Iterative development/continuous improvement

Posted Aug 10, 2010 0:03 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639)
In reply to: Iterative development/continuous improvement by sladen
Parent article: Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)

Uhm... don't confuse the very very good papercuts project with the other design initiatives which are being done entirely at the distribution level and which is the focus of the Q/A in the interview. Mr. Bacon didn't mention Papercuts in that interview at all.. you are broadening the discussion a bit too far to try to make your point. Certainly Jono Bacon was not including Papercuts when he was talking about "swapping stuff in and out." And this is the very particular quote that otaylor is commenting on here. To bring up papercuts in defense of efforts like notify-osd and libindicate..things which require copyright assignment back to Canonical... is to change the subject entirely.

That being said. Papercuts is worthy of being lifted up specifically because its so atypically upstream focused in comparison to much of the other work that is going on. If the deliberate care that was being shown in how upstream feedback is handled in the papercuts initiative was being shown in the other work there would be much less friction. And no ridiculous copyright assignment requirements because its understood that papercuts is a contribution to a larger whole. Papercuts is proof that someone inside Canonical knows what it takes to _contribute_ to upstream projects in a constructive manner.

We don't even have to use the hand wavy definition of Ayatana as an upstream project that Jono uses in this interview. In fact Papercuts is an initiative that works against that already strained definition. Papercuts shows the Ayatana idea at its best exactly because Ayatana is _not_ trying to act as an upstream project but as a conduit for contributions to existing projects. Papercuts as a project stands apart because its is explicitly focused on contributing to existing upstream projects outside of Canonical's direct control. All the more reason to scratch one's head when others inside Canonical choose to work at the distribution level instead of contributing to the existing upstream project roadmaps.

-jef

Iterative development/continuous improvement

Posted Aug 11, 2010 8:11 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (1 responses)

Jef, for all your Ubuntu bashing, I admire your objective and constructive stance that you are sometimes taking. Yes, the papercuts project is certainly a worthwhile effort. And they really try to take these things upstream, it is sometimes a bit depressing to see various upstream be completely uninterested, snobbish, overly defensive or ignoring the upstream bugs for months. It does take lots of efforts to get small but good stuff upstream in some (not all) cases!

Iterative development/continuous improvement

Posted Aug 11, 2010 17:12 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Correction, I bash Canonical very deliberately. It's been like watching Shuttleworth open up the valve to an irrigation cistern wide open and watching the water spread out over fertile but wild soil and Canonical then trying to till and farm the result without much thought on what to do about keeping the cistern full and the irrigation water flowing. It's simply not a sustainable way of doing things.

If I have ever spoken ill of the Ubuntu project as concept then I have done so in error. But I have most definitely been an outspoken critic of how Canonical as a for-profit corporate entity has chosen to manage that project and how Canonical chooses to blur business interests with community interests. A critic of how Canonical execs choose to couch strategic business decisions in the language of community sentiment instead of factual information. A critic of how Canonical execs wrap themselves in the protection of the banner of community when such business decisions are publicly challenged instead of addressing the concern as stated making any such challenge an implied attack on the Ubuntu community leaving the underlying question of Canonical's ability to execute any business strategy unanswered.

-jef