Why care about upstream?

Posted Aug 12, 2010 0:03 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639)
In reply to: Why care about upstream? by rahvin
Parent article: Ubuntu: "We have no plans to fork GNOME" (derStandard.at)

There's another possibility. Shuttleworth could reformulate the Canonical/Ubuntu relationship into a non-profit similar in structure to the Mozilla foundation with a for-profit subsidiary.

In a lot of very important ways that may be the better organizational model which turns the current relationship of community and corporate control on its head. A reorg that puts the public-good nature of the Ubuntu project concept as the controlling entity under which a for-profit Canonical would serve as a business entity would fix a lot of the problems that are causing friction now. But Shuttleworth would have to be willing to let community interests reign supreme instead of being something to be leveraged for business interests. Something he's not shown any signs of doing yet.

-jef

Why care about upstream?

Posted Aug 12, 2010 0:38 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

the problem is how you define 'community interests'

a lot of the complaints voiced here are not things that I would consider the ubuntu community to have much interest in.

'Ubuntu community interests' probably don't directly include redhat developer or gnome developer interests (there is sure to be some overlap, but there is also sure to be areas of disagreement.

many people act as if calling something a community means that there is harmony and everyone agrees.

right now, I doubt that there is that large a portion of the ubuntu community that is unhappy with how things are being done. There are some very vocal people, but so much noise is coming from outside that community.

by the way, why are you not calling for Novell, Suse, Mandriva (or whatever their name is this year ;-) to reorganize the same way? they all have for-profit companies in control.

Why care about upstream?

Posted Aug 12, 2010 1:10 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

I am not calling for anyone to reorganize. I postulated a third option beyond death and buyout one that has the possibility of providing benefits to the open ecosystem that neither of those other scenarios provide for.

And you are right, the history of mozilla foundation as an incorporated entity is instructive and valuable for multiple corporate entities bwho have intellectual property in development that they believe is high impact on society at large and want to try to ensure those works and ideas are made widely available and globally accessible regardless of the (mis)fortunes of one particular sponsoring company. I'm not sure the other corporate entities that you mention have leadership which have made it their mission to provide deep societal impact and global accessibility as significant themes in their project sponsorship. Shuttleworth has in his visioneering for what Ubuntu is meant to be and to provide. And in this way a Mozilla like structuring maybe a better fit as an implementation detail for that vision if the current structure is determined to be unworkable.

I can't imagine a buyout scenario that would leave Ubuntu in a position to continue work towards its wide-spread availability goals but I can imagine a non-profit structuring which would allow multiple corporate interests to underwrite the project to allow it to continue based on the value they see in an Ubuntu project without having to funnel support through Canonical as a single controlling entity by purchasing engineering and support services from Canonical they don't actually value.

-jef