Banning [LWN.net]

Banning

Posted Dec 10, 2008 20:59 UTC (Wed) by kragil (subscriber, #34373)
In reply to: Banning by jspaleta
Parent article: IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering

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.

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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
"Soyuz is the distribution management portion of Launchpad. It encompasses the build system, package management and archive publishing.

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.
Access to the code is the key which allows community innovation to occur. It does not matter who is running the end result.

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 (subscriber, #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.
Even Red hat has some closed source in the company (at the moment) .. you better learn to deal with it.
FOSS world domination will take way more time than you might think .. but it will get there.

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