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Shuttleworth: Quality has a new nameShuttleworth: Quality has a new namePosted Apr 24, 2012 19:13 UTC (Tue) by slashdot (guest, #22014)Parent article: Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name
How about the huge downsides of fragmentation?
How about the fact that cgroups and socket activation make systemd strictly better than anything else?
Shuttleworth is being a total idiot in this case.
I wonder whether he is really fit to lead a distribution, or whether he simply bought his leadership position and has been given way more respect and consideration than he deserves.
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Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 19:17 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
in case you haven't noticed, there are a lot of people who aren't thrilled with systemd.
Disagreeing with LP does not make you an idiot.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 22:25 UTC (Tue) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
Yeah, and at least 95% of those are simply badly informed or clueless.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 22:29 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
so please let us 'clueless' people have a distro that does things the way we want, instead of trying to force us to do things your way.
why do you have to be so hostile to different opinions?
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 19:34 UTC (Tue) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link]
He did not "buy" his leadership position.
He created with his own money the whole organization.
Alex
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 19:50 UTC (Tue) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
For some value of "whole organization."
But as the great majority of Ubuntu is simply rebranded Debian, his investment was far, far less than it would take to actually build from scratch. Therefore, it is fair to call the invention of Ubuntu as a Debian fork the buying of a vanity distribution. The "self-appointed" business could hardly be clearer, could it?
I'd only agree with your phraseology when the bulk of the code for his product originated from Canonical. The chance of that happening is infinitesimal.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 15:06 UTC (Wed) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link]
Speaking as a Debian Developer, I don't think this is fair at all.
Yes, Ubuntu harnessed Debian and saved themselves a lot of grunt work by doing so. But do not underestimate their contribution to improving the readiness of Linux and free software for the mainstream desktop, nor the popularisation of Linux amongst the masses.
Debian has, in turn, benefited hugely from the work that Ubuntu has done.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:19 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
There is no evidence whatsoever that mass appeal has been achieved by Ubuntu. There is evidence that Ubuntu has successfully solidified interest in the linux enthusiast community that would have otherwise gone to other distributions. An achievement for sure, but let's be very clear about the scope of that achievement.
I can find no evidence anywhere I can find that the overall adoption rate of linux globally (prior to Android) was accelerated by the introduction of Ubuntu.
Sadly the wikimedia OS useragent stats don't go back more than a couple of years so they don't tell a story long enough to really speak to the long term trend. But what I do see in the wikimedia stats is effectively...stagnation of linux (other than Android). The trend is cycle with a 12 or 13 month cycle but once you account for that cyclic nature the longer term trend is...flat. This is the most credible publicly available dataset that I know exists. If there is another public dataset of merit, I'm more than happy to look at it.
The _only_ _linux_ software vendor to reach and sustain a quantifiable mass market appeal has been Google with Android. Wikimedia stats show this clearly in the same way that it shows traditional linux distribution market penetration stagnation.
-jef
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:32 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
The problem is with figuring out the stats for each disto and for linux overall
a lot of the people who are using Ubuntu instead of windows are not going to techie sites (including wikipedia), they are non-techie people just using the system for their day-to-day needs.
you also have to think back to what the linux landscape looked like when Ubuntu was introduced, there was a distinct gap in the desktop niche at the time.
Ubuntu didn't do anything that other distros couldn't have done, and it couldn't have done what it did without the entire ecosystem, but it was a major wake-up call in terms of making Linux "just work" out of the box without having to answer lots of technical questions first.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:48 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
There was no gap. That is revisionist. Linspire was being sold at Walmart. That's not a gap...that's progress. And prior to that HP sold a laptop with Suse pre-installed.
But please, point me to any quantifiable evidence that Ubuntu change the rate of adoption for linux. You can believe what you want. I'm not going to argue over matters of faith. But don't state it as fact unless there is evidence you can point me at.
-jef
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 26, 2012 1:47 UTC (Thu) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]
I can't give you any hard evidence, but there's a lot of people I personally know that used Linux for the first time, and it was with Ubuntu. Note, this was all before Unity came along.
I have to admit, that it did seem that Ubuntu made the entrance into Linux easier. I'm not so sure that is true today.
I personally never liked Ubuntu. I started with Slackware (in the days of the 13 floppies), moved to Red Hat Linux (before Fedora) and have switched and stayed on Debian. I'm a grumpy old developer that enjoys hacking on SysV init scripts and running 2.6.9 kernels as well as 3.4-rc4 (compat sys is a PITA). I've switched to xfce to get away from the Gnome3 nightmare, and avoid systemd, upstart, and grub2.
Yes, I may be stubborn, and hate drastic changes, but it took me 15 years to come up with a workflow that suits me well, and I'll be damn if I'm going to throw it all away overnight.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 19:51 UTC (Tue) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
"How about the huge downsides of fragmentation?"
That's a bit rich, since one of the perceived problems with Lennart's software is that it is very linux centric.
I'm glad to see the GNU/Linux operating system is being one of the more successful in the "fringe os pool", but I don't feel that's a good enough excuse to willfully start introducing incompatibilities with other unix and unix-like operating systems and kernels.
Charging too far ahead of "the pack" might not be the best long term option.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 20:02 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
If Linux is trying to do things that nobody else can do then it's not a terrible thing to have something Linux-centric.
Why should Linux have to wait for NetBSD, AIX, and Solaris to implement currently Linux-only features before Linux can use them?
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 20:04 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
you can go ahead and do incompatible things, but if you then try and claim that people who don't jump on board with your incompatible things are fragmenting linux, you deserve to be laughed at.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 20:08 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Well I can't read Lennart's response right now because the work firewall is incomparable with google plus, but I'll just assume that Lennart is accusing Ubuntu of fragmentation and that is what you are referring to.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 5:11 UTC (Wed) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link]
The meat of the argument is not the fragmentation per se, more that not using systemd is gonna be costly for them in the long run.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 20:53 UTC (Tue) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
>If Linux is trying to do things that nobody else can do then it's not a >terrible thing to have something Linux-centric.
>Why should Linux have to wait for NetBSD, AIX, and Solaris to implement >currently Linux-only features before Linux can use them?
Well, of course linux development shouldn't have to halt or restrain itself from charging ahead. But it is, imo, considered good form to write your software for the unix-platform as broadly as possible. Taking advantages of certain kernel features if they are available, but providing fallbacks for the rest of them (at least until they catch up).
Pushing for a subsystem to become the new standard on GNU/Linux even though it is unusable on any other unix system causes fragmentation. And I can see how, for example, a redhat might not have any problems with that (and why should they?), but some of us have different motives, and feel compelled to speak up against the "We're the most popular, why should we care about the others?" mentality. The short term gain might not be worth the long term drawbacks.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 27, 2012 0:46 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
Please read on this weeks LWN.net's feature page the article »The return of the Unix wars?« and notice that it doesn't cover the big elephant in the room, concerning fragmentation: Not fragmentation within Linux, but fragmentation within the Open Source Un*x variants. Yes, the Unix wars are back and LP is their war lord. LP's work strives to go ahead in a bold fashion and he thinks we are sufficiently strong to ignore other Unix systems, that we may go bold forward to our own island of functionality.
Well, how's your Linux market share today? Do you think it's sufficient to be so self confident, or do you think you should play nice with the other folks from your family? Some of us seems to think that we can eventually shun our stinking brethren *BSD users (and other Unix users), and that we'll be doing good for it. Will that be the case?
And this comes from the community that hails Linus for his insistence on backward compatibility on kernel ABIs. If it comes to user land, they ignore his insights.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 27, 2012 6:58 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] And this comes from the community that hails Linus for his insistence on backward compatibility on kernel ABIs. If it comes to user land, they ignore his insights. System V init doesn't really have much of an ABI to be compatible with. AFAICT systemd does make an effort to support SysV init's init scripts, which from a practical point of view probably makes most sense because it allows third-party system services to be run under systemd even if they don't come with a systemd unit definition file. Or do you mean we shouldn't use something like systemd on Linux because BSD and Solaris don't support advanced Linux features that systemd exploits, such as cgroups, and because there is no systemd (or workalike) for these systems? IMHO that would be silly. It's not as if those platforms are bending over backwards to ensure all their newfangled features don't break compatibility to Linux.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 30, 2012 1:15 UTC (Mon) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
> System V init doesn't really have much of an ABI to be compatible with.
Ahem. Please read http://lwn.net/Articles/490177/, by an author named, well, anselm. Perhaps he'll understand what's about; I can fully subscribe to his views expressed in that post. :-)
In fact, the System V init ABI is simple: If /etc/init.d/start/$service {start,stop,status,restart,reloac} worked with init.d, it should work with systemd as well.
Since the systemd proponents dismiss init.d scripts as ineffective and not-working, and strive for substitution by systemd definition files in all cases, I won't accept the existance of »deprecated« init.d scripts as »systemd supports it«. Discussions on mailing lists of Fedora, opensuse-factory, et.al. clearly shows that this is not what is supposed to be »real systemd support«.
But then I notice that there are intrinsic assumptions of systemd that are not always fulfilled. E.g., on opensuse-factory I followed quite some flamewars where developers asked how previous features should be realized now. The most prominent examples were (a) how to shut down all running virtual machines when no watchdog process is there (systemd ties a service to a running process it can supervize), and (b) how to state the status of a system like AppArmor when there's no daemon to ask for the status. HylaFax service description wasn't convertible either; I don't remember the reason any more, though. All the time, the answer the developers got was: Thou Shall Not Want To Do That. I.e., the answer they got was: That's not a service as defined by systemd and thus it's not a valid request. We Define What's Right And You Are Wrong(tm).
As another example from the openSUSE community: When systemd was introduced in 12.1, they broke packages like Postfix. Well, shit happens when you introduce new things, no biggie -- one should think. But: systemd introduced the breakage and what was the reaction of those who caused the problem? It was: it's Postfix's problem, it should adapt to the New And Only Way; it's not systemd's fault and Postfix should fix it. Sit back and contrast this to the Linux kernel way: If somebody introduces a change in a fundamental service, it's his or her responsibility to fix all problems that's caused by the change; he can't tell the others »that's the New Way(tm), You Have To Do The Work to change«. Such patches would be flamed to hell by Linus, and rightly so. And that's the behaviour I would like to see in user land, too.
We're thoroughly missing a Linus for Linux plumber's land. Last year, it was all ConsoleKit etc, that was en vogue. Now it's obsolete, decided by the very same developer that introduced camel case *Kit daemones to Unix. Witness the change of udev's role and HAL's demise over the last few years -- this ain't a stable environment any more to develop for. Oh yes -- will standalone udev still exist next year, or will it be abandoned? The developers actions, blog posts, and comments on their blogs don't necessarily inspire trust.
And btw,
> do you mean we shouldn't use something like systemd on Linux because BSD
I don't think we should not use cgroups. But if patches come along to make cgroups optional, upstream should go forward and accept them. Instead they ridicule non-Linux developers -- or even Linux developers, as shown by Lennart's last blog post about Ubuntu. systemd upstream is as bad as OpenSSH upstream -- and that's something to write, I wouldn't have thought I would compare someone to Theo de Raadt without meaning an insult. (I don't know if you ever met Theo in person. It's not a nice affair.)
For me, the most sad point is: I actually agree with Kay and Lennart et.al. that SysV init is not done well and should be replaced. The architecture of systemd is sound and much better. init.d dependencies is one of the first things one has to patch in most installations. systemd unit descriptions are really better and can be adapted more easily. But: The developer's attitude does not inspire trust. That's like running software from Dan Bernstein, which I would never do in a professional environment. And trust is all that's about, isn't it? (I'm referring to Dennis' Turing Award article, in case that ain't clear.)
I hope this clarifies some of my thoughts.
Joachim
PS: Are you Anselm from Darmstadt? If yes, I met with Metin last week. Cheerio. :-)
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 30, 2012 15:53 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] For me, the most sad point is: I actually agree with Kay and Lennart et.al. that SysV init is not done well and should be replaced. The architecture of systemd is sound and much better. I think we're all on the same side here … But: The developer's attitude does not inspire trust. That's like running software from Dan Bernstein, which I would never do in a professional environment. And trust is all that's about, isn't it? True. It would certainly be good if Lennart Poettering was less like Dan Bernstein and more like Wietse Venema ;^) PS: Are you Anselm from Darmstadt? Yep, that's me ;^)
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted May 2, 2012 14:08 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] And trust is all that's about, isn't it? (I'm referring to Dennis' Turing Award article, in case that ain't clear.)I think you mean Ken Thomson's article.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted May 2, 2012 15:09 UTC (Wed) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
You are right, of course.
Dennis' and Ken's work have been so intertwined for me, that this lapsus may happen... ;-) They got the award together in 1983, and I always considered that article the real Turing lecture for Unix, not the other one about Bell Labs' research politics. Even ACM lists that article on Dennis' short annotated bibliography: http://amturing.acm.org/bib/ritchie_1506389.cfm
(I had the pleasure to have a dinner with them, many years ago. It was a great evening that I still remember well.)
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 20:51 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I don't see how Linux centric is a problem for systemd. Note that his other software is not Linux specific AFAIK. In general, I don't see Linux centric as being seen as a problem.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 26, 2012 15:55 UTC (Thu) by dan_a (subscriber, #5325) [Link]
It's not a problem per-se, but it is incompatible with complaining about fragmentation IF the product being complained about works across a number of operating systems. (In my opinion, of course.)
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 22:23 UTC (Tue) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> Shuttleworth is being a total idiot in this case.
s/in this case//
I honestly can't think of anything sensible Shuttleworth has ever done for OSS.
This guy needs a serious beating with a cluebat. He isn't just completely and utterly worthless for the OSS community, he's downright harmful.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 24, 2012 23:41 UTC (Tue) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
>I honestly can't think of anything sensible Shuttleworth has ever done for OSS.
Ship-it!
In spite of all of Canonical's flaws, and their touchy-go-y behaviour with proprietary software, ship-it! was a major success and really made inroads for distributing Free Software.
I don't know if they still provide that service, but at that time it was a wonderful (if costly) initiative that raised the tide for all distributions.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 0:09 UTC (Wed) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link]
Though I dislike many aspects of Ubuntu and would not install it on my computer, I don't let myself be blinded by that.
Ubuntu understands very well what it takes to make a Linux distribution palatable for the general public. He has brought Free/Open Source Software to more people than all other distros combined. Stats were published by Phoronix/OpenBenchmarking this week.
Concerning your remark about encouraging the use of proprietary software:
That Mr. Shuttleworth commends Mac OS X just showing that he gives credit where credit is due. Though I agree with other commenters that aiming for OS X is aiming way to low.
Unfree soiftware in Linux distributions? Posted Apr 25, 2012 1:37 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] At least, Fedora has a strict policy what can (and can't) be shipped as part of Fedora. It just isn't true that it offers a "mix of free and propietary software by default," much less "no questions asked."
Unfree soiftware in Linux distributions? Posted Apr 25, 2012 10:27 UTC (Wed) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link]
Fedora contains sourceless and restrictively licensed firmware in a default installation. This is despite their "If it is proprietary, it cannot be included in Fedora." claim (from your link, even).
Unfree soiftware in Linux distributions? Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:32 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Firmware is really the only real exception to this rule and it is well documented in the packaging guidelines. I have now added a reference to the above page.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 2:16 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
>- He deliberately keeps[...] incompatible[...]
>- He works on completely useless stuff[...] >- He supports crap[...] >- He develops and encourages the use of proprietary software
That is quite reminiscient of the “90s vintage villain” Microsoft Corp.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 26, 2012 9:39 UTC (Thu) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
Yeah, complete with comprehensive reality denial, and refusal to acknowledge that he could ever have done anything good. I'm surprised they aren't calling Mark Shuttleworth 'M$' at this stage.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 26, 2012 15:59 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
When I see the first person use that moniker, would you like me to badger them to cite you for introducing it into the meme pool? Credit were credit is due... I think you just accidentally started a new meme.
-jef
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 26, 2012 16:06 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
I think I may have postulated it on LWN earlier already: Displacing Microsoft [as desired in LP bug#1] is only possible by becoming like Microsoft.
The SI voice says: Proposal to use ₥s as a distinctive symbol, since M$ is obviously already used.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 27, 2012 12:09 UTC (Fri) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link]
I ain't installing a new input method or learning a new Unicode code point just to type "₥s" (and you're fortunate I am not too lazy to cut-and-paste from your post).
Try again!
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 27, 2012 16:03 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
If you have a Compose key (I use Shift+RtAlt), just do <Compose></><m>. Most of the combined characters "make sense" in how to create them.
As a reference:
setxkbmap -option lv3:ralt_switch_multikey
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 7:35 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link] Shuttleworth has created an entire distribution, done things in a different way, great focus on user experience, got loads more people to use Linux, etc. He has different ideas on how to do things and the ability to execute it. It could either not work out (in which case there are enough resources to do things differently), or he's successful. He isn't just completely and utterly worthless for the OSS community, he's downright harmful. You're turning your disagreement in the way he does things in a personal attack. Not nice.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 7:43 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> Shuttleworth has created an entire distribution,
No he didn't, he essentially ripped off debian's work.
> done things in a different way,
> great focus on user experience,
> You're turning your disagreement in the way he does things in a personal attack.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 8:15 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
Hello HelloWorld, I find many of your posts to be offensive and contain personal attacks. Could you state your criticism in less emotional tone, please?
>> Shuttleworth has created an entire distribution,
>> done things in a different way,
>> great focus on user experience,
To be honest, I think Ubuntu deserves some credit (as does RedHat/Fedora/Ubuntu) for reinvigorating the race to a "polished" desktop. I believe many Fedora/RedHat technologies have helped to achieve that. But by experimenting with overarching visions of how to get a polished desktop rather than niche thinking (eg the non-free driver jockey thingie which helps to determine which non-free drivers might be required to enable your wlan, has helped me many times when installing Linux on friends computer, where I had to give up with pure Debian).
>> You're turning your disagreement in the way he does things in a personal attack.
So because IBM also happily sells you proprietary solutions, you remove all IBM-contributed patches to the kernel before using it? I commend you for that. The Ubuntu one client and interface is Open Source, the backend is not. I presume you don't use Amazon, Google, Twitter, or LWN.net because they also develop evil closed source server side backends. Sorry, I prefer open web services to closed ones (that is why my cloud is a webdav server), but condeming Ubuntu as evil because they have a cloud service they like to push, sounds a bit overstretched to me.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 12:03 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] To be honest, I think Ubuntu deserves some credit (as does RedHat/Fedora/Ubuntu) for reinvigorating the race to a "polished" desktop. True, but for many years, Ubuntu was merely providing GNOME and KDE with some customisation (not all of it positively received) in a more timely fashion than Debian. In other words, the underlying offerings were pretty good already, and Ubuntu was just a convenient packaging of them with enough infrastructure and brand identity to make that packaging persuasive. Now, however, the Ubuntu developers have moved into new territory, and although I can see the point of them doing that, I'm not convinced that they've shown enough stamina to deliver a complete experience living up to what they have been promising. So, digging beneath the surface of Unity's tablet-like shell paradigm, there are still the confused settings panels reminiscent in places of old-style Kubuntu and even Windows. All that cruft should be tidied up and the system made more reliable so that you don't really have to look at it unless you really have to. Sorry, I prefer open web services to closed ones (that is why my cloud is a webdav server), but condeming Ubuntu as evil because they have a cloud service they like to push, sounds a bit overstretched to me. Can you migrate from it? Can you substitute something else in its place? Those are the pertinent questions.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 26, 2012 19:52 UTC (Thu) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]
> Can you migrate from it? Can you substitute something else
> in its place? Those are the pertinent questions.
I think the answer to that is somewhat complicated, as UbuntuOne has many parts...
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 14:53 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> Hello HelloWorld, I find many of your posts to be offensive and contain personal attacks. Could you state your criticism in less emotional tone, please?
Dude, attacking Shuttleworth was the whole point of my posting, so of *course* it contains personal attacks.
> But by experimenting with overarching visions of how to get a polished desktop rather than niche thinking
> So because IBM also happily sells you proprietary solutions, you remove all IBM-contributed patches to the kernel before using it? I commend you for that. The Ubuntu one client and interface is Open Source, the backend is not. I presume you don't use Amazon, Google, Twitter, or LWN.net because they also develop evil closed source server side backends. Sorry, I prefer open web services to closed ones (that is why my cloud is a webdav server), but condeming Ubuntu as evil because they have a cloud service they like to push, sounds a bit overstretched to me.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 15:00 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
> Dude, attacking Shuttleworth was the whole point of my posting, so of *course* it contains personal attacks.
Thanks for the confirmation. This grants you a spot in my "personal attacks" filter.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 15:12 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
Oh, how convenient for you! Now you suddenly don't have to deal with my reasons for attacking him any longer!
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 15:49 UTC (Wed) by ean5533 (subscriber, #69480) [Link]
I'm going to make the naive assumption that you really don't understand what's going on. Spaetz isn't filtering you out so that he can ignore your comments and happily live in his own world (as you imply). He's filtering you out because you just confirmed that you think ad hominem reasoning is a valid way to argue. It is not.
You may have valid points, and you may have valid reasons to back them, but if people have to dig through your faulty arguments in order to find the good ones then it is hard to trust anything you say. At some point it becomes easier to just ignore you completely than to waste time trying to sort through the cruft. If you'd like to be taken more seriously, please take the time to make sure your arguments are all relevant and that you don't drift into personal attacks that contribute nothing to your point.
If you find yourself tempted to respond by calling me an idiot, please know that your response is already heading down the wrong path.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:02 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> I'm going to make the naive assumption that you really don't understand what's going on. Spaetz isn't filtering you out so that he can ignore your comments and happily live in his own world (as you imply). He's filtering you out because you just confirmed that you think ad hominem reasoning is a valid way to argue. It is not.
Oh yeah, right. So when someone speaks like a moron, behaves like a moron and at least appears to have the ideas of a moron, calling that person a moron is not a valid way to argue?
> You may have valid points, and you may have valid reasons to back them, but if people have to dig through your faulty arguments in order to find the good ones then it is hard to trust anything you say.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:07 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Calling people morons is not how we'd like people to argue on LWN, no. Save that for the schoolyard, please.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 18:04 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> Calling people morons is not how we'd like people to argue on LWN,
Well, good thing I didn't do that then.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:13 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] calling that person a moron is not a valid way to argue? Precisely so. Instead, explain why the idea is stupid. Tread warily, though, lest you fall foul of the "arguing with idiots" effect.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:15 UTC (Wed) by ean5533 (subscriber, #69480) [Link]
Your original post listed several things that you believe Mark is doing wrong. Presumably the point of your argument is that Mark is detrimental to the Linux community, but you haven't explained why; you've only listed a bunch of things that you, personally, do not like. (Never mind that you provided no citations, and actually criticized someone who asked you for citations. Also never mind that you seem to believe every technical decision ever made by Canonical was made personally by Mark himself). Even if we ignore the flaws in your reasoning, and just accept your argument that Mark is detrimental to the Linux community, there is still zero justification for calling Mark an idiot, a moron, or someone who "needs a serious beating with a cluebat".
I am finished talking with you. Your negative attitude is caustic.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 18:24 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> Your original post listed several things that you believe Mark is doing wrong. Presumably the point of your argument is that Mark is detrimental to the Linux community, but you haven't explained why;
Yes, precisely. I didn't explain it because it's obvious. For example there's a general agreement that improvements to software like the kernel, GTK+ or X.org should preferably be done upstream, and not in the distros. So why should I write down the reasons for that again when dozens of people have done that before me? And it's the same for all the other point's I've made.
> Never mind that you provided no citations, and actually criticized someone who asked you for citations.
> Also never mind that you seem to believe every technical decision ever made by Canonical was made personally by Mark himself.
So no, I don't see any serious flaws in my reasoning. And let me say it again: I'm not trying to write an academic paper here. I'm just giving *my personal opinion* about Shuttleworth, which is what comments are for.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 19:06 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> or example there's a general agreement that improvements to software like the kernel, GTK+ or X.org should preferably be done upstream, and not in the distros.
if you are going to start throwing rocks I'll point out that RedHat has probably the worst track record of any distro in terms of maintaining local patches to the kernel. They are far better than they were in the past (at one point the divergance was so large that there were major apps that would run only on the RedHat kernel), but they still maintain a fair number of them (as does almost every disto)
In fact, by this criteria, the least evil distro is Slackware (and even Slackware has a few local patches to the software it ships)
Your absolutist "Since they aren't perfect, they are evil" attitude is not productive. If you are trying to convince other people to agree with you, then insulting them doesn't help either, and if you aren't trying to convince people, what are you trying to do?
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 29, 2012 21:26 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"if you are going to start throwing rocks I'll point out that RedHat has probably the worst track record of any distro in terms of maintaining local patches to the kernel"
That isn't the same thing. Red Hat usually does all kernel work upstream and backports it to maintain compatibility for the enterprise releases. For Fedora, there isn't any history of major local patches that weren't upstream quickly because of the shorter release cycle. When people complain about vendor X not doing work upstream it is usually because that vendor hasn't made any efforts to push it upstream.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 29, 2012 22:12 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
Red Hat currently does much of it's kernel work upstream, but this has not always been the case. they have gotten much better in the last couple of years.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 29, 2012 22:22 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Feel free to be more specific. I would argue that what has changed is the 2.6 kernel development process.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 29, 2012 23:37 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the 2.6 development process was changed to encourage Red Hat (and the other distributions) to cooperate more and work more upstream, and I think it's been a wonderful success in doing so.
I just see people giving Red Hat a free pass on anything that it does (or has ever done) while condemning Canonical and Ubuntu for doing similar things (and in my eyes, doing them to a less damaging degree)
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 29, 2012 23:50 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"the 2.6 development process was changed to encourage Red Hat"
Citations needed. https://lwn.net/Articles/94386/ shows Alan Cox pushing for a six month release process and Andrew Morton suggesting the current process. Also I note, you didn't provide any specifics on which kernel features weren't pushed upstream by Red Hat earlier in the 2.4 kernel process.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:23 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
This is a technical forum.
It's acceptable to attack someone's code.
It's acceptable to attack someone's decisions.
It's acceptable to attack someone's reasoning.
It's acceptable to attack someone's track record.
It's acceptable to questions someone's mindset.
It's NOT acceptable to attack someone for who they are. This includes your opinion of their intelligence, their Gender, their race, how they dress, etc.
It's NOT acceptable to say that you wish a group of people would die.
One thing that you should keep in mind, is that there is no one perfect solution that solves every problem in existence. Everything involves trade-offs, and the importance of different aspects that are being traded off against each other is very subjective. What you consider critically important may not be so critical to someone else. And at the same time, what someone else considers critically important may not seem so critical to you.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:54 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Validity.... is probably not the right word.
I would argue that calling someone a moron is... ineffective... if your goal is to influence or to persuade people to reconsider their position.
It's one of those things that falls into a class of emotive rhetoric. Emotive rhetoric (both positive and negative) is pretty much only useful for rabble rousing. Anytime you are speaking to people who already agree (or disagree) strongly with the general arguments you are making and you want to people to stop thinking and to start reacting emotional about something. You know propaganda.
If however the goal is to get people to think, then you'll avoid as much emotive language and rhetoric as you possibly can. I would hope that everyone's goal here... including yours... is to get other readers thinking rationally..instead of reacting emotionally.
And of course rational discourse is made entirely more difficult if you start writing (bah I want to say put pen to paper..but sadly this is becoming a lost phrase) in an emotional state. Because of the written medium, you have to anticipate that any emotional leakage you put into your own writing will be negatively amplified in the reaction. The less emotional rhetoric you can put into the writing, the better chance you stand of getting a reasonable response in return.
But if your goal was basically to just cause trouble....you nailed it.
-jef
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:41 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>He's filtering you out because you just confirmed that you think ad hominem reasoning is a valid way to argue.
Please go and learn what 'ad hominem' means.
Saying "your argument is wrong because you smell" is ad hominem.
Despite the prevailing LWN opinion, 'ad hominem' is a phrase which actually *has a meaning*. It can't simply be applied to any personal attack.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:50 UTC (Wed) by ean5533 (subscriber, #69480) [Link]
I understand that "ad hominem" typically refers to counter-arguing with irrelevant personal attacks. However, I believe it is also valid in this case. HelloWorld was (presumably) trying to make the point that Mark Shuttleworth's business decisions negatively impact the community. One way that HelloWorld justified his point was by calling Mark an idiot. Calling Mark an idiot doesn't explain why his decisions are bad, it's just an irrelevant personal attack.
Regardless, I realize that my usage of that term is non-standard is best and that it was probably the wrong term to use.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 22:47 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] HelloWorld was (presumably) trying to make the point that Mark Shuttleworth's business decisions negatively impact the community. I think the point was made clearly enough. One way that HelloWorld justified his point was by calling Mark an idiot. Actually, the qualification was removed from someone else's assertion that Shuttleworth was being an idiot in a particular situation. Calling Mark an idiot doesn't explain why his decisions are bad, it's just an irrelevant personal attack. It would be if there were no other observations, but it looks to me like the presumed name-calling is merely a conclusion about the guy after considering those observations. Of course, one could come to a different conclusion - "Mark Shuttleworth is a stubborn visionary", for example - but that would also be based on the observations, not a random statement for the sake of argument. I don't think Shuttleworth is an idiot, nor do I think that statements claiming that Shuttleworth has done nothing sensible for open source software or that he is "worthless for the OSS community" have any credibility, but it is true to say that some of Canonical's moves have been very divisive. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Maybe that adage is being applied here, and we've all seen the other interpretation in other discussions, but some would argue that it isn't relevant as each of the observations can be refuted in some way. If so, claims of "ad hominem" are not the way to go about doing so.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 29, 2012 20:56 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] This grants you a spot in my "personal attacks" filter.Amen. I needed to cull these articles with 200+ messages anyway...
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 21:33 UTC (Wed) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link]
Well to be complete, there was Launchpad ( but this was published, even if the community didn't adapt it to run somewhere else than Ubuntu ), there is Landscape ( and it took them a rather long time to figure that people would like to have it on the other side of the firewall, and that's still not free software ), and there is the android ubuntu integration stuff ( that would become free some day, IIRC, so that may not be fair to count that as non free from canonical ).
The case of ubuntu one is rather interesting, because while there could be support for another server ( there is code for that, and I think U1 support local peer without server ), there was no one motivated enough for that, neither from community nor Canonical.
Launchpad Posted Apr 25, 2012 22:52 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
What I would find interesting to discuss is whether Canonical's bets on services like Launchpad have really paid off for them or for the community. There are quite a few projects using Launchpad, but at the same time, there are a lot of projects using services like Bitbucket, GitHub, Gitorious, Google Code, SourceForge, not to mention running their own services using a selection of Free Software solutions.
Would it have been better for Canonical to focus on the distribution or other things? Or is there strategic value in stuff like Launchpad that makes it worth the investment?
Launchpad Posted Apr 26, 2012 0:55 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Understanding which projects are actively using launchpad is a bit complicated because of the way launchpad is positioned as both upstream project hosting and distribution build system sausage factory. Its deliberately designed to blur the line and make it appear as if project development for thousands and thousands of projects is actually happening there. Just because a project is listed in launchpad doesn't mean its being used outside the context of Ubuntu package building.
For example... Networkmanager has a launchpad project listing...it has bzr trees....it has bugs... and none of it is upstream networkmanager project development. Its _all_ distribution specific packaging work...no different really than Fedora's git and bugzilla that feeds into Fedora packaging. But end of the day NetworkManager upstream development uses the freedesktop and gnome development infrastructure for git and bug reporting. Does NetworkManager as a project use launchpad? Hard to argue that it does. Does Ubuntu as a downstream distributor which leverages the work done in the NetworkManager project make use of launchpad...yes..clearly.
Or take Openstack. Openstack is using launchpad blueprints and bugs but is doing the code development primarily with git facilitated by gerrit using launchpad single-sign-on. I mean holy crap...that's so convoluted...all to avoid using bzr and use git instead. Clearly launchpad does provide some very unique capabilities in the blueprints and bug modules..and that magic that is single sign on. Basically all the not really code management bzr stuff. Is OpenStack using launchpad? Yes..clearly. But not in a way you would expect. As soon as github fired up equivalent services like blueprints and a bug report tool....you think openstack would move to using github's version of those services?
All that is to say that it is quite hard to understand how much "upstream" usage there is of launchpad versus how much strictly Ubuntu integration usage there is in launchpad. Obviously launchpad as infrastructure to grind the sausage that is Ubuntu is quite critical...by design...but that's downstream integration choices...not upstream development choices.
http://blog.launchpad.net/cool-new-stuff/setting-up-comme...
And remember that a lot of Canonical's projects started out as private projects with OEM partners inside the launchpad infrastructure. So the business model aroud the private partnership stuff did make sense at one point...back in the day when HP and Canonical were working hard on Mi (poor Mi) launchpad sort of made sense for private collaboration in that sense but that was a while ago now...before git one the distribute tool war.
-jef
Launchpad Posted Apr 26, 2012 10:30 UTC (Thu) by cas (subscriber, #52554) [Link]
github already has a bug reporting tool (i prefer it to launchpad's), and it's reasonably well integrated with git pull requests so is quite useful for devs as well as end-users. afaik, they don't have launchpad's blueprints or roadmap feature yet.
Launchpad Posted Apr 26, 2012 12:03 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
A notable downside to GitHub is that it's a proprietary service, although I imagine it's possible to migrate away from it, and I suppose that with Launchpad you could at least potentially deploy your own instance. But then again, I'm not really aware of any other deployments of Launchpad, whereas lots of people use stuff like Trac, Redmine, combinations of other tools.
I just wonder whether all the effort put into Launchpad, Bazaar, the needless tying together of the two, was strategically worth it.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 9:45 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link] This is a fact, not an opinion.Having an opinion and believing strongly in it doesn't make it a fact. The rest of your post doesn't provide much content and furthermore, it seems you're focussed on saying "I am right!" in a trollish way instead of having a discussion.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 14:56 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> The rest of your post doesn't provide much content
Oh, it does, it seems you didn't understand it though. Fortunately, that is not my problem. To quote Linus Torvalds: "Happily, I don't _need_ to convince you".
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 15:05 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
You're no Linus :P
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 15:12 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
I'm actually happy about that.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 27, 2012 0:52 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
Ah, sorry, I didn't get the message that we shall not listen to you. my fault.
*PLONK*
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 26, 2012 10:21 UTC (Thu) by cas (subscriber, #52554) [Link]
speaking as a DD since 1994 or so, debian has *always* been meant to be a base for other distributions as well as a distribution itself.
ubuntu has not "ripped off" debian's work any more than any distro has "ripped off" the FSF's work or any other free software project's work. ubuntu used debian's work in a way that it was always intended to be used. good luck to them.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 15:28 UTC (Wed) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link]
You attribute an awful lot to "him" personally here! I don't think a constructive counter-argument could be made until you've provided some citations for those claims.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 15:31 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
There's this wonderful thing called a search engine. You should try it some day.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 0:18 UTC (Wed) by kklimonda (subscriber, #60089) [Link]
upstart actually supports socket activation http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/natty/man7/socket-eve...
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 7:51 UTC (Wed) by mezcalero (subscriber, #45103) [Link]
This kind of Upstart socket activation is pointless and misses the point entirely. It is not useful to parallelize boot-up, only for doing on-demand activation of services. But the on-demand activation is really not that interesting, the parallized boot-up however is.
I have pointed that out a couple of time to the Upstart developers, but that didn't help. They entirely miss the point of socket activation with their bridge, and just confuse everybody with this half-assed implementation.
Or to say this with different words: Upstart tries to map socket activation into an "event" (since for Upstart everything is about "events"), however sockets are not events, they are established for a long time, and need to be passed to services even without an event actually being triggered.
Let me stress that: Upstart does *NOT* support socket activation in the way how it would actually be useful.
Lennart
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