Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld) [LWN.net]

Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

Posted Feb 2, 2008 10:09 UTC (Sat) by Beineri (guest, #39002)
In reply to: Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld) by kripkenstein
Parent article: Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

> Canonical was very open about the reasons for not LTSing Kubuntu

Wrong, they pushed forward faulty arguments like the state of KDE4 and the 
one you mention.

> that shipping 3.5.x means they need to support it for 3 years. [..] 
> This leaves Canonical with a single in-house KDE developer in charge of 
> maintaining KDE 3.5.x, which is a considerable burden and risk.

If Canonical/Shuttleworth isn't willing to invest the necessary money to 
be able to support Kubuntu LTS for 3 years (in the worst case alone) but 
on the other side wants to earn money by selling support contracts for a 
version labelled LTS then this is a problem of Canonical/Shuttleworth's 
understanding of how "selling support as added value" works in the Open 
Source business and not of upstream/the KDE project!

About the worst case, Canonical employee claim that upstream will not 
continue to support KDE 3.5 codebase long enough but they never asked the 
KDE project and that claim is wrong. Also they would not be the alone one 
doing the work, as eg Novell supports KDE 3.5 code base as part of SLED 10 
until 2011 (extended even 2013).

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Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

Posted Feb 2, 2008 10:44 UTC (Sat) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link]

> About the worst case, Canonical employee claim that upstream will not continue to support
KDE 3.5 codebase long enough but they never asked the KDE project and that claim is wrong.
Also they would not be the alone one doing the work, as eg Novell supports KDE 3.5 code base
as part of SLED 10 until 2011 (extended even 2013).

I disagree with the first part, and agree with the second one.

1. The KDE project can say that it intends to support KDE 3.5.x for 3 years, but Canonical is
being realistic here: KDE is a volunteer project. Supporting KDE 3.5.x is not a glorious job,
and hence most people will prefer to hack on 4.x. Furthermore, the KDE project cannot *commit*
in any binding sense to supporting KDE 3.5.x for three years, such a commitment has no
standing. The volunteer developers can change their minds tomorrow - one of the perks of being
a volunteer. Canonical feels that this is too risky, and I tend to agree.

2. You're right about Novell, Canonical wouldn't be alone with the problem. While it doesn't
solve the problem, it might make it much more reasonable. So I do see your point - Canonical
could have made an effort to support Kubuntu as LTS for 8.04.

Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

Posted Feb 3, 2008 0:32 UTC (Sun) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link] (2 responses)

"If Canonical/Shuttleworth isn't willing to invest the necessary money to be able to support Kubuntu LTS for 3 years (in the worst case alone) but on the other side wants to earn money by selling support contracts for a version labelled LTS then this is a problem of Canonical/Shuttleworth's understanding of how "selling support as added value" works in the Open Source business and not of upstream/the KDE project!"

Er, are you willing to pay Canonical extra for KDE in your 8.04 LTS support contract? Are you willing to pay them at all? Do you know anyone who is?

Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

Posted Feb 3, 2008 8:12 UTC (Sun) by Beineri (guest, #39002) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm for sure not within the target audience of Canonical. :-) If Canonical 
has no (potential) Kubuntu LTS customers then why can't they openly and 
honestly say that instead of spreading something like "we would like to 
sell a Kubuntu LTS product but upstream/the community doesn't support us"?

Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

Posted Feb 3, 2008 15:38 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Both situations are not mutually exclusive. The middle ground could be something like "we would like to sell a Kubuntu LTS product but upstream/the community doesn't support us -- to the extent that the product would be profitable". Maybe they would need to hire x additional KDE developers, but the number of expected Kubuntu customers would only pay for x-2. I think it is coherent with what they are saying.

Talking about your projections of the expected number of customers in public is not always a smart thing to do.

Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

Posted Feb 3, 2008 4:14 UTC (Sun) by tbrownaw (guest, #45457) [Link] (1 responses)

>> Canonical was very open about the reasons for not LTSing Kubuntu

>Wrong, they pushed forward faulty arguments like the state of KDE4 and the one you mention.

Why does their presented reasoning being supposedly faulty automatically mean that they
weren't honest about that reasoning?

Aaron Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the Desktop (ComputerWorld)

Posted Feb 7, 2008 20:46 UTC (Thu) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

If you assume they are stupid, you could argue their arguments were 
honest. I assume they're not, so they knew it was bull when they said it. 
Pretty dishonest, if you ask me.