canonical/IBM/Virtual Bridges share includes a non-compete clause which would prevent Canonical from working on an open solution to the Virtual Bridges problem. Even if there is, the volunteer Ubuntu community is probably not constrained in exploring a Virtual Bridges alternative and making it available in universe.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 5, 2008 18:12 UTC (Fri) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]
so did you villify redhat for working to make things work on vmware before vmware released free versions of their software?
IBM is hardly taking a loss on this software bundle, they are making less profit on the Lotus bundle, but they intend to make it up in volume.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 5, 2008 18:42 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Was Red Hat only supporting VMware with company engineering time? Or was Red Hat also tasking manhours to support open virtualization technology as well? Things like Xen and KVM. Did both of those open technologies benefit from Red Hat employee time? It's a matter of balance between near-term business opportunity and long-term sustainability of the open ecosystem. I've no problem supporting businesses who make a good faith effort to find the balance by both supporting proprietary tech and contributing to open tech which directly competes. Nor do I have a problem harshing business that are failing to achieve that balance.
So for the case of VDI functionality that Virtual Bridges provides in this bundle what is Canonical doing to find the balance? Which open technology project is Canonical going to help incubate which directly competes with the proprietary Virtual Bridges tech? Can Canonical make a commitment to integrating an open VDI feature target into their next desktop and server release using freenx? That would be absolutely brilliant.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 8, 2008 11:26 UTC (Mon) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"How about: "The Fedora/RH approach is good because it sells you on open
standards, then delivers them", as opposed to this product from IBM and Canonical that sells you on open standards, then gives you proprietary software running proprietary protocols. "
But he's not doing that, is he? What he's doing is basically whine and cry about Ubuntu, because he feels that Ubuntu is stealing his pet-projects thunder. He does not spend time trying to bring his offering in to positive light, he spend his time trying to drag the competitor down. It makes you think that "Since he doesn't talk about the positive features of his offering, does it mean that it has none?". And since he apparently defines his product through it's competitor, it also makes you think that the competiror has to be pretty good to get so much attention from him.
He's a very negative person. A whiner, if you will.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 8, 2008 19:23 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Do me the favor of using exact quotes from me before interpreting what you think my motivations are.
My criticism is explicitly about Canonical... not Ubuntu. I think Canonical is doing some things fundamentally wrong as a community managing entity and is setting a bad example for all corporate citizens of the open ecosystem.
I think Canonical's choice to setup launchpad as a closed service to be the backbone of a community distribution such as Ubuntu is fundamentally wrong and it stunting the larger Ubuntu community's ability to interact more directly with upstream projects. Lauchpad's design is fundamentally flawed and does not take external upstream workflows into account. This design flaw is a direct result of Canonical's business interest for a centralized Launchpad service which is in direct conflict with the ecosystem of distributed project development. Launchpad's services as designed maybe compelling for individual upstream projects, but for distribution development where collaboration with external upstream projects is required, the centralized nature of Launchpad isn't necessarily a good approach. Canonical may have turned the corner recently with bug triaging by opening up the Launchpad plugin API, and creating the bugzilla and trac launchpad plugins... but for patchsets including translations.. its not clear that the Launchpad services as designed is helping collaboration with upstream and in fact it maybe hurting collaboration by encouraging people to do their work in launchpad instead of encouraging people work directly in upstream.
Ubuntu translators really do want to work more directly with upstream, but they are hamstrung by how translation development in Launchpad works, and they do not have access to the code to implement changes to the translation tools so they can build a better process. Right now they have to rely on Canonical to make changes to Lauchpad. That's a problem for the Ubuntu translation community and for the upstream projects. A problem created by Canonical's business interest in a proprietary Launchpad service.
I think Canonical's choice to setup a community remix trademark policy, then bend the rules of that trademark policy for Canonical's commerical benefit so Canonical could create the commercial OEM netbook remix images with specialized hardware support is a problem for the Ubuntu community and shows a lack of respect for the volunteer Ubuntu community who isn't getting a Canonical paycheck. As a corporate entity, if you are going to setup a community trademark policy for a secondary trademark, abide by that policy as you would have any other community member and don't twist the rules for corporate benefit just because you are the mark holder and can not be held accountable by the larger community. Canonical is building the OEM specific netbook images and calling them "remixes" in direct conflict of the "remix" trademark policy they established for the non-Canonical employeed Ubuntu community to use. Canonical didn't have to call the commercial OEM offering a "remix", they could have abided by the community trademark policies and called it something else. A 'Do as I say, not as I do' management style, is never a good way to manage a community. This sort of willingness to subvert communicated community oriented policies for business reasons is a problem. It will become a bigger and bigger problem as Canonical adjusts its business focus more narrowly on profitability and less on brand recognition. If they are willing to subvert the community "remix" trademark policy what other policies are they going to be willing to subvert?
I think Canonical's handling of a community ports area as an architecture graveyard that does not include a way for the Ubuntu community to initiate ports of Ubuntu to new architectures is a problem for the Ubuntu community. Is the only way to open up an Ubuntu port to a new architecture is to first have Canonical provide the infrastructure in a failed effort to monetise the architecture? Can motivated Ubuntu community members who are not employed by Canonical add new architectures to the Ubuntu ports area without having to pay Canonical to do provide the build hosts? Are community members really forced to run those sorts of ports as external projects without access to the Ubuntu branding? Isn't that a problem for the wider Ubuntu community? If Ubuntu's build infrastructure was modeled on Debian's decentralized community approach, Ubuntu would already have a community led ARMv5 port up and running inside the Ubuntu ports system.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 9, 2008 13:21 UTC (Tue) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"Do me the favor of using exact quotes from me before interpreting what you think my motivations are."
I judge your motivations based on what you say. And no, I'm not going to post quotes about the multitude of whining you do here.
"My criticism is explicitly about Canonical... not Ubuntu."
Why? Why do you keep on whining about Canonical? Why does it matter to you at all what they do or do not do? Hwy don't you focus on making your product as good as it can be, as opposed to spending your time here whining about your competitor? Yes, I understand that it can be pretty annoying to see an upstart like Canonical/Ubuntu do something in a short time that Red Hat spent years to reach. But whining does not change that fact. What you should be doing instead, is to make sure Fedora is as good as it could be. But you are not doing that. Instead, you spend your time crying about Ubuntu/Canonical.
Your endless whining is alienating users. I was so-so when it came to fedora, but your whining made it pretty easy for me to dumb Fedora.
"I think Canonical is doing some things fundamentally wrong...."
Well, that's their problem, is it not? Why are you so concerned about a mistake someone else is making? I see lots of companies doing something that I think is stupid, yet I don't waste my time whining about it, especially since those things do not relate to me at all.
"I think Canonical's choice to setup launchpad as a closed service to be the backbone of a community distribution such as Ubuntu is fundamentally wrong and it stunting the larger Ubuntu community's ability to interact more directly with upstream projects."
Again: that's their problem, not yours. Why not focus on your problems, as opposed to whining about others problems?
"Ubuntu translators really do want to work more directly with upstream"
There's nothing preventing them from working with upstream. if they choose to work in Launchpad only, that's their problem, not yours.
"If my motivation was to sabotage the Ubuntu community for my own self-interests, I wouldn't be publicly critical"
Your motivation is to cast Ubuntu/Canonical in a bad light, because you feel that they threaten Fedora. I think it speaks volumes about the quality of Fedora when you have to resort to endless mudslinging and whining about your competitor. Yes yes, "I have only Canonicals best interest at heart!". That's a load of crap if I ever saw one. Why don't you focus on Fedora and problems it faces, as opposed to losing sleep over someone elses problems? But I guess this all boils down to the fact that Canonical came out of nowhere, and took huge chunk of Linux-users mindshare just like that. That must be annoying for someone who spent years trying to do that, only to see some upstart doing it instead?
And now you start to whine about Ubuntu in threads that have nothing to do with Ubuntu! And by that I mean the post about Luis Villa's blog-post. give it a rest already. You sound like a broken record, and you have nothing worthwhile or new to bring to any discussion. It will always be about "Waaah, Canonical sucks!"
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 9, 2008 14:01 UTC (Tue) by njd27 (subscriber, #5770) [Link]
Please do not feed the troll.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 9, 2008 17:20 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I do not feel that Ubuntu threatens Fedora. What would threaten Fedora is if Canonical actually got so heavily involved with upstream projects that upstream development roadmaps for important subsystems like the kernel or Xwindows or GNOME were driven by Canonical's upstream activity.
I feel that Canonical as a corporate entity is a poor example of a corporate citizen of the larger ecosystem of open development and is exhibiting behaviours that negatively impact sustainability of that larger ecosystem. I point out those specific behaviours which need to be addressed. I will continue until those specific behaviours change.
-jef
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 10, 2008 7:50 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"I do not feel that Ubuntu threatens Fedora. "
Your behavior here says the opposite.
"I feel that Canonical as a corporate entity is a poor example of a corporate citizen of the larger ecosystem of open development and is exhibiting behaviours that negatively impact sustainability of that larger ecosystem."
So you think that because Ubuntu does not contribute as much to upstream as some other distros do, they are threatening the viability of the entire ecosystem? I'm sorry, but that does not compute. They are not actively harming the ecosystem, what they MIGHT be doing at worst is that they are not actively benefiting it.
But, OTOH, I think that Ubuntu does have a positive contribution. They have increased mindshare of Linux and various projects associated with it. They have brought more users to Linux. And all those are positive things.
There are ways of helping Linux that do not involve patches. As long as we think that "only way to help is to submit patches!", Linux will be doomed to a niche. The ecosystem is not just code.
"I point out those specific behaviours which need to be addressed. I will continue until those specific behaviours change."
In other words: "I'm annoyed because Ubuntu is threatening the popularity of Fedora, and I'll vent my anger and frustration in lwn.net!".
Pretty sad, really. And what's even sadder is the fact that everyone else that read lwn.net needs to suffer your endless whining.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 5, 2008 15:46 UTC (Fri) by nhasan (subscriber, #1699) [Link]
I must say that each participant in this thread (including me) is trolling (by accusing each other of trolling). Stay on topic. If you see a troll, ignore.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 4, 2008 19:21 UTC (Thu) by kev009 (subscriber, #43906) [Link]
I don't trust IBM as a software company. This may be a nice offering, but they had a similar offering in the past, Linux based ThinClient Manager. IBM is notorious for pulling support and all trace of a product at their whim. That nice pile of hardware and software may well be scrap 2-5 years later while it still has useful life left, and forget about updates. Stick with RedHat and SUSE if you want well supported Linux.
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 5, 2008 8:24 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link] (...) offering based on Ubuntu Linux. The name is Ubuntu, not
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 5, 2008 8:57 UTC (Fri) by Guhvanoh (subscriber, #4449) [Link]
Well aren't you lucky they didn't say Ubuntu GNU/Linux?
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering Posted Dec 8, 2008 12:19 UTC (Mon) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
I prefer Ubunto GNO/Lonix.
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