Thanks for making my argument [LWN.net]

Thanks for making my argument

Posted Mar 6, 2013 15:51 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Thanks for making my argument by raven667
Parent article: Canonical reveals plans to launch Mir display server (The H)

Untrue, affiliations, including corporate alliances, can easily bias us and subconsciously at that. To scoff at that is to deny provable human nature.

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Thanks for making my argument

Posted Mar 6, 2013 16:04 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Oh, and if some free software programmer's view of something *were* biased because, e.g. that something was the product of a competitor of their employer or their employer's corporate allies, that does NOT make them a bad person. Indeed, I would *expect* a person to be biased toward acting in the interests of their employer - that would make them a *good employee*.

Such biases do exist, at various levels of consciousness. That is not to condemn them. However, we should be aware of them, and take care to note affiliations.

Thanks for making my argument

Posted Mar 6, 2013 16:16 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

While at some level what you say is true I'm not sure it applies strongly in this case. Linux developers come from a wide range of companies and while they may be directed to work on a particular part of the system which is strategically important to their employer, they generally show more loyalty to Linux itself than to whichever company is currently paying them.

As far as I can tell, dissing Canonical provides no tactical or strategic benefit to any particular vendor who is involved in this discussion

Thanks for making my argument

Posted Mar 6, 2013 16:28 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Perhaps in this case, not strongly, sure.

However, there's been a number of times over the last few years where from several rouge capped free software people have snipped at Canonical, with a common theme that Canonical is somehow free-riding. The sub-text seems to be that Canonical gets more of the user-base with Ubuntu and recognition than their share of the work deserves. Guess who employees a lot of the people doing the work?

To think there is absolutely no element of corporate competition to this story seems, I'm sorry, a little naïve. Both in terms of Canonical choosing not to hitch their wagon to Wayland, and in the (predominantly) RedHat and Intel employees' reactions to that. There are pure, technical elements too, of course...

Thanks for making my argument

Posted Mar 6, 2013 19:34 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

> There are pure, technical elements too, of course...
Like what? So far, every technical reason named by Canonical either has been disproven or is phrased too vaguely to ever be.