Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) [LWN.net]

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)
In reply to: Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) by jspaleta
Parent article: Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica)

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.

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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