Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)

Posted Aug 10, 2010 14:43 UTC (Tue) by ean5533 (guest, #69480)
In reply to: Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at) by rahulsundaram
Parent article: Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)

"This is no big deal. Canonical would just have to revise and propose again till it gets upstream like everyone else."

And what if it gets rejected again? Are they then allowed to say "well, we tried" and give up? Exactly how many iterations are they required to go through before they're allowed to just move on to other work without being hounded?

I think there's a fundamental miscommunication between the two sides of this debate. I don't think people who are on "Ubuntu's side" are arguing that Canonical is giving back just as much as, say, RedHat is giving back; rather, I think everyone (including myself) is just tired of hearing Canonical being trashed by those who aren't happy with the amount of upstream patches being accepted. For the last two weeks everyone has been jumping on the "we hate Canonical" bandwagon and it's honestly gotten very old, very quickly.

Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)

Posted Aug 10, 2010 15:20 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

There is no bright line divide. If they want to give up on first try and move on, that is certainly their choice but if you wanted to make a feature a part of a larger project, it usually requires more persistence than that. If you can live with that divergence, more power to you. It has been my experience that downstreams sooner or latter realize that it is too much of a burden even if it does buy you some uniqueness in the shorter run.

Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)

Posted Aug 10, 2010 17:23 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (5 responses)

> For the last two weeks everyone has been jumping on the "we hate
> Canonical" bandwagon and it's honestly gotten very old, very quickly.

If you can't stand two weeks of bad press, how to you think people feel about five years of Canonical marketing push to create the image they are a major Linux contributor (if not *the* major Linux contributor), while actually contributing very little (as every study that actually tried to count contributions shows)?

Part of the press has even started using "Ubuntu" as "Linux logo", that's how hard Canonical has pushed to claim the work of others (and people get mad at RMS just for pre-pending GNU to Linux, when the FSF has actually produced boatloads of code everyone uses).

Life is unfair but there is nothing unfair about the blame Canonical is getting today.

Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)

Posted Aug 10, 2010 22:51 UTC (Tue) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link]

> If you can't stand two weeks of bad press, how to you think people feel about five years of Canonical marketing push to create the image they are a major Linux contributor (if not *the* major Linux contributor)

I'm sorry, what? No such 'marketing push' ever existed AFAIK.

Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)

Posted Aug 11, 2010 11:58 UTC (Wed) by ean5533 (guest, #69480) [Link] (3 responses)

"If you can't stand two weeks of bad press, how to you think people feel about five years of Canonical marketing push to create the image they are a major Linux contributor (if not *the* major Linux contributor)"

If you could dredge up ANY kind of proof that a marketing campaign like this existed, I'd be surprised. But by all means, please try. Until then, please don't spread B.S. rumors like this.

Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)

Posted Aug 11, 2010 13:27 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (2 responses)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10092376-16.html

> Ubuntu and Canonical are making a very big difference in free
> software, and that has little to do with how many patches in the kernel
> have an @canonical.com e-mail address associated with them

[...]

> Canonical has been hiring usability and design experts to feed
> improvements to the "upstream" Linux community.

Can "upstream" here mean anything but GNOME?

> It is hard to overstate
> how important this work could prove to be to consumer Linux adoption.

Two years later someone actually measures the improvements Canonical fed "upstream" and finds precious little.

(just an example found after 10s of Googling, I don't think I had even read this particular article before).

I don't think Canonical would have hired Matt Asay later if there was any disagreement on how it reported Canonical views.

Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)

Posted Aug 11, 2010 17:04 UTC (Wed) by ean5533 (guest, #69480) [Link] (1 responses)

That? That's your proof that Canonical had "five years of Canonical marketing push to create the image they are a major Linux contributor (if not *the* major Linux contributor)"? There's a huge difference between "we're hiring experts" and "we're *the* major Linux contributor".

Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)

Posted Aug 11, 2010 19:24 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

You didn't ask for a good proof, you asked for "ANY proof". And I don't have the time to do a complete web survey for you (I do note that there is only one side of the debate providing actual facts backed by external links here, and it's not yours).

I do suspect that a literature major would have a field day collating all the public Shuttleworth interviews, blogs and articles, and counting all the occurrences of:
1. some FLOSS players need to do foo or bar (when those players are totally outside Canonical's control, but the words used imply to non-technical reporters Canonical either has this kind of control or is owed it)
2. Canonical wants others to do foo like it is going to now, followed later by see how influent we are, we asked for foo and others *are* doing foo now (when they were already doing foo long before Canonical realised it was a good idea)
3. Canonical is going to invest heavily in foo, and the future will be wonderful (when the heavy investment never materialises except in press articles)

Taken alone each of those is pretty innocent, repeated again and again they create a perception in the press which has little to do with reality. This is what I call a deliberate marketing push.

But feel free to point out examples where Canonical has actually given the press an accurate assessment of its capabilities.