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Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica)Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica)Posted Oct 25, 2010 20:22 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639)In reply to: Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) by Arker Parent article: Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica)
I think its important to compare and contrast what Mark Shuttleworth Said 6 months ago about Unity and what he is saying now.
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/383
particularly the section on the relationship between Gnome Shell and Unity.
Was he talking about Unity being a direct competitor to Shell six months ago? Nope. He went out of his way to talk about how Unity as a design concept complements Shell. He went out of his way to paint Shell as not netbook appropriate(contrary to any statement by the actual Shell developers) so he could make strategic statements about Unity's value as netbook optimized.
Does anyone really think that Shuttleworth and Canonical in general didn't have a 6 month+ plan in place for Unity in May? Do you really think the change in the strategic messaging around Unity from "complementary" to "competitor" is something that didn't anticipate back in May when Shuttleworth wrote his mealy mouthed assessment of the relationship between Unity and Shell?
6 months from now how different will the strategic messaging around Unity be then?
Just because Canonical messages something in one release cycle does not mean its set in stone. In fact, its the very things they say which are said and meant to assuaging criticism that point to areas where further changes are already planned inside the Canonical fenceline.
So with that, I take all the current fear assuaging statements with regard to trying to position Unity as _still_ a GNOME desktop with more than a pinch of salt and suggests to me that Canonical is going to be investing in developing applications which are Unity-centric and not stock GNOME compatible as part of a continuing integration via diversification strategy.
-jef
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Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 25, 2010 20:32 UTC (Mon) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link]
I generally disagree with you Jef, but in this I 100% agree.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 25, 2010 22:14 UTC (Mon) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link]
But both Nokia and Litl actually submit things back to upstream GNOME and the various projects that GNOME uses. I am well aware there are some statistical errors with Dave Neary's GNOME census[1], but still it is a bit telling. Combined with other[2] similar[3] studies it shows a troubling picture.
Per linkedin the employee count:
The point I am trying to explain with completely meaningless statistics is that Nokia and Litl contribute to what the world accepts to be the meaning of the term "upstream". They work well with others and don't spin fud or make up new meanings for the word upstream.
[1] http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2010/07/28/gnome-census/
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 25, 2010 21:15 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
> Does anyone really think that Shuttleworth and Canonical in general didn't have a 6 month+ plan in place for Unity in May?
Wow, you really have a high opinion of their planning skills.
Not that I think they suck at it. Just that they are like everyone else.
6 months ago, they might have had some thoughts about using Unity in general, but didn't know how it would progress. 6 months pass, they reassess in light of current progress in Unity and GNOME Shell, and they decide to go with Unity. So what. You see a lot of malice here, but it seems to reflect more of you than of them.
Disclaimer: I don't care either way about Unity or GNOME Shell, never tried either, don't see the need for a 'new desktop' shell or metaphor or whatever. Very happy with current GNOME, I swear by gedit as my IDE of choice.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 25, 2010 21:17 UTC (Mon) by whitemice (guest, #3748) [Link]
>> Does anyone really think that Shuttleworth and Canonical in general
>> didn't have a 6 month+ plan in place for Unity in May? > Wow, you really have a high opinion of their planning skills.
+1
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence".
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 25, 2010 21:21 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Are you suggesting that Canonical is managed by a collection of incompetents? Hmm.
-jef
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 0:11 UTC (Tue) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]
> Are you suggesting that Canonical is managed by a collection of incompetents?
"Just that they are like everyone else."
I believe here "incompetence" is most likely just a hyperbole to the fact that they are fallible like every other human in this planet. Thus, you should not attribute it to malice, just to fallibility.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 0:40 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Oh absolutely...fallible. People make mistakes..the malicious and incompetent, the philanthropist and the miser, the pure of heart and the cynical. We all make mistakes and I have no intention of stating that Canonical is acting either maliciously or incompetently when I talk about the mistakes they are making as I see them.
So with that little semantic sidebar in mind. I'll reiterate my point.
Canonical has been making a huge mistake with its half-hearted appeasement messaging aimed at GNOME developers and GNOME supporters. They are misrepresenting their own business interests and sowing additional discord over a much longer time period.
It's a hell of a lot easier on everyone when a business entity stops pretending they are interested in open collaboration and just do their own differentiated in-house development without trying to manage perception in the community about how externals feel about that work.
The mistake Canonical continually makes is prioritizing perception over reality. Yes some people are going to be miffed at seeing yet another corporate entity doing differentiated development. That will cause unavoidable injured feelings. But its insult on top of injury when employees of that company bend over backwards to avoid saying that is what they are doing and try to put some backspin on the situation.
-jef
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 0:12 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Well they are human.
But I think that it's probably possible for them to change their minds. Call me crazy to think that people can possibly change decisions over the course of months. A grand conspiracy theory about how Shuttleworth planned ahead and lied six months ago in order to somehow (and completely pointlessly) blindside the anti-Ubuntu brigade into compliance is probably the least likely thing that could of happened.
It's worth noting that the Arstechnica article mentions that Unity is to be based on Compiz instead of Mutter. However the the current 'alpha' version of Unity shipping with 10.10 is based off of Mutter. So I expect that they did, in fact, mean Unity to be the compliment of Gnome-shell, but aiming for 'lite' environments. It seems, however, that the Ubuntu folks ended up being displeased with Gnome-shell's progress and direction and decided to just make Unity be the default for everything so they would not have to maintain two different desktops shells.
Also it's worth noting that between Mutter and Compiz the Compiz project is the one that has been more mature and used longer by more people then Mutter. That instead of working on improving and integrating Compiz into something more Gnome-like the Gnome Window Manager folks decided that they should write their own based off of Metacity. Compiz is not something difficult to work with either. It's designed to be extensible from the get-go as you can tell by the wealth of plug-ins and add-ons.
One can just as easily accuse the Gnome project of being victims of NIH syndrome as it is to accuse Ubuntu trying to fork the Gnome desktop. (Also I feel that both statements would be ignorant ones.)
Besides. I've been using Gnome-shell for several months now on Debian I tried out Ubuntu 10.10. Today I installed the netbook add-ons and found that Unity is better. My opinion, of course. I am not crazy about the button ordering, but it works a lot better with Unity and unified menus thrown in.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 0:27 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Are you seriously saying that you really thought Canonical was going to invest in Unity and _not_ make it the default for its Desktop at some point? Really? Did you even read the blog post from Shuttleworth I referenced.
6 months ago Shuttleworth mentioned that Unity was going to be offered as the basis for an Ubuntu Light desktop directly to OEMs. Not just a netbook offering...but a desktop offering...directly to OEMs. Canonical does not have the manpower to support multiple desktop interfaces with OEM customers.
The only plausible paths moving forward was either Canonical was going to ditch Unity as a failed experiment or double-down on its bets and make it the default for all its supported offerings to streamline its support offerings. It's simple business economics. Canonical isn't profitable. If they are serious about being profitable they have to make a decision and focus on a coherent support strategy. Regardless of what you think about Unity from a technical or political pov, it makes absolutely no business sense to support it as well as other offering that can be made to do the same thing from an engineering business standpoint. The don't support Kubuntu as an OEM offering for the very same reason.
-jef
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 1:55 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Hrm. My bad.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 2:42 UTC (Tue) by TRS-80 (subscriber, #1804) [Link] I'd call Mutter more mature - it's basically the continuation of Metacity development, just with a new name. Which is not to say I know which one is better for Unity, all I know is that Mutter and Gnome-shell are highly integrated.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 25, 2010 22:24 UTC (Mon) by j1mc (guest, #56848) [Link]
Per Matt Zimmerman's recent blog post (http://mdzlog.alcor.net/2010/10/20/ubuntu-and-qt), we can gather that they'll be bringing in their own Qt apps into Ubuntu.
To me, it wouldn't matter if Canonical / Ubuntu were using Unity if contributing to Unity didn't require assignment of copyright for your contributions to Canonical. If that weren't the case, then people could take the best of both worlds between Gnome-Shell and Unity and do whatever they wanted.
I don't even care if they're putting QT apps into Ubuntu. I don't care that it's not Gtk. Qt is open and free. Even Nokia doesn't require contributions to Qt to be given over to Nokia.
But the copyright assignment requirement effectively keeps Canonical out on their own island, and what you contribute to these Canonical-initiated projects could eventually be made proprietary. Caveat contributor.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 4:51 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] My take is you're right except that I don't think the goal is to diverge from GNOME. Rather, I think Shuttleworth has its own vision, that he wants to implement on a rapid timescale, and it will never be possible with GNOME. GNOME is a democracy (like India) and slow-moving. Ubuntu is a dictatorship (like China) and gets thing done fast. But unlike with India and China, people are free to leave GNOME or Ubuntu, so there is no real downside to the dictatorship. Most free-software projects (including most FSF projects) are in fact dictatorships -- the main freedom developers have is to fork, and that happens only under extreme provocation. So there is nothing new here. So Shuttleworth wants to do something radically different, without being hemmed in by the requirements of the GNOME project or other distros. Good for him. If it works, it's still free software and others can benefits. If it fails, it doesn't hurt anyone else.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 11:40 UTC (Tue) by AlexHudson (subscriber, #41828) [Link]
I agree with your post mostly; I think you're right about the motivation. I think you're wrong about the 'no harm' though.
Already Ubuntu has a set of APIs which no other distro has, and which they either patch into applications to use or (rarely) have upstream developers put into the application on some kind of switch. As their UI becomes more and more specific, that's only going to increase.
Additionally, their development of Unity comes at the opportunity cost of driving forward Gnome's UI work: Canonical could be in there contributing directly to upstream, but instead they're not - over seemingly small-beans design choices.
It's hypocritical and disingenuous to support projects like LibreOffice while requiring copyright assignment for your own projects. It's also hypocritical to claim to be a Gnome-based distro when all your development happens outside Gnome (I don't buy that Ayatana is an "upstream" in any sense of the word). To be a member of a community, you have to contribute to that community, not take away from it.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 14:56 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
Yes, the copyright assignment part is discomfiting: but the FSF claims that they do it to be able to defend the copyright, and as long as they insist on using that argument, anyone can.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 16:27 UTC (Tue) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
There's an enormous difference. Read what the FSF actually
promises in return (vs the hot air information silence surrounding Canonical).
* The FSF promises to *never* make their software proprietary.
* The FSF, as a non-profit, with a public charter stating its goal
I trust the FSF completely. Given that most of Shuttleworth's
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 17:23 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] The FSF promises to *never* make their software proprietary. True, the software will remain free, for their definition of "free". It will never actually be "proprietary" but the licensing can and has become more restrictive: ie, GPLv2 -> GPLv3. Contributors to GCC and other FSF projects have seen their contributions relicensed under GPLv3, because of the "v2 or later" clause that accompanied all FSF GPlv2 projects. Projects like FreeBSD consider GPLv3 too restrictive, and have refused to include recent versions of GCC into their base. When you say you trust the FSF completely, you mean the GPLv4, whatever its terms, will be acceptable to you. I trust neither the FSF nor Canonical, but it doesn't really matter to me. Even if Canonical "makes their software proprietary" at a future date, they can't erase the free versions that are already out there and users who are dissatisfied are free to fork. Worst case, it's like the BSD licence and there's nothing wrong with that licence. This is a less likely scenario than the FSF introducing an unsatisfactory GPLv4: because the GPLv4 will still be "free software" by most definitions, the motivation to fork will be less, whereas if Canonical "makes their software proprietary" and the software has any value to others, a fork is pretty much guaranteed.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 17:41 UTC (Tue) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link] Contributors to GCC and other FSF projects have seen their contributions relicensed under GPLv3, because of the "v2 or later" clause that accompanied all FSF GPlv2 projects.To the extent that that's true it's got nothing to do with copyright assignment. With the FSF priojects older contributions are still available from older versions under the older licence, and any project that was formerly available on a "v2 or later" basis (of which there are many, including non-FSF ones) could equally be taken to GPLv3 by later contributions being added with a "v3 or later" licence.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 18:36 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
Great point. The "v2+" issue is orthogonal to the "copyright assignment" issue. It should also be noted that GPLv2 is too restrictive to the BSD advocates, so it perhaps shouldn't be shocking that GPLv2+ and GPLv3 are.
A big point to note about the "+" issue is that the "+" ensures forward-compatibility with future GPL releases, i.e. GPLv2 is incompatible with GPLv2+. Perhaps some will see it as a conspiracy from the FSF, but it's arguably a logical consequence of the "no further restrictions" in the GPL that ensure end-user freedom (at the expense of the mid-users' freedom to restrict others' freedom, BSD advocates will note).
The GP has a fair point, however, in that the "+" implies a non-legally-binding trust in the FSF to not go where you don't want them to in future GPL releases, with the benefit of forward-compatibility and the ability to fix "bugs" in the license (e.g. tivoization and the MSFT-NOVL deal; the scare quotes are there because it's clear that not everyone agrees that these are bugs in the license).
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 18:42 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
"GPLv2 is incompatible with GPLv2+" should read "GPLv2 is incompatible with GPLv3, while GPLv2+ is not."
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 16:49 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
The devil is in the details. The FSF makes a solid legal binding statement about _not_ relicensing under proprietary terms that contributors can rely on. The FSF can't just decide to sell proprietary version of the code you assign copyright to them under their standard assignment agreement...or they would be in breach.
Canonical makes no such legally binding promise-back. The details of the contributor agreement matter...and will continue to matter. Canonical's contributor agreement makes zero effort to provide unpaid external contributors that their interest are protected.
I sincerely hope that when Rick Spencer (Director of the Ubuntu Engineering Team) says:
That needs to include a change in Canonical's policy with regard to external contributors to actually mean anything at all.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 19:08 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Did I say that I thought the _goal_ was to diverge from GNOME. No I have not said that. Just like it wasn't my _goal_ to run over that little girl on her bicycle this morning when I was rushing as fast I could possible go in my car to get from home to work. It was not my _goal_ nor my _intent_ to kill that child. I just wanted to get to work as fast as I could possibly could. Surely my end goal justifies the means of execution(pun intended) to achieve them.
I would not want someone to think that I thought Shuttleworth _meant_ to do direct harm or any damage to any existing project in the FOSS ecosystem on which he's relying on. If thought that, I would just come out and say that. I fully understand that many and even possibly all of his intentions are noble. But even the noblest intention can do harm through poor choices in execution.
Verily, its the noblest of intentions that do that can do the deepest harm because invariably other people give too much benefit of the doubt to the overtly well-meaning and are more reluctant to be critical of their chosen means to reach their very popular and well-meaning goals.
-jef
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 27, 2010 4:24 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
Yes, but
(a) GNOME is not a little girl (b) Shuttleworth's intentions are to make money using free software. Not charity. And there's nothing wrong in that.
I suspect if it had been Microsoft or Apple who had adopted GNOME for their next desktop, but replaced the default shell with a thing called Unity, which was free software, we would be applauding -- not nitpicking on copyright assignment or damage to the upstream.
Canonical are a commercial business, just as much as Microsoft or Apple. And they are as focussed on ordinary desktop users (and, now, netbook/tablet users) as Microsoft and Apple. They just happen to be doing it using free software.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 27, 2010 5:04 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Yes the stated intention for Canonical is to make money. No argument from me on that score. By they way, six years into their experiment how is that going for them? Back in 2006 a Canonical exec was on record as saying he was anticipating seeing Canonical reach profitability in 2008.
http://news.cnet.com/Canonical-seeks-profit-from-free-Ubu...
Oops. It's...let me see now..late 2010 unless my watch has stopped..and still not profitable. Every couple of years Canonical widens its focus and the goal posts to profitability move back further into the future. I can understand why some would interpret any criticism of such behaviour as questioning that very fundamental intention of wanting to be a a real grown-up self-sustaining company.
But again for literally the 3,768 time today Canonical's _intentions_ has never been the _intent_ in any of my criticism. I am very deliberately not questioning _intention_. I very specifically question choices in execution and strategy..particularly those which run counter to previous statements made by Canonical execs. These criticisms run across multiple subjects because well..Canonical execs seem to say a lot of things that really don't match up with their stated intentions.
I continually wonder why defenders of Canonical keep reading all criticism of anything Canonical chooses to do as criticism of the companies intentions. Intentions and execution or not the same thing.
-jef
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