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Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)
The Austrian Newspaper 'Der Standard' has an interview
with Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu community manager.
"derStandard.at: Lot's of the work Ubuntu has been doing recently
- app indicators, Messaging Menu, MeMenu - hasn't really been done upstream
and is only used in Ubuntu. Are you going separate ways? Jono Bacon:
Actually that's all upstream work, it's just that Ayatana is the
upstream. So the code's completely open source, the bug tracking is open,
people can hack on it. For the app indicators we also had a lot of
community involvement, it was based on a Freedesktop.org spec, worked on
with consultancy from KDE, we invited GNOME developers to participate in
the Freedesktop discussion and proposed them to the GNOME community for
inclusion, but it's not up to us, if they take it or not. It's kind of
similar how other distros have done it in the past, like Novell when they
developed their own main menu with Slab, they felt it added value to their
distro." (Thanks to Michael Kofler)
(Log in to post comments)
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 9, 2010 21:35 UTC (Mon) by spot (guest, #15640) [Link]
So, they're not forking GNOME, they're just taking the parts of GNOME that they like, taking out the parts that they don't, and reimplementing core components in different, and intentionally incompatible ways, without any attempt at merging those changes back to the GNOME upstream.
No, sorry, what you're doing is textbook forking.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 9, 2010 22:25 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
on the other hand, if they did announce that they were forking Gnome, the questions here would be about all the things that they are not planning to do.
there are many different flavors of forks, this does not appear to me to be an attempt to fork the core, but they do plan to make changes around the edges (with a fairly fuzzy definition of the edges)
Think about what you would be expecting/requiring them to do if they did announce plans to fork Gnome. I think you will find that why they are stating that they are planning to do is very mild in comparison.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 5:40 UTC (Tue) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]
What's "intentionally incompatible" here? My understanding is that they intent to stick with rebasing their work on official GNOME releases; having a good interest in being compatible.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 5:44 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
The notification API in Ubuntu's GNOME for example is now different from upstream GNOME and different from future plans for GNOME including GNOME Shell. All that work that has gone into it from Canonical will really be wasted when they move to GNOME Shell unless they heavily patch it. Such divergence will increasingly be more of a fork from GNOME. If they had worked within GNOME instead of downstream and proposing it upstream at a much later stage, it would have made it more likely for GNOME to integrate their changes. It is quite unfortunate.
Standardised interfaces vs. standardised implementations Posted Aug 10, 2010 11:37 UTC (Tue) by sladen (subscriber, #27402) [Link] The notification API (Application Programming Interface) in Upstream GNOME, Fedora GNOME and Ubuntu GNOME stacks is identical. That programming interface is the standardised Desktop Notifications Specification authored by Mike Hearn and Christian Hammond. What Ubuntu does ship (since April 2009) is an alternative implementation of a daemon that renders the incoming requests to the screen (" ...which in-turn has highlighted a number of sub-optimal applications, applets and daemons (eg. ones that do not check the return result of GetCapabilities(); or which have inappropriate priorities). End result: having an alternative (standards-compliant) implementation to verify the GNOME software collection against has highlighted and caused dozens of everyday applications to be fixed and improved. Is there really that much difference between a five-line patch fixing a standards-compliancy issue and a five-line patch with the word "papercut" in the title? Should one patch be held in lower-regard than the other?
Standardised interfaces vs. standardised implementations Posted Aug 10, 2010 11:42 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I wasn't referring to notify-osd which wasn't discussed within GNOME at all afaik. I was talking about libappindicator.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2010-Fe...
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2010-Fe...
org.freedesktop.Notifications vs. org.kde.StatusNotifier* Posted Aug 11, 2010 10:43 UTC (Wed) by sladen (subscriber, #27402) [Link] So the objection is not that current versions of K/Ubuntu (≥9.04) ship free software that talks the org.freedesktop.Notifications.* D-Bus protocol, but that future versions of K/Ubuntu (≥10.10) may ship free software that talks the org.kde.StatusNotifier* protocols aswell. Is one protocol really more evil than the otherbecause it contains "kde" in the path? A frequent demand heard in free software circles is "go away and show me the code"; yet that appears to have happened here.
org.freedesktop.Notifications vs. org.kde.StatusNotifier* Posted Aug 11, 2010 11:04 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Let me be clear. I am not objecting to anything. Someone else asked what was the divergence in Ubuntu's GNOME from upstream and I was responding to that. Whether it is a good change or not is a completely different point.
Standardised interfaces vs. standardised implementations Posted Aug 10, 2010 11:58 UTC (Tue) by Frej (subscriber, #4165) [Link]
The sad part is that GNOME is better without notify-osd ;). Try it!
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 9, 2010 21:47 UTC (Mon) by otaylor (subscriber, #4190) [Link]
In general, I think I'll let Jono's words speak for themselves; it's a good interview and worth a read. But I wanted to quickly respond to:
"With all the stuff we are doing, fundamentally we're swapping things in and out, for instance with notify-osd replacing the GNOME notification-daemon. To me the analogy is like buying a car and putting a different set of wheels on it - so it's still a car.
So sure it's a delicate situation but it's the same with Red Hat building GNOME Shell which is a completely different user experience to GNOME".
We've never seen GNOME Shell as a set of Red Hat wheels for the GNOME car. GNOME Shell is a comprehensive, integrated, redesign of the GNOME experience. It was started from designs at a hackfest with GNOME-wide participation, and developed in the GNOME infrastructure from day one. We actively solicit contributions from everybody.
Bolting pieces on at the edge fundamentally limits the scope of the changes you can make and the degree of integration you can achieve. We hope that Ubuntu will work closely with the community to get the great ideas that their design team has into future versions of GNOME.
Iterative development/continuous improvement Posted Aug 9, 2010 23:23 UTC (Mon) by sladen (subscriber, #27402) [Link] It's excellent that hoverboards, maglevs and Segways are being developed as possible "comprehensive, integrated, redesigns" of travel. It's also excellent that existing cars, trains and bicycles are being gradually refined (through a process of continuous development) to improve people's day-to-day lives as they are. Is it really a problem if a bunch of Human Computer Interaction-obsessives (lets call them "Ayatana") sit down and bug-fix the issues one papercut and one pop-up daemon at a time? What about if these boffins were also to give those bug-fixes back, ...to anyone who'll take the changes, and anyone who will listen?
Iterative development/continuous improvement Posted Aug 10, 2010 0:03 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Uhm... don't confuse the very very good papercuts project with the other design initiatives which are being done entirely at the distribution level and which is the focus of the Q/A in the interview. Mr. Bacon didn't mention Papercuts in that interview at all.. you are broadening the discussion a bit too far to try to make your point. Certainly Jono Bacon was not including Papercuts when he was talking about "swapping stuff in and out." And this is the very particular quote that otaylor is commenting on here. To bring up papercuts in defense of efforts like notify-osd and libindicate..things which require copyright assignment back to Canonical... is to change the subject entirely.
That being said. Papercuts is worthy of being lifted up specifically because its so atypically upstream focused in comparison to much of the other work that is going on. If the deliberate care that was being shown in how upstream feedback is handled in the papercuts initiative was being shown in the other work there would be much less friction. And no ridiculous copyright assignment requirements because its understood that papercuts is a contribution to a larger whole. Papercuts is proof that someone inside Canonical knows what it takes to _contribute_ to upstream projects in a constructive manner.
We don't even have to use the hand wavy definition of Ayatana as an upstream project that Jono uses in this interview. In fact Papercuts is an initiative that works against that already strained definition. Papercuts shows the Ayatana idea at its best exactly because Ayatana is _not_ trying to act as an upstream project but as a conduit for contributions to existing projects. Papercuts as a project stands apart because its is explicitly focused on contributing to existing upstream projects outside of Canonical's direct control. All the more reason to scratch one's head when others inside Canonical choose to work at the distribution level instead of contributing to the existing upstream project roadmaps.
-jef
Iterative development/continuous improvement Posted Aug 11, 2010 8:11 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
Jef, for all your Ubuntu bashing, I admire your objective and constructive stance that you are sometimes taking. Yes, the papercuts project is certainly a worthwhile effort. And they really try to take these things upstream, it is sometimes a bit depressing to see various upstream be completely uninterested, snobbish, overly defensive or ignoring the upstream bugs for months. It does take lots of efforts to get small but good stuff upstream in some (not all) cases!
Iterative development/continuous improvement Posted Aug 11, 2010 17:12 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Correction, I bash Canonical very deliberately. It's been like watching Shuttleworth open up the valve to an irrigation cistern wide open and watching the water spread out over fertile but wild soil and Canonical then trying to till and farm the result without much thought on what to do about keeping the cistern full and the irrigation water flowing. It's simply not a sustainable way of doing things.
If I have ever spoken ill of the Ubuntu project as concept then I have done so in error. But I have most definitely been an outspoken critic of how Canonical as a for-profit corporate entity has chosen to manage that project and how Canonical chooses to blur business interests with community interests. A critic of how Canonical execs choose to couch strategic business decisions in the language of community sentiment instead of factual information. A critic of how Canonical execs wrap themselves in the protection of the banner of community when such business decisions are publicly challenged instead of addressing the concern as stated making any such challenge an implied attack on the Ubuntu community leaving the underlying question of Canonical's ability to execute any business strategy unanswered.
-jef
Iterative development/continuous improvement Posted Aug 10, 2010 0:14 UTC (Tue) by otaylor (subscriber, #4190) [Link]
It's never a problem that someone is doing work. No kittens are killed if work is duplicated; it even keeps the kittens of deserving designers and coders in kitten chow. Fixing problems in the GNOME 2 UI is great for users. And certainly the work that has been done on the Ubuntu UI is one of many sources of inspiration for the GNOME 3 design.
But unlike maglev trains, GNOME 3 will be out next year. And at that point, very few of the patches that have been come up with for Ayatana will apply to GNOME. Not only that, but in terms of user interface, arbitrary choices are being made that don't match up. There was a huge community flap because the titlebar buttons were moved in Ubuntu from the right to the left. On the other hand, in GNOME 3 we cleared out the left side of the titlebar entirely as not to interfere with the primary task-switching navigation target at the top-left of the screen. Neither decision is wrong in its context. But it seems like a puzzler for Ubuntu once they switch to GNOME 3. Do they move the buttons back? Do they heavily patch GNOME 3 to match their current interface?
Design is just like code - the more changes you make downstream instead of collaborating upstream first, the the more problems you have when upstream changes. And the longer you carry big changes, the worse the problem gets.
Iterative development/continuous improvement Posted Aug 10, 2010 10:00 UTC (Tue) by gidoca (subscriber, #62438) [Link]
Something's terribly wrong with the design of GNOME if they have to "heavily patch GNOME 3" only to move the buttons to the other side of the title bar.
Iterative development/continuous improvement Posted Aug 10, 2010 10:38 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
You skipped over important parts of the comment you are replying to. It isn't just buttons that is being moved. There is a lot of design changes being applied downstream and a number of applets that enable the change that is going to be incompatible with the path that GNOME is moving towards.
Iterative development/continuous improvement Posted Aug 10, 2010 10:47 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] But unlike maglev trains, GNOME 3 will be out next year Contrary to your implied point, maglevs have been out for a while. Contrary to the grandparent's implied point, maglevs aren't intended to replace regular trains for the most part: they're something different. GNOME 3 is, however, intended to (fairly rapidly) replace GNOME 2. Therefore -- even if it won't be released until next year -- it is very much in Ubuntu's interest to keep an eye on it and not diverge too much.
says who? Posted Aug 10, 2010 11:10 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
(Completely off-topic)
Maybe it's just me, but it's not always clear who are the participants here. And in this case, as in many others, they are actual contributors.
Thus I wonder if it would make sense to have an optional 'homepage' attribute for subscribers (not sure about guests, for considerations of spams and such), to be linked from the nick name?
Yes, usernames in comments should link to homepages Posted Aug 11, 2010 10:14 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
Agree.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 9, 2010 21:50 UTC (Mon) by mezcalero (subscriber, #45103) [Link]
The way I read this Canonical created "Project Ayatana" simply to have something they can call "upstream" where they can contribute GNOMEish software to without having to release control by contributing it to the real upstream: GNOME proper.
Ayatana is about control, which is exercised in various ways: through requiring copyright assignment, through maintaining it in Launchpad, by being the sole maintainers and so on.
While what Canonical does here is certainly Free Software, and legal and even legitimate it is bad Free Software citizenship: in style of Sun with OOo they are unwilling to consider other community participants as equals. That that is not healthy for a project is visible in the slow self-destruction of OOo. Let's see how long it takes for Canonical to notice that.
It's an irony that a company that employs multiple promiment "community" and "upstream relationship" managers makes community contributions to their projects this messy and actively circumvents the real upstream by creating their own projects based on upstream under their own control.
systemd and the advantages of variety Posted Aug 9, 2010 22:13 UTC (Mon) by sladen (subscriber, #27402) [Link] So, who is upstream for systemd? (A piece of [potentially] core infrastructure that seeks to re-implement existing processes in a new and funky way, but which at first-glance seems to duplicate work that already exists).
...There is more than one way to skin a cat; generally it takes somebody willing to put in the time to get a new idea ready, and then to deploy that code to find out if it'll stick, or instead be superseded by something better. (As an example, remember Spatial Nautilus?) Pragmatism is a virtue. The above are rhetorical questions.
systemd and the advantages of variety Posted Aug 9, 2010 22:39 UTC (Mon) by mezcalero (subscriber, #45103) [Link]
You are comparing apples and oranges.
I believe there are good reasons when you might want to start your own project instead of contributing to an existing one. Two of them come to my mind here: "the design of the existing implementation is flawed in its core", and "the existing implementation would not be recognizable after the changes". Both apply to systemd's case. Neither applies to ayatana. "I want control" appears to have been the driving reason behind ayatana, and I believe it is a bad reason.
design/theme variations Posted Aug 10, 2010 4:54 UTC (Tue) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
I think there is room for more than one appearances. I know the notify things need patching software individually and the numerous other problems, but it's mostly just Canonical's burden to do so and carry the patches.
No-one seems to be complaining about Moblin/MeeGo and their complete reimplementation of UI on top of GNOME, it's always Ubuntu/Canonical that gets all the blame. MeeGo is probably/potentially used by more people in a near future than Ubuntu. But I think this new trend is quite refreshing - when eg. GNOME/KDE consist of huge amount libraries and on top of those finally end user GUI, I don't think it's bad if the top-most parts get reimplemented in multiple ways. Even though I like what I've seen of GNOME Shell so far, the free software can't get mainstream desktop usage if there are no brands with their unique look and feel. And in that context, I understand the control thing as well to an extent - business as usual, they own the Ubuntu trademark and want to have something that's associated especially with it, even though as free software anyone is free to take the work as well (as long as they don't use the trademarked Ubuntu logo etc.).
On the other hand, GNOME would need more manpower from Canonical as well, it's a pity that the amount of contributions is so small, even considering the size of the company which is not that big regarding the Ubuntu part of it. But in general, it's not something, and the popularity of one distro is not something that should cause flame wars every freaking week. I don't think the discussion is going anywhere (and yes, yes, it's Canonical that does not understand...).
design/theme variations Posted Aug 10, 2010 8:16 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
> No-one seems to be complaining about Moblin/MeeGo and their complete
> reimplementation of UI on top of GNOME, it's always Ubuntu/Canonical that > gets all the blame.
Red Hat was massively flamed for years because they dared release the Bluecurve theme. Quoting wikipedia
There has been controversy surrounding the theme, especially the alterations to KDE, which were sufficiently severe as to cause developer Bernhard Rosenkraenzer to quit Red Hat "mostly in mutual agreement I don't want to work on crippling KDE, and they don't want an employee who admits RHL 8.0's KDE is crippleware."
Ubuntu is going a lot further on the fork road than Red Hat ever did (even in Bluecurve days Red Hat was a major upstream contributor) so they should not be surprised at people's reaction.
If Ubuntu has a product to release at all nowadays that's because Red Hat learnt its lesson and does all its development upstream now (the real upstream, not a fork spoofing as upstream). What's good for the goose...
Quoting from the article:
No it is not changing and distros which have tried this in the past have rightfully been flamed till they changed their (real or perceived) ways. Canonical needs to learn they are *not* special and won't be given a free pass at behaviour which has not been tolerated from other distributions. They don't even have the excuse of being the first to try this path precedents are well known, they are aware of them, they are deliberately betting on being exempted from the obligations of their competitors.
Bluecurve history Posted Aug 11, 2010 0:10 UTC (Wed) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link]
When has Red Hat ever been a major contributor to upstream *KDE*? As I remember the story, they had that 1 guy, and when he left they had none. Is that still the case?
Red Hat didn't get flamed for forking KDE per se, but because they dumbed it down to match Gnome's feature set, which at that point was at a historical low. So calling the resulting thing "KDE" was almost insulting to KDE developers and users. Note the difference to the discussion about Canonical: Nobody is criticizing what they are doing to Gnome, just that they are doing it in the wrong place.
If Red Hat just wanted to experiment with something like move some buttons from one corner of a window to another... actually, KDE always allowed to do that with a simple setting :-)
Bluecurve history Posted Aug 11, 2010 5:50 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I noticed that "dumbing down" criticism actually never has any specifics. If you want the details, refer to
Bluecurve history Posted Aug 11, 2010 5:56 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
> When has Red Hat ever been a major contributor to upstream *KDE*?
KDE used and still uses lots of components Red Hat is a major contributor to. A lot more than the number of components GNOME uses as Canonical has a significan contribution to.
> Red Hat didn't get flamed for forking KDE per se, but because they dumbed
Red Hat :
Which is exactly the kind of user experience changes Ubuntu is trying GNOME side, except on a *far* more modest scale
Bluecurve history Posted Aug 11, 2010 6:15 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
> When has Red Hat ever been a major contributor to upstream *KDE*?
One of the explicit goals of bluecurve was to bring GNOME and KDE text management closer:
And not only Red Hat changes have long been merged KDE-side, but till very recently (he moved to Google this summer) KDE's next-gen text rendering lib, harfbuzz, was a cross desktop effort whose main contributor was paid by Red Hat to work on the project.
Having the ability to display clean text in KDE is a core KDE feature, right? (Google certainly considers it needs good text rendering in Chromium, even though Android uses its own proprietary text stack)
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 9, 2010 21:57 UTC (Mon) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link] Jono's definition of upstream is quite different from the common understanding, it seems."For the app indicators we also had a lot of community involvement, it was based on a Freedesktop.org spec, worked on with consultancy from KDE, [...]" It would be nice if he gave credit where credit is due, this spec has been developed by KDE to replace the aging system tray specification which uses xembed. The Notificatin Area protocol, a D-Bus-based protocol which gives control over apppearance and user interaction to the system tray to make it more suitable for different visualizations and form factors. It was first introduced in the Plasma Desktop before Canonical even started adopting it. "we invited GNOME developers to participate in the Freedesktop discussion and proposed them to the GNOME community for inclusion, but it's not up to us, if they take it or not. " My understanding of working upstream is not that you throw the code out there and let the (real) upstream project pick it up or not. Responsible companies *involve* the upstream community in the design process, and develop a solution based on that. Working on something in your own back-yard and then putting online something that's design-wise set in stone is not accepted in projects such as the Linux kernel, and many other projects -- and that's a good thing. It's a basic mechanism to prevent balcanization of Free Software projects, and as such takes care of keeping basic economics open source development models have which make them more efficient than proprietary models - sharing and collaboration. While Canonical does the first, they seem to fail at doing the latter. The title of the article is quite misleading as such, a more suitable quote from the interview to use for the title would maybe have been "Historically a lot of the work has been done in upstream GNOME but that's changing." This seems to be at least true for Canonical.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 9, 2010 22:21 UTC (Mon) by sahko (guest, #54088) [Link]
Canonical seems to have a brilliant business plan: "Lets take what Red Hat and Novell and all the others contribute to the actual upsteam projects, GNOME, Xorg, the Linux kernel & add our cherry on top of the cake. & yeah, lets call that Ubuntu". I suggest all other companies follow the same plan too. Innovate in-house & leave GNOME to rot.
By the way, i'm glad mr. Bacon mentioned the Ubuntu One Music Store this time.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 9, 2010 22:26 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
umm, I somehow missed the portion of this announement that said that they were going to make their 'fork' of gnome proprietary and not make the source available. please point it out to me.
Proprietary web services Posted Aug 9, 2010 22:32 UTC (Mon) by sladen (subscriber, #27402) [Link] Firefox is free software running on your desktop, that arrives configured to talk to a number of non-free web services (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, ...) that allow you to preview and potentially buy online content. Does integrating these so that they work out-of-the-box help to solve bug #1?
Proprietary web services Posted Aug 9, 2010 22:45 UTC (Mon) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
That's disingenuous - there's a difference between interoperating with proprietary systems that are already there and creating your own, and Ubuntu seems very keen on doing the latter.
Ubuntu != Canonical Posted Aug 9, 2010 23:29 UTC (Mon) by sladen (subscriber, #27402) [Link] Confusing Ubuntu (a distribution) with Canonical Ltd (a company) could be argued to be disingenuous...
Ubuntu != Canonical Posted Aug 10, 2010 10:44 UTC (Tue) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
I'm not confused. The proprietary services carry Ubuntu branding, not Canonical branding. They are Ubuntu services.
Ubuntu != Canonical Posted Aug 10, 2010 10:50 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Yes, it isn't like Canonical own the Ubuntu trademark or anything, or even have any special role in the Ubuntu project. And those proprietary applications with special relationships to proprietary services: are they purely optional, available only in a special Canonical edition of Ubuntu, or do the Ubuntu ISOs actually ship those applications?
And what does this have to do with GNOME? Well, if you start removing bits from GNOME and replacing them with components which may or may not be proprietary, you remove value from that project by diverting development away from it (people work on the replacement functionality and potential developers no longer see the need to improve the original components) and potentially damaging the project's reputation (by confusing people into thinking that the replacement functionality actually belongs to the project).
We've seen this kind of thing before with distributions like Corel Linux that swapped out upstream components (the file manager in that case) with proprietary replacements. The main difference here seems to be that some replacement functionality is at least openly developed and freely available, but the complaint is that such development seems to occur in "puppet states" that exist purely at the discretion of Canonical, making Jono Bacon's protests about "upstream" look a bit like some Soviet leader welcoming "support" from supposedly autonomous allies of the regime.
Ubuntu != Canonical Posted Aug 10, 2010 12:15 UTC (Tue) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link]
Give it a rest... Without Canonical who employs the vast majority of core Ubuntu developers and maintains control over launchpad, Ubuntu would die. Sure people would try to keep it alive, but it would fizzle and then pop.
The things like Ubuntu One and the Rhythmbox UbuntuOne music store are not on a "special iso". They are in the default Ubuntu install. In _fact_ they even took things such as the GNOME MagnaTune Rhythmbox plugin, which has a referrer id for GNOME and changed the referrer id to one of thier own. This means that the profits from music sales go to them and not to the GNOME Foundation.
Even if it is a pretty and easy to use distribution (I like notify-osd), Ubuntu does not play well with others. The kicking and screaming from Mark, Jono, and company just further solidifies that fact in my mind.
- ranted from my Ubuntu desktop
Ubuntu != Canonical Posted Aug 10, 2010 15:23 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Yes, I guess I probably should give sarcasm a rest in any first paragraph. The other paragraphs were worth reading, too, albeit not for any content with detectable levels of sarcasm.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 9, 2010 22:48 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
It's going to be interesting to see if Gnome Project can work directly with 7digital and provide a different application level store front interface that isn't tied to a 3rd party service like U1. It really comes down to 7digital's business model and whether they are willing to give API access to some of their advanced features to independent program developers like the upstream banshee or rhythmbox developers instead of to a business entity like Canonical.
You'll note that 7digital storefronts on other platforms like blackberry and android aren't tied to a 3rd party service... they allow direct purchasing and downloads from 7digtal onto the client device. Its clear that a buffer service like U1 isn't strictly needed and Canonical is trying to position U1 between 7digital and end-consumers as a value-add service.
If Gnome as at project level could enter into a business deal with 7digital, they could encourage 7digital to open the necessary APIs for Gnome application usage and receive the referral revenue similar to how Gnome is getting referral revenue now via the Amazon Music integration in banshee and Magnatune referral revenue in rhythmbox without U1 acting as an interfacing service. Clearly if Gnome is okay working with Amazon for referral revenue for music, Gnome should be okay working with 7digital in a similar manner. 7digital just needs to open up their APIs enough to make it possible for independent developers to build the application storefront.
It should be noted that Canonical has worked a separate deal with Magnatune such that referral income that would have originally gone to the Gnome Project when Ubuntu users use the Magnatune rhythmbox plugin is set aside for distribution to Canonical instead of Gnome. Reference:
-jef
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 11:03 UTC (Wed) by filip7d (guest, #69503) [Link]
jef,
i hope you'll be happy to hear that opening our 7digital API to independent developers is something we're actively working on.
And we're especially keen on getting the open source community involved. Although most of the 7dgital API is already open to everyone there are still some advanced features that are not available out of the box as unfortunately each use of these requires us getting approval from the music labels. But if anyone is interested in integrating these just get in touch with us and let us know what you'd like to build and we always try to help.
More info on the API can be found at http://developer.7digital.net
Filip
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 17:47 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I'd be happier if you provided vorbis and/or flac files so no vender would have to continue to work around the problems associated with mp3 patents and all vendors can provide out-of-the-box support for your music catalogue and would put your service into a position of being held high as a vendor who supports open standards, open protocols, and open data exchange formats.
But in the meantime, having an open API that upstream banshee, amarok and rhythmbox developers can rely on to write plugins to provide a means for users (across the myriad linux distributions available) to interact with your storefront would be a serviceable addition. Its clear that at least the banshee developers are interested in working directly with music stores as evidenced by the newly integrated Amazon music store support. Both Amarok and rhythmbox have shown upstream support for magnatunes so there's probably the potential there for discussing support for a mainstream music vendor if you can provide a published and reliable API.
-jef
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 8:37 UTC (Tue) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"I suggest all other companies follow the same plan too. Innovate in-house & leave GNOME to rot."
Um, isn't GNOME perfectly free to take the code Canonical developed, and use it in GNOME? Do you think that if GNOME rejects that code (for whatever reason), the Canonical is not allowed to use it either?
The code is free software. It's there for the taking if anyone wants it. How exactly is that "innovating in-house and leaving GNOME to rot"?
"Does becoming Microsoft in Microsoft's place count? How will the "majority of the PCs for sale should include only free software like Ubuntu" when Canonical itself is producing and including in Ubuntu proprietary software?"
Is Ubuntu One proprietary software?
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 9:05 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"Um, isn't GNOME perfectly free to take the code Canonical developed, and use it in GNOME?"
GNOME doesn't just take random modules developed elsewhere and integrate it with GNOME. Just like in the Linux kernel, the maintainers involve have to bring it forward and propose it to GNOME formally
http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/ModuleProposing
There is a feedback cycle after that. Often modules take multiple releases to get accepted. If they are rejected, the reasons for that rejection is provided and the maintainers of the module can take that feedback into consideration, revise and propose again. This is a long established way of doing things. Canonical did propose one of the module (IMO, they should have done it much earlier) and it got rejected by the GNOME release engineering team for that particular release and they stated the reasons why. This is no big deal. Canonical would just have to revise and propose again till it gets upstream like everyone else. They seem to have given up on it already however.
"Is Ubuntu One proprietary software?"
Ubuntu One has a server side and a client side. The client is free and open source. The server side which is the bulk of the software is proprietary.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 14:43 UTC (Tue) by ean5533 (subscriber, #69480) [Link]
"This is no big deal. Canonical would just have to revise and propose again till it gets upstream like everyone else."
And what if it gets rejected again? Are they then allowed to say "well, we tried" and give up? Exactly how many iterations are they required to go through before they're allowed to just move on to other work without being hounded?
I think there's a fundamental miscommunication between the two sides of this debate. I don't think people who are on "Ubuntu's side" are arguing that Canonical is giving back just as much as, say, RedHat is giving back; rather, I think everyone (including myself) is just tired of hearing Canonical being trashed by those who aren't happy with the amount of upstream patches being accepted. For the last two weeks everyone has been jumping on the "we hate Canonical" bandwagon and it's honestly gotten very old, very quickly.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 15:20 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
There is no bright line divide. If they want to give up on first try and move on, that is certainly their choice but if you wanted to make a feature a part of a larger project, it usually requires more persistence than that. If you can live with that divergence, more power to you. It has been my experience that downstreams sooner or latter realize that it is too much of a burden even if it does buy you some uniqueness in the shorter run.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 17:23 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
> For the last two weeks everyone has been jumping on the "we hate
> Canonical" bandwagon and it's honestly gotten very old, very quickly.
If you can't stand two weeks of bad press, how to you think people feel about five years of Canonical marketing push to create the image they are a major Linux contributor (if not *the* major Linux contributor), while actually contributing very little (as every study that actually tried to count contributions shows)?
Part of the press has even started using "Ubuntu" as "Linux logo", that's how hard Canonical has pushed to claim the work of others (and people get mad at RMS just for pre-pending GNU to Linux, when the FSF has actually produced boatloads of code everyone uses).
Life is unfair but there is nothing unfair about the blame Canonical is getting today.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 22:51 UTC (Tue) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
> If you can't stand two weeks of bad press, how to you think people feel about five years of Canonical marketing push to create the image they are a major Linux contributor (if not *the* major Linux contributor)
I'm sorry, what? No such 'marketing push' ever existed AFAIK.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 11:58 UTC (Wed) by ean5533 (subscriber, #69480) [Link]
"If you can't stand two weeks of bad press, how to you think people feel about five years of Canonical marketing push to create the image they are a major Linux contributor (if not *the* major Linux contributor)"
If you could dredge up ANY kind of proof that a marketing campaign like this existed, I'd be surprised. But by all means, please try. Until then, please don't spread B.S. rumors like this.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 13:27 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10092376-16.html
> Ubuntu and Canonical are making a very big difference in free
[...]
> Canonical has been hiring usability and design experts to feed
Can "upstream" here mean anything but GNOME?
> It is hard to overstate
Two years later someone actually measures the improvements Canonical fed "upstream" and finds precious little.
(just an example found after 10s of Googling, I don't think I had even read this particular article before).
I don't think Canonical would have hired Matt Asay later if there was any disagreement on how it reported Canonical views.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 17:04 UTC (Wed) by ean5533 (subscriber, #69480) [Link]
That? That's your proof that Canonical had "five years of Canonical marketing push to create the image they are a major Linux contributor (if not *the* major Linux contributor)"? There's a huge difference between "we're hiring experts" and "we're *the* major Linux contributor".
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 19:24 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
You didn't ask for a good proof, you asked for "ANY proof". And I don't have the time to do a complete web survey for you (I do note that there is only one side of the debate providing actual facts backed by external links here, and it's not yours).
I do suspect that a literature major would have a field day collating all the public Shuttleworth interviews, blogs and articles, and counting all the occurrences of:
Taken alone each of those is pretty innocent, repeated again and again they create a perception in the press which has little to do with reality. This is what I call a deliberate marketing push.
But feel free to point out examples where Canonical has actually given the press an accurate assessment of its capabilities.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 19:25 UTC (Tue) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
You didn't answer my question: if GNOME refuses to use the Ubuntu-developed code, does that mean that Ubuntu can't use it either? And is Ubuntu required to offer it proactively to GNOME (have they done that btw?)? The code is still free software, free for anyone to take and use.
So why isn't Ubuntu allowed to use that code in their distribution? Because GNOME does not use it? Um, excuse me, but when did GNOME get the authority to decide what code Ubuntu can and can't use?
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 20:04 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
> If GNOME refuses to use the Ubuntu-developed code, does that mean that Ubuntu can't use it either?
Perhaps. Ubuntu would have to continually forward-port their patches to each new Gnome release. That's a difficult job because, as shown earlier in this thread, Ubuntu is making fairly fundamental and incompatible design changes as well as code changes.
Just because Ubuntu is (obviously) allowed to use their code doesn't mean that it is actually possible or realistic.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 8:59 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"Perhaps."
Perhaps? So you are saying that Ubuntu MIGHT be allowed to use their own free code in their own distribution? Whatever happened to that much ballyhooed "freedom"? Or does that "freedom" mean that people/organizations (Ubuntu included) are free to do whatever they want with their own code only as long as certain powers-at-be (like GNOME) let them? In this case Ubuntu has some free code that changes some aspects of GNOME, and here we are being told that Ubuntu is "perhaps" allowed to use that code in their distribution. Why shouldn't they be allowed? Seriously?
"Ubuntu would have to continually forward-port their patches to each new Gnome release. "
So? That's Ubuntu's problem, and if they are willing to do that, I fail to see what grounds others have to whine about it.
"That's a difficult job because, as shown earlier in this thread, Ubuntu is making fairly fundamental and incompatible design changes as well as code changes."
Again: that's Ubuntu's problem, and it should not concern anyone else.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 9:20 UTC (Wed) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] If Ubuntu were going off and doing their own thing, without reference to other players in the Free Software ecosystem, we'd be OK (albeit unhappy) about the "it's Ubuntu's problem" answer. As it is, when Mark Shuttleworth is asking both other distributions and Ubuntu's upstreams to align their release cycles with his company's distribution's cycle, thus reducing the chance that upstream will be in a state of flux when Ubuntu wants to stabilise (as upstream developers tend to not break things massively just as they get busy stabilising their employers' distributions, and when they do, they know which release they can take and be happy with, thanks to understanding the codebase), Ubuntu people can't be surprised that upstream is annoyed when Canonical is punching below its weight, and justifying this with "but we do our stuff in our own sandbox!"
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 9:58 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"As it is, when Mark Shuttleworth is asking both other distributions and Ubuntu's upstreams to align their release cycles with his company's distribution's cycle"
Um, isn't Ubuntu (and Fedora) pretty much tied to GNOME's release-cycle? I think Shuttleworth has talked about synchronized releases, but it seems to me that it's already happening, when two of the major distros have tied their releases to GNOME's release-cycle. And no-one was forced to do that. And it was not Ubuntu that forced others to tie themselves to their releases, they were the ones who decided to tie their releases to GNOME.
"Ubuntu people can't be surprised that upstream is annoyed when Canonical is punching below its weight, and justifying this with "but we do our stuff in our own sandbox!"
So what is this "annoyance" about? That Ubuntu dares to ship Ubuntu-developed free software in Ubuntu, even though GNOME has decided to not use that code? Again: whatever happened to freedom?
Like I said: what is the problem here? If Ubuntu decides to shoot themselves in the foot by using code that is tied to GNOME yet not part of GNOME, Ubuntu's problem? shouldn't all those Ubuntu-haters be rejoicing since Ubuntu is wasting their resources on something like that? But no, they are bitching and moaning instead. Why?
This is yet another example of the constant bickering and whining that plaques Linux and free software. So much time and energy is being wasted arguing with each other.
At this point you might say "well, what about Ubuntu, and their divisive act of using that software?". Well, what about it? It's their software, and they are perfectly in their rights to use it.
If that software really improves things and users like it, then aren't we better off as a result? Linux-desktop will be improved as a result. Why not let users decide if this effort is worthwhile or not? If the software is not success, then people will choose some other distro instead and/or Ubuntu will drop that software. In any case, the userbase will adapt and evolve.
So what exactly is the problem here?
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 10:18 UTC (Wed) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] As it happens, distros are choosing to align with GNOME anyway. But when Canonical's CEO makes a fuss about how distros should align, yet his company isn't doing upstream work, it looks a lot like a power grab by Canonical. Put this way. When I see the statistics, look at Canonical's decision to ban me from working on Bazaar, Launchpad, Upstart and other Canonical projects (copyright assignment that's incompatible with my contract of employment - not needed when I work on X11, for example), then read Mark's blog, and Jono's apologia, I hear, "Guys, you're doing great work for us. But you should do it on our timetable. Oh, and we're not going to help you much, because it's easier for us that way. But you should definitely help us, because we're Free Software people, even if we won't ever help you, because you're not prepared to hand over ownership of everything to us."
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 11:24 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"But when Canonical's CEO makes a fuss about how distros should align, yet his company isn't doing upstream work, it looks a lot like a power grab by Canonical. "
Um, no, it doesn't. So Shuttleworth has his ideas and opinions on how to do releases. And guess what? We all have our own ideas and opinions. If I decide to voice my opinion about something, is that a "power grab" by me? No, it's not.
You might have a valid argument if Shuttleworth was somehow forcing everyone to adhere to his ideas and opinions. But he's not. He's voicing his opinion, and he has every right to do that.
""Guys, you're doing great work for us. But you should do it on our timetable."
Well, "their timetable" is in this case "GNOME's timetable".... And still: who cares? Shuttleworth has his opinions, and he has every right to voice them. When he does that, he's not bullying anyone, nor is he "power grabbing". Is Fedora "power grabbing" when they decided to tie their releases to GNOME's release-schedule? Or is this "power grabbing" by GNOME? Why aren't you complaining about that? Because no-one from GNOME or Fedora said "I think everyone should do like this"? Why is it so terrible to say that aloud? Because it's "power grabbing"? Puh-leeze!
So let's recap: Ubuntu has not forced anyone to adhere to their timetable. What Ubuntu has done is to tie THEIR timetable to someone elses (GNOME) timetable. And supposedly that is a bad thing? But when Fedora does the exact same thing, it's suddenly not terrible at all?
It's amazing how a community that is supposedly so gung-ho about freedom, get so upset when someone uses his right to free speech and opinion... So Shuttleworth thinks that projects should align their releases. Burn him on the stake, the heretic!
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 12:31 UTC (Wed) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] Yes, the difference between distros naturally choosing to align around upstreams they consider important, and distros telling each other how they should behave is important. If Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, SLES, Mandriva, Gentoo, Arch and others all end up aligned naturally around GNOME's release schedule, that's great. If Canonical's CEO, a man of some power thanks to his money and control of a distro, tries to tell other distros and non-GNOME upstreams (such as KDE) that they should all align together, he'd better be putting his not inconsiderable money where his mouth is, and working upstream to ensure that aligning to a schedule that suits Canonical is in upstream's interests, not just Canonical's. His failure to do so is hypocritical, and he's being called on that. You will notice, for example, that no-one's calling Mandriva on their failure to show up strongly in the statistics - this is in large part because Mandriva aren't making the same degree of noise as Canonical. I'm explaining why I personally find Mark's statements distateful given the statistics (and as CEO of Canonical, when he's talking about Linux stuff, he can't expect it not to rub off on his company, just as Steve Ballmer's words on the future of computing rub off on Microsoft, or Mr Jobs talking about the future of mobile rubs off on Apple). I'm trying to do so in a constructive manner, so that you can understand why Mark's statements combined with his company's behaviour is causing this reaction, and I get shouted down and accused of trying to silence Mark Shuttleworth, a man who's sufficiently rich that I could spend every penny I have on trying to shut him up, and still not succeed! What's more, he could spend a relatively small fraction of his fortune on upstream development, and have Canonical punching above their weight in upstream (they're about a tenth the size of Red Hat in terms of engineer count, I believe, so supplying 1/10th the upstream commits would remove the distaste). And, on top of that, when this was brought up 2 years ago as Canonical not contributing to the kernel, the defence brought up (and accepted for lack of statistics) was that Canonical mostly did work in GNOME and other higher levels of the stack, so of course they don't show at kernel level, but Mark's statements aren't hypocritical because they'd show up at GNOME level. Now, they're being shown to not pull their weight at that level, making the statements clearly hypocritical, and reopening the old discussion that got closed off by the lack of statistics before. This obnoxious behaviour on the part of the Ubuntu community is why I don't normally speak up about things that I perceive as going wrong with it. All I'm trying to do is explain why the mix of Shuttleworth's public statements, Canonical's active behaviour to discourage community around their projects, and Ubuntu's lack of upstream contribution gives me a bad feeling. It's times like this that I wish that Ubuntu took its Code of Conduct seriously. I'm trying to explain why I find the mixture of Canonical's behaviour with the statements made about co-operation by Canonical's CEO problematic; if Ubuntu took its Code of Conduct seriously, Ubuntu's community would react the same way Mandriva's community does (by understanding why I'm saying what I'm saying, and explaining how Mandriva is going to do things differently - even if that's just by not making provocative public statements). Instead, I'm seeing my words twisted and I'm being personally attacked for not agreeing with Ubuntu's behaviour, despite trying to explain what it is that I dislike. That is why this is so important; it very much feels like if I don't agree with everything Canonical does, they'll sic their attack dogs on me, and aim to attack me until I go away and stop disrupting their nice little world.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 13:15 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"If Canonical's CEO, a man of some power thanks to his money and control of a distro, tries to tell other distros and non-GNOME upstreams (such as KDE) that they should all align together, he'd better be putting his not inconsiderable money where his mouth is"
Why? Because he's rich? I'm sorry, but your logic does not follow. He can have opinions about various things, and he can voice them freely without actually having to invest resources towards that goal. Wishing for something, but not proactively investing in it does not make the man "hypocrite". I wish for world peace, but I do not participate in peace-marches.
"His failure to do so is hypocritical, and he's being called on that."
Huh? So because he has an opinion, but he does not invest money towards realizing his opinion, he's a "hypocrite", and he's being called out on it? That makes absolutely no sense at all.
And I bet that if he DID invest towards that goal, you would be whining here how "Shuttleworth tries to force everyone do as he pleases!".
"this is in large part because Mandriva aren't making the same degree of noise as Canonical. "
So, if Mandriva had a famous CEO and an active blog, then they would be target if whining?
"I'm trying to do so in a constructive manner, so that you can understand why Mark's statements combined with his company's behaviour is causing this reaction"
No, you are not being constructive. You are whining because Shuttleworth said that distros/projects should align their release-schedules. Excuse me, but there's nothing in that comment to cause anyone to get annoyed. If someone becomes annoyed by that comment, it's quite obvious that that person has an axe to grind with Ubuntu.
"and I get shouted down and accused of trying to silence Mark Shuttleworth, a man who's sufficiently rich that I could spend every penny I have on trying to shut him up, and still not succeed!"
So, basically you are annoyed because Shuttleworth happens to be rich? I mean, you have made repeated comments about Shuttleworths wealth, so it's becoming apparent that you are annoyed/bitter because Shuttleworth happens to be rich.
"so of course they don't show at kernel level, but Mark's statements aren't hypocritical because they'd show up at GNOME level. Now, they're being shown to not pull their weight at that level, making the statements clearly hypocritical, and reopening the old discussion that got closed off by the lack of statistics before. "
They are putting their weight in to that level, it just happens that GNOME does not want the code they wrote. Or do you think that since GNOME refused their code, Ubuntu should just stop developing it entirely? That if they want to write code, they MUST do it inside GNOME? Why can't they simply ship it as part of their distro?
Fact is that the code they write for GNOME will end up benefitting users (Ubuntu-users at least), even if that code is not actually part of official GNOME. And if they fail... well, then they fail, and no-one but Ubuntu is harmed by it.
If Ubuntu's work proves to be wildly succesfull, then others can use it as well, and everyone benefits. If they fail, then Ubuntu will take the hit for that. Why should there be only one way of doing things, and (in this case) it's the official GNOME-way, and no-one is allowed to deviate from that? Why not try something different and new, and see if it works? What if the approach GNOME is taking ends up being a mistake, and we would be stuck with it because there were no alternatives developed?
"This obnoxious behaviour on the part of the Ubuntu community is why I don't normally speak up about things that I perceive as going wrong with it. All I'm trying to do is explain why the mix of Shuttleworth's public statements, Canonical's active behaviour to discourage community around their projects, and Ubuntu's lack of upstream contribution gives me a bad feeling."
Why do you care? You can use some other distro, so what Ubuntu does (or does not do) has no bearing on you at all. Why do people insist on whining about things that do not touch their lives at all?
And, FWIW, I would say that we are better off with Ubuntu, than we would be without it. They are about free software, they write free software, they try to make Linux mainstream... How are those a bad thing? Because it threatens the "purity of the faith" or something?
"Instead, I'm seeing my words twisted and I'm being personally attacked for not agreeing with Ubuntu's behaviour"
OK, few points:
a) How exactly have I been "twisting your words"?
b) How exactly have I been "personally attacking" you?
Do you know what "personal attacks" are? If I commented on your looks or something (in other words, attacked your person) then you might have a point. But I haven't done that. I have disagreed with you, called you out on your illogical statements etc.,, but I have NOT resorted to personal attacks!
"despite trying to explain what it is that I dislike."
And what exactly is that? The fact that Canonicals rich rockstar-CEO dared to say that "distros and projects should align their release-schedules"? I'm still at a loss in figuring out what exactly is it that Shuttleworth did wrong there. Is it the fact that he had an opinion, but he did not throw millions towards making his opinion a reality? Besides, he HAS done something: he synced Ubuntu's release-schedule to GNOME's release-schedule.
"it very much feels like if I don't agree with everything Canonical does, they'll sic their attack dogs on me, and aim to attack me until I go away and stop disrupting their nice little world."
Oh please, don't play a martyr. First of all, I'm in no shape or form associated with Ubuntu and/or Canonical, I don't even run their distro! The reason I'm having this particular discussion is because I saw comments and claims being made that frankly made no sense at all. At their core the argument seems to be "I just find Ubuntu and Shuttleworth so damn annoying!" without really giving any tangible reasons why that is. Maybe because some people are still stuck in the idea that only way we can improve Linux is by hiring a legion of hackers and writing code. Or maybe it's because whenever something becomes popular, others get this weird need to tear it down.
With that kind of thinking, no wonder Linux is stuck at 1% on the desktop...
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 13:36 UTC (Wed) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] He has a strong opinion on what the rest of us should do. He's not guiding his company in a direction that's compatible with his company doing what he says the rest of us should do. That's what I object to. Then, add in the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, which says that people should be respectful and considerate; when I try to explain as best I can just what I'm finding problematic about Canonical, it goes by the wayside; more hypocrisy from Ubuntu's community. If Mandriva's CEO was telling the rest of us what we should do, but not then making Mandriva go down that route, then damn right I'd criticise Mandriva. While I disagree in many respects with the FSF, I don't criticise them, because they're at least living up to what they ask me to. I'm not, despite your claims to the contrary, asking Shuttleworth to shut up. I'm not asking him to do anything other than accept that if what he says and what his company does diverge, people will criticise, and that's a fact of life. You accused me of being an Ubuntu hater. You accused me of saying that Shuttleworth should shut up. All I am doing is saying that what Shuttleworth says I should do, and what he is doing with his company don't match up. Why is this deserving of such a huge attack?
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 13:52 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"He has a strong opinion on what the rest of us should do. "
And you have a strong opinions on what he and his company should do, so what's your point? And we all have opinions regarding what others should do. When it comes to how they should vote, how they should behave in public... Yes, you and me included.
"He's not guiding his company in a direction that's compatible with his company doing what he says the rest of us should do. That's what I object to. "
Huh? He said that distros/projects should align their release-schedules. And he aligned his distros release-schedule to GNOME's schedule. So, isn't he doing what he suggested others should be doing as well?
Of course he can't align his schedule to everything, since different projects have different schedules. And he can't force KDE (for example) to align it's release-schedule to that of GNOME's. So he did what he could, which is to align his distros release-schedule to that of a major upstream-project (GNOME). What else should he do?
"Then, add in the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, which says that people should be respectful and considerate; when I try to explain as best I can just what I'm finding problematic about Canonical, it goes by the wayside; more hypocrisy from Ubuntu's community. "
How exactly does Ubuntu Code of Conduct have any bearing on discussion that takes place in LWN.net? I'm not part of Ubuntu-community in any shape or form. And what "hypocricy" are you talking about? That when I disagree with you, I'm "violating the Ubuntu Code of Conduct"? That the CoC requires that I agree with you? That if I disagree with you, I'm "violating the Ubuntu CoC"? I'm not representing Ubuntu, I'm not part of Ubuntu-community and this discussion is not taking place in Ubuntu-relates website, so what Ubuntu CoC says is irrelevant.
"If Mandriva's CEO was telling the rest of us what we should do, but not then making Mandriva go down that route, then damn right I'd criticise Mandriva. "
Again: Shuttleworth said that distros/projects should align their release-schedules, and he aligned Ubuntu's schedule to that of GNOME's. Isn't that EXACTLY doing what he suggests others should do as well?
"I'm not, despite your claims to the contrary, asking Shuttleworth to shut up. I'm not asking him to do anything other than accept that if what he says and what his company does diverge, people will criticise, and that's a fact of life."
What "divergence" are you talking about? Fact is that Ubuntu's schedule is aligned with GNOME's schedule, and that is an example of the thing he suggested others to do as well. So what exactly is the problem here???? Seriously, your argument is lacking in logic.
"All I am doing is saying that what Shuttleworth says I should do, and what he is doing with his company don't match up."
Uh, hello?!?! Yes they do! Ubuntu's release-schedule is synced to GNOME's release-schedule, and that's EXACTLY what Shuttleworth was talking about!
"Why is this deserving of such a huge attack? "
Huge attack? Should I just say "well, I disgree with you", and leave it at that, otherwise your feelings would be hurt?
Well, maybe your argument "deserves a huge attack" because it's is illogical and rotten to the core? Shuttleworth talked about syncing release-schedules, just like Ubuntu has synced it's release-schedule to that of GNOME's. And yet, here we have people saying that "Ubuntu does not follow the advice they are giving to others!". Huh?????
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 19:53 UTC (Wed) by dhaval.giani (subscriber, #45724) [Link]
Let me try to rephrase the objection.
Janne, why don't you write all the code. I will sell it as my innovation, and oh yeah, I want you to write the code and release it as per my schedule. BTW, I am not paying you anything for it but I will whine if you don't do what I want you to.
That is the issue.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 11, 2010 22:07 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
except for the fact that by choosing the license you are explicitly saying that you are ok with other people taking your work and trying to sell it.
Ubuntu isn't ever claiming that they wrote everything, they aren't removing copyright notices, they just aren't making a big deal of the fact that (like every linux distro) they are including things from many/many different projects.
I see very little whineing from ubuntu folks, I see a lot of it directed _at_ ubuntu.
Yes they are suggesting syncing releases, they aren't the only ones to make the suggestion (just Mark S is high profile so people notice and remember his statement)
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 12, 2010 8:03 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"Let me try to rephrase the objection.
Janne, why don't you write all the code. I will sell it as my innovation, and oh yeah, I want you to write the code and release it as per my schedule. BTW, I am not paying you anything for it but I will whine if you don't do what I want you to.
That is the issue."
So, "the issue" is that Canonical uses bunch of free software to create a distro? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that free re-use and free distribution the exact point of GPL? Maybe those others should be writing proprietary software if they are so annoyed when Ubuntu uses their software in their distribution?
And like I already said, Ubuntu hasn't been forcing anyone to adhere to their schedule. Quite the opposite in fact! They tied their schedule to GNOME's schedule! They tied their schedule to someone else's schedule! Yet people are complaining that Ubuntu tries to force other to adhere to their schedule, when Ubuntu has been doing the exact opposite! Basically, Ubuntu has allowed a third-party to determine their release-schedule.
And about Shuttleworths comment... When he said that projects and distros should align their schedules, it does not necessarily mean that they should be align with Ubuntu's schedule. The schedule could be different from the one we have now.
And what "whning"? Shuttleworth argued that it would make sense for distros and projects to align their resources. I'm not going to argue whether that's a good or bad idea, but I don't think that's "whining". It's an opinion, a suggestion, a point of discussion. But whining? I don't think so. Or do you think that every point of discussion or opening of discussion is "whining"?
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 12, 2010 4:04 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Janne, your impassioned first paragraph makes it clear that you did not read my last paragraph. I wish you would slow down and engage in a two-way discussion. Both sides of this argument have good points but there's no way they can be heard above all the shouting.
Take er easy, ok?
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 9, 2010 22:44 UTC (Mon) by DYN_DaTa (guest, #34072) [Link]
The more news / blog posts / interviews I read, lately, about Canonical and Ubuntu the more I feel that there's something wrong with their philosophies, especially with core concepts related to upstream, collaboration, attributions and open source in general.
But my biggest fear is based on the perception of a growing inability, by their side, to adopt work schedules, know how to work with projects other than Ubuntu and an almost total lack of technical merit (code) outside their own particular universe.
We all know that Ubuntu success was mainly a matter of marketing: packaging and selling a product, a product based on previous work of others. But time has passed and although some voices of their community believe that the code is not everything I, personally, still think is most important.
Ubuntu, as a leading desktop distribution, should have the responsibility to lead by example, significantly increasing their contributions of code and putting aside the excuses.
I want Ubuntu to be a great example of a nice and useful Linux distribution, but not at the expense of others.
"Ubuntu Linux" Posted Aug 10, 2010 14:52 UTC (Tue) by dbruce (subscriber, #57948) [Link]
Is it just me, or does Ubuntu go to great lengths to minimize any mention of Linux? This isn't just the old "Linux" vs. "GNU/Linux" issue. Try going to Ubuntu's site as a newbie with no previous FOSS knowledge, and see if the word "Linux" ever comes up. Even the technical specs for the latest server edition avoid any mention of Linux - see this page:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Server/TechSpecs/1004LTS
The kernel is simply described as:
Default 2.6.32-server Tickless, No Preemption, Deadline I/O, PAE, 100Hz
Elsewhere, the server edition is described as "seamlessly supporting Windows, OSX, and Ubuntu clients".
I'm not sure what to make of all this. Are they afraid that people have heard that "Linux is difficult", therefore they intentionally distance Ubuntu from "Linux" to keep from scaring folks away?
DSB
(needless to say, the GNU project isn't mentioned either. But they aren't subtle about repeatedly emphasizing that they feature Firefox, and to a much lesser extent, OpenOffice.org)
"Ubuntu Linux" Posted Aug 10, 2010 15:27 UTC (Tue) by DYN_DaTa (guest, #34072) [Link]
Hum ...
I just made a little experiment related with your post. I have visited the home pages of the following Linux distributions:
Debian
Can you guess which of them do not have a single mention of the word "Linux"?
Hint: it is the same that has a single mention of "Debian" through a tiny link at the bottom of the page.
"Ubuntu Linux" Posted Aug 10, 2010 17:02 UTC (Tue) by dtor (subscriber, #39360) [Link]
I just glanced over RedHat and Fedora pages and what do I see? "Red Hat Enterprise Linux", "Fedora is a Linux-based operating system..." - can you spot it yet? You need to read more carefully.
"Ubuntu Linux" Posted Aug 10, 2010 17:15 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Of course they do. He's talking about Ubuntu.
"Ubuntu Linux" Posted Aug 10, 2010 17:16 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
How many mention GNU?
"Ubuntu Linux" Posted Aug 10, 2010 17:32 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Does Android announce itself as linux?
Does WebOS announce itself as linux?
Does Litl's OS announce itself as linux?
I really don't think you can knock Canonical for attempting to position Ubuntu as a strong stand alone brand in the consumer oriented device space. Linux is a weak brand. Linux is a confusing brand when put in front of consumers. I don't think Canonical is doing anything particularly wrong by building a strong brand in Ubuntu separate from _linux_. If anything its a necessary strategic move to differentiate products in the consumer device space.
-jef
"Ubuntu Linux" Posted Aug 10, 2010 18:17 UTC (Tue) by dbruce (subscriber, #57948) [Link]
"I don't think Canonical is doing anything particularly wrong by building a strong brand in Ubuntu separate from _linux_."
Just to be clear, I didn't mean to imply that Ubuntu should be called "Ubuntu (GNU/)Linux". The name is fine. Still, I find it really strange that they should avoid any mention of the name of the most critical component of their product. Sure, Android is not "announced as linux", but at Google's Android site, the fact that it is based on the Linux kernel is very easy to find. With Ubuntu, they list the kernel's version number and main config items without even saying that it is Linux. Doesn't that strike anyone else as being weird?
Furthermore, if a potential desktop user has heard of "linux", they very likely are not thinking of the kernel, but of a complete distribution.
"Ubuntu Linux" Posted Aug 10, 2010 19:19 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
"Sure, Android is not "announced as linux", but at Google's Android site, the fact that it is based on the Linux kernel is very easy to find."
Come on, it's quite easy to find that Ubuntu is Linux-based.
BTW, people forget that "Linux" is actually "Linux" (r)(tm) and use of this trademark is actually NOT free for commercial use.
Even this site has: "Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds" note.
"Ubuntu Linux" Posted Aug 20, 2010 23:45 UTC (Fri) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]
Ubuntu.com -> "What is Ubuntu?" -> Ubuntu on the desktop yadda yadda, no mention of Linux
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop
Android.com -> What is Android -> Architecture diagram featuring the Linux kernel
"Ubuntu Linux" Posted Aug 11, 2010 4:15 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
You have pretty much described why "linux" a weak brand and exactly why every single consumer oriented product is going to avoid using the word in its mainstream marketing materials. The dilution of its colloquial meaning to be equally and confusing applicable to the 1 billion+ different distributions on distrowatch means that from a product marketing perspective the meaning of "linux" is so that using it when describing your product to the target consumers is going to cause confusion. This is why consumer grade electronic appliances like network gear(NAS,print server, and routers) which use a linux based OS don't really mention it either.
Those of us who care about what products are shipping a linux derived OS ..those of us in the 0.01% tail of the technology consumer market...know how to find that information when we are looking to buy a NAS or router or phone or desktop or whatever (usually because we plan to hack it and extend its functionality) But, noone is going to build a viable consumer brand identity relying on the word "linux" as part of its core branding strategy, no one. There is nothing to gain in mainstream consumer purchasing culture by making it obvious that a particular product has a linux kernel in it. 99% of consumers frankly don't care.
-jef
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 16, 2010 9:53 UTC (Mon) by hein.zelle (guest, #33324) [Link]
> We all know that Ubuntu success was mainly a matter of marketing:
> packaging and selling a product, a product based on previous work of > others. But time has passed and although some voices of their community > believe that the code is not everything I, personally, still think is most > important.
Then explain why Ubuntu has become so popular. I think it's exactly because they spend time thinking and working on packaging. That ranges from a recognizable brand to an easy installer to a nicely-configured desktop to a good set of default-software to "everything just works". For the average GNU/linux user, that work has been very important in getting GNU/linux accepted, understandable and usable. And it's a huge job done well, too. That value seems to be largely ignored in this discussion, which is a pity I think, as it's the one area where other linux projects/distributions DO get return value from Ubuntu. (or at least, they could, if they're open to it).
There seems to be a general opinion that ubuntu should be responsible, which in this case translates to asking gnome for permission before changing parts of gnome. Although that would be the nicest, I can certainly understand that from a company point of view that's a fairly hard policy to work with, especially if things get turned down after first submission. Granted, that shouldn't be a reason to give up, but you can also turn the argument around: shouldn't Gnome be a bit more forthcoming and ask Ubuntu what they could do to accommodate development, changes and customization? I think GNOME as well as other distributions should see if they can't gain/take/learn more from Ubuntu. GNOME certainly wasn't harmed by being the default desktop choice for such a popular distribution.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect from Canonical to stick purely with mainline GNOME (most people probably agree) - customizations are one of the very few ways to get their brand to stand out from the crowd, and they've done a good job at that so far. If Canonical is to have a real chance at becoming more or less sustainable with their Ubuntu related work, I don't think they should be denied options to add custom developments at their own time schedule. If they decide to keep it that way long-term, that may indeed be a problem, but it's _their_ problem. A somewhat more forthcoming stance from Gnome might help matters, and if it doesn't - just don't support Ubuntu. They'll feel the pain if they deviate from GNOME too far and need to maintain a split code base.
I think Ubuntu deserves more credit than they're getting here - the fact that they've grown so much and created such a popular distribution, so nice and easy to use, is proof that the work they do is worthwhile. I absolutely hope that the relation between Canonical/Ubuntu and gnome stays good, open and bi-directional, but I think the solution is in approaching them, not bashing them.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 9, 2010 23:28 UTC (Mon) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] So they claim it is not a fork and instead it is just Spork. They can call it what they want but to me it is still a fork.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 5:29 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
" Jono Bacon: Actually that's all upstream work, it's just that Ayatana is the upstream"
Ayatana is a Canonical downstream project. Not a upstream community by any regular definition of "upstream". Aaron Seigo already pointed this out in a response to Jono Bacon in his earlier blog post and Jono seems to agree
http://identi.ca/conversation/44101681#notice-44414137
I think, the fact that this question even came up in the interview is a warning sign.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 6:07 UTC (Tue) by gmaxwell (subscriber, #30048) [Link] <troll>
We've always been upstream with Ayatana
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 10:31 UTC (Tue) by evad (subscriber, #60553) [Link]
As just an observer, and just another system admin for a big organisation, I can't agree or disagree with the criticism, or the defence, of Ubuntu. It may be the case that everybody is right about Canonical/Ubuntu, that they're ignoring "upstream", they're making incompatible changes, etc. Ignoring the technical stuff, which most of your users and sys admins will do, I notice a few things:
1) Most of the comments to this entry, whilst maybe correct, still look like an attack on Ubuntu. Ubuntu has been successful in capturing "hearts and minds" a lot faster than Red Hat or any other distribution did. So, you all might be right (you probably are!), but I also know that a lot of you are Fedora/Red Hat people, so it still looks like an attack on Canonical (for perhaps reasons of success rather than technical merit), and so if you're going to win this argument you're going to have to be careful and try not to make this an anti-Ubuntu thing at all - you won't win any favours in the community.
This might not be the case, but its what it looks like!
2) There is this general prevailing idea that somehow Canonical is riding on Red Hat and GNOME's success, and they're stealing all the good work and code. I keep seeing this all over the place. Well, this is open source software, and you can't really moan about that now, can you? I don't think this argument will win you any favours in the community, it seems rather two-faced to me.
3) Finally, I get the feeling that whilst Ubuntu may have gone about this work "wrong" (and who gets to make those rules?), they're still doing it all in an open source manner, and openly developing the code, they're just not subscribing to the view that they have to agree with upstream. At the end of the day GNOME is jam packed full of Red Hat and other long-existing developers who have a different view to Canonical.
Canonical, being new, don't have much choice really. They don't want to just re-package upstream's work (because they have little or no control of it), but they also don't want to fork (we all know a fork of GNOME would not really be a success). Instead they seem to be taking a mystery third way in order to provide what they think is better value to their customers.
Please don't flame me for this! They are just observations. I use RHEL, Ubuntu, Fedora and others all the time at work and home, and quite frankly, this in-fighting isn't helping advance open source software. If Ubuntu has caused the problem, fine, but all I see is negative comments and blog posts all over the place, or a war of words, nobody seems to be fixing the technical issues or convincing Ubuntu to make the changes the rest of the community thinks they need to.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 12:04 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
> Canonical, being new, don't have much choice really. They don't want to
> just re-package upstream's work (because they have little or no control > of it),
Nokia was totally new to Linux and GNOME when it launched Maemo. Maemo's first release was in november 2005, more than a year after Ubuntu's first release.
Yet Nokia contractors appear pre-eminently in the same contribution stats Canonical is conspicuously absent of. Most of those contractors are far smaller structures (in revenue and people) that Canonical ever was. They give Nokia the control it wishes on the GNOME components it cares about.
So Canonical has plenty of choice, and plenty of time to exercise it.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 14:55 UTC (Tue) by havenerk (guest, #69481) [Link]
So according to a quick Google: Nokia has about 130,000 employees, Redhat about 3200, and Canonical about 350. It is not surprising that Nokia was able to make an impact relatively quickly on the contribution stats. No matter how small the contractor shops are--they have a very large corporation footing the bill.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 14:59 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
Even a large bill can not make someone work 25 hours a day.
When a dozen-person contractor can appear as a bigger contributor than Canonical, that means Canonical could have achieved the same by paying a dozen person max. The size of the corporation contracting is irrelevant when the work is done by a small team in a separate company.
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 18:42 UTC (Tue) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link]
The money excuse...
http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/lpc_2008_keynote.html
...has already been covered
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 10, 2010 15:02 UTC (Tue) by Hanno (guest, #41730) [Link]
Curiously, Maemo is hardly used by anone, if you compare it to Ubuntu.
(I do root for Maemo/Meego, actually. However, at this point after years of work on it, it still cannot be called a roaring success.)
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 12, 2010 12:53 UTC (Thu) by sce (subscriber, #65433) [Link]
Just a note on that one: I've got several colleagues at work that own a Nokia N900 with maemo on it, and they love it and highly recommend it. However, I've decided I'm not going to buy one, because Nokia will not officially support the upgrade from Maemo to Meego (as I understand it). Instead, I'm waiting for the first Meego phone. (Whether I will wait for one from Nokia or I'll just go for the first Meego phone that's released I haven't decided yet.)
I hope there are many like me that didn't buy the N900 only because they're waiting for the Meego version (eventhough Maemo looks very nice).
Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) Posted Aug 13, 2010 14:32 UTC (Fri) by stevem (subscriber, #1512) [Link]
Meh. I'm very happy with Maemo on my n900, and depressed that Nokia have dropped it for Meego. I guess I'll end up moving elsewhere for my next phone.
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 10, 2010 20:27 UTC (Tue) by MattPerry (guest, #46341) [Link]
Someone please explain to me, why does it matter if Ubuntu contributes changes to upstream or not? As I see it:
1. The source is still available, and anyone who wants to cherry-pick code and apply it to their own installation can do so.
2. If Canonical wants to take 99% of GNOME and enhance or replace the remaining 1%, it doesn't affect GNOME or anyone else at all. Same observation if the ratio was 50%/50%.
There's already little to differentiate the major distributions aside from details of the technical underpinnings that only the nerdiest of nerds care about. I don't like this idea that we must all converge on a single way of doing things and that everything must be merged upstream. Maybe the upstream maintainers don't want certain changes that downstream want merged?
"There's more than one way to do it" and if the complainers don't like it, maybe *they* should take the source and do the work to get it merged upstream rather than complaining. Then again, it might be best if they leave well enough alone. I wish there were more choices for full-blown desktop environments than GNOME or KDE because I don't like either of them. Some diversity in this area, even if it is minor changes and evolution of one desktop environment by a single vendor, is a welcome change IMHO.
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 10, 2010 21:47 UTC (Tue) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] It matters because of the noise Canonical made not so long ago about being an important player, on a par with Red Hat, Novell et al. It matters because of the noise Mark Shuttleworth has made about syncronicity. It matters because Canonical (and hence Ubunutu's) owner has talked about how it's important that distributions end up releasing at similar times. In short, it matters because Mark Shuttleworth has made a lot of noise in the not too distant past about how other entities that produce free software should synchronise with Ubuntu, yet when we look at Canonical's track record in working with those other entities, it looks very much like a one-way street. It doesn't have to be this way; Canonical is making decisions (like copyright assignment requirements, which make it impossible for me to contribute, so I don't even look) that actively discourage other free software contributors from working with Canonical on Canonical-led projects, and compounding that by failing to do significant levels of work in projects they don't lead. Instead, there seems to be a lot of heat generated either about how it's a Red Hat conspiracy, or how Ubuntu does things that mean it doesn't need to contribute upstream. It leaves me with a bad feeling about Canonical, which extends to the entirety of Ubuntu; why, exactly, are they so upset at being called on Mark Shuttleworth's claims?
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 11, 2010 1:30 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
They dislike being called on it because it's the truth. It's rather well accepted psychology that no one likes to have their hypocrisy publicized and commented on and will react very negatively when it does occur. Shuttleworth/Canonical/Ubuntu have engaged in numerous public events where they lauded the Ubuntu approach and either chastised the community or made suggestions on cooperation (depending on your point of view mostly) then proceeded down the same path the community has been criticizing them on for 5 years or more of near zero upstream cooperation.
Let's be honest people, we've been talking about Ubuntu needing to move more stuff upstream for a VERY long time and little to no progress has been made on that front. The community gave him multiple years to get things going before serious criticism even started. Shuttleworth talks a good game and I'll even admit they make good suggestions from time to time and do some very good things, but he runs his business like he's in the standard proprietary software business. Copyright assignment, keeping key components proprietary and closed source, throw it over the wall open source and numerous other actions that do little to advance free software. The worst thing about it is the community has been discussing all this bad behavior for several years and very little has changed. I came to the conclusion about a year ago that nothing will ever change and as a result Ubuntu will die eventually.
RedHat's success (even SUSE to a lesser degree) has a lot to do with their complete commitment to open source, their prioritizing of upstreaming everything possible and taking valid criticism and making changes. I can remember a lot of mistakes Redhat made over the years (bluecurve has been mentioned but there have been dozens of incidents) but rather than continuing the same policies they take the criticism seriously for the most part and adapt their policies. Shuttleworth/Canonical seem to approach everything as if it's their choice and nothing else or anyone else's opinion matter. For all his talk he still apparently doesn't get FOSS and for that reason alone I don't see Ubuntu as a long term success. Once Shuttleworth cuts off his private funding it's a dead company and a lot of that has to do with their policies IMO.
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 11, 2010 10:01 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] RedHat's success (even SUSE to a lesser degree) has a lot to do with their complete commitment to open source, their prioritizing of upstreaming everything possible and taking valid criticism and making changes. Apple is also a believer. They are very successful. If you define "success" as "number of commits to an upstream Open Source repository", you will undoubtedly find that Red Hat tops the list. It is a rather arbitrary metric, of course. The real success -- as in how much money did we make -- of both Red Hat and Novell is to be found in the datacenter. Both Red Hat and Novell are completely committed to selling their products and services, like any other business. Expecting a company to act in any other particular way is just silly. In my experience the road into the datacenter has nothing to do at all with whether or not the source is open, and both Red Hat and Novell have a track record that reflects this. It is because Red Hat and even Novell are successful in the datacenter that they can dedicate resources to Free Software development, not the other way around. People should stop wasting their time and energy on the "debate" about who should contribute what, indeed. It numbs the mind. We have sports on television for that. (Oh, and if you insist on having this debate, try to grasp the difference between a company and a distribution.)
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 11, 2010 12:29 UTC (Wed) by ean5533 (subscriber, #69480) [Link] In short, it matters because Mark Shuttleworth has made a lot of noise in the not too distant past about how other entities that produce free software should synchronise with Ubuntu, yet when we look at Canonical's track record in working with those other entities, it looks very much like a one-way street.Serious question: would there be a problem if Mark had originally made a call for everyone (including themselves) to sync with, say, Fedora's schedule?
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 11, 2010 12:37 UTC (Wed) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] Less of a problem, certainly, as he doesn't control Fedora's schedule. And if he'd combined it by actually taking action, and making Ubuntu releases sync up to Fedora's schedule, there'd be no problem at all. The thing that leaves me feeling unhappy is the mixture of Shuttleworth (a very rich man, with an entire distribution company at his command) telling me (as a bit player in the Free Software community) that I should do things upstream in ways that suit him, yet not putting his money where his mouth is. Other people may disagree, of course.
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 11, 2010 16:05 UTC (Wed) by ESRI (guest, #52806) [Link]
I think all this stuff is just about differing business strategies. As someone mentioned earlier, these are all companies trying to sell a product, and as much as "free" and "open source" fits into each company's respective strategies, selling the product is still the primary goal.
In Canonical's case, would they be in the position they are now if they'd spent time and resources working with upstream? Maybe, but I don't think so... GNOME moves incredibly slowly and conservatively... in addition, Canonical's model relies heavily on being able to take without having to spend too many resources giving back. Though the community yells about this, there's nothing they can really do about it and Canonical knows it. It's inevitable really that if something is available for free, someone is going to eventually abuse that freedom. I realize this is arguable since Canonical does give back in plenty of other ways if not directly via source code and engineering resources...
In GNOME/RedHat/Novell/whoever's case, they _do_ contribute back heavily. This model has worked for them and helped their bottom line. It's in their interest to push back against those piggy backing off their work.
I don't see this problem going away ever.. but I think it goes much further than just a philosophical question. The usual suspects in human nature are at play here. :)
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 11, 2010 17:29 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
You don't see the problem going away ever? I do. Either Canonical makes an internal thinking and policy with regard towards long term sustainability. Or they run out of money trying to out innovate the upstream ecosystem in some misplaced hopes that there's a pot of goal in that approach.
Either way the problem goes away. One solution is a net-win for the ecosystem. The other is a net-loss. Part of the process of Canonical becoming self-sustaining is going to be a realization that an engineering commitment to upstream project roadmaps reaps long term benefits to their bottom line. The current path of differentiation from upstream coupled with their aggressive product release cycles represents an ever growing in-house maintenance burden which I think its unsustainable engineering practice long term considering their market position. If Canonical were a traditional VC startup instead of the product of one man's fever dream reaction to a psychic alien mindprobe while he was in outer space... things would probably be handled differently than they are.
-jef
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 11, 2010 21:52 UTC (Wed) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] That's OK. My tinfoil hat says Shuttlework has eventual plans to sell Ubuntu to Microsoft. If not directly then hidden behind some VCs. Either way since Ubuntu seems to want to separate itself from upstream, I see no other alternative. Then Microsoft can start making all sorts of FOSS friendly claims, etc, etc.
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 11, 2010 22:09 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
everything that ubunu is shipping is opensource, they have some closed source services that they use and offer.
that is wildly different from how microsoft works and acts. if you think they are the same, you need to go back and look at what microsoft is doing.
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 11, 2010 23:41 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
My tinfoil hat says the erosion of Microsoft revenues won't even be an issue for at least a decade and Shuttleworth has only committed to funding Canonical out of his own pocket through 2012 last I saw. I'd being willing to wager money that Canonical is either dead or sold by at the latest 2015 and MS won't be interested in acquiring a Linux company for at least a decade, maybe two.
Canonical is dead in the long run, Ubuntu will likely continue on as a community project under a different name or it will get folded back up into Debian.
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 12, 2010 0:03 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
There's another possibility. Shuttleworth could reformulate the Canonical/Ubuntu relationship into a non-profit similar in structure to the Mozilla foundation with a for-profit subsidiary.
In a lot of very important ways that may be the better organizational model which turns the current relationship of community and corporate control on its head. A reorg that puts the public-good nature of the Ubuntu project concept as the controlling entity under which a for-profit Canonical would serve as a business entity would fix a lot of the problems that are causing friction now. But Shuttleworth would have to be willing to let community interests reign supreme instead of being something to be leveraged for business interests. Something he's not shown any signs of doing yet.
-jef
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 12, 2010 0:38 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the problem is how you define 'community interests'
a lot of the complaints voiced here are not things that I would consider the ubuntu community to have much interest in.
'Ubuntu community interests' probably don't directly include redhat developer or gnome developer interests (there is sure to be some overlap, but there is also sure to be areas of disagreement.
many people act as if calling something a community means that there is harmony and everyone agrees.
right now, I doubt that there is that large a portion of the ubuntu community that is unhappy with how things are being done. There are some very vocal people, but so much noise is coming from outside that community.
by the way, why are you not calling for Novell, Suse, Mandriva (or whatever their name is this year ;-) to reorganize the same way? they all have for-profit companies in control.
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 12, 2010 1:10 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I am not calling for anyone to reorganize. I postulated a third option beyond death and buyout one that has the possibility of providing benefits to the open ecosystem that neither of those other scenarios provide for.
And you are right, the history of mozilla foundation as an incorporated entity is instructive and valuable for multiple corporate entities bwho have intellectual property in development that they believe is high impact on society at large and want to try to ensure those works and ideas are made widely available and globally accessible regardless of the (mis)fortunes of one particular sponsoring company. I'm not sure the other corporate entities that you mention have leadership which have made it their mission to provide deep societal impact and global accessibility as significant themes in their project sponsorship. Shuttleworth has in his visioneering for what Ubuntu is meant to be and to provide. And in this way a Mozilla like structuring maybe a better fit as an implementation detail for that vision if the current structure is determined to be unworkable.
I can't imagine a buyout scenario that would leave Ubuntu in a position to continue work towards its wide-spread availability goals but I can imagine a non-profit structuring which would allow multiple corporate interests to underwrite the project to allow it to continue based on the value they see in an Ubuntu project without having to funnel support through Canonical as a single controlling entity by purchasing engineering and support services from Canonical they don't actually value.
-jef
Why care about upstream? Posted Aug 11, 2010 22:01 UTC (Wed) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] In short, it matters because Mark Shuttleworth has made a lot of noise in the not too distant past about how other entities that produce free software should synchronise with Ubuntu, yet when we look at Canonical's track record in working with those other entities, it looks very much like a one-way street. Sounds eerily like something Microsoft does.
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