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Author Topic: From Canonical's drink the kool-aid dept: Unity - sign on, or sign out  (Read 5098 times)

40hz

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Well...Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical has finally uttered the anticipated "drink the kool-aid" speech on his blog regarding Ubuntu's new direction. In it, he gets into where he's coming from - and where those who don't see it the same way as he does should feel free to go...

His words make for an interesting combination of hubris, begging the question, deflection, issue reframing, and historical revisionism. But I guess that's what makes so many of our modern visionaries "Modern Visionaries."

"So it goes." :-\

Some unwarranted melodrama

The sky is not falling in.

Really.

Ubuntu is a group of people who get together with common purpose. How we achieve that purpose is up to us, and everyone has a say in what they can and will contribute. Canonical’s contribution is massive. It’s simply nonsense to say that Canonical gets ‘what it wants’ more than anybody else. Hell, half the time *I* don’t get exactly what I want. It just doesn’t work that way: lots of people work hard to the best of their abilities, the result is Ubuntu.

The combination of Canonical and community is what makes that amazing. There are lots of pure community distro’s. And wow, they are full of politics, spite, frustration, venality and disappointment. Why? Because people are people, and work is hard, and collaboration is even harder. That’s nothing to do with Canonical, and everything to do with life. In fact, in most of the pure-community projects I’ve watched and participated in, the biggest meme is ‘if only we had someone that could do the heavy lifting’. Ubuntu has that in Canonical – and the combination of our joint efforts has become the most popular platform for Linux fans.

If you’ve done what you want for Ubuntu, then move on. That’s normal – there’s no need to poison the well behind you just because you want to try something else.

It’s also the case that we’ve shifted gear to leadership rather than integration.


When we started, we said we wanted to deliver the best of open source on a cadence. It was up to KDE, GNOME, XFCE to define what that was going to look like, we would just integrate and deliver (a hard problem in itself). By 2009 I was convinced that none of the existing free software communities could create an experience that could challenge the existing proprietary leaders, and so, if we were serious about the dream of a free software norm, we would have to lead.

The result is Unity, which is an experience that could become widely adopted across phones, tablets, PCs and other devices. Of course, that is a disruptive change, and has caused some members of existing communities to resent our work.
I respect that others may prefer different experiences, so we remain willing to do a large (but not unlimited) amount of work to enable KDE, GNOME, and other DEs to thrive inside the broader Ubuntu umbrella. We also take steps to accommodate developers who want to support both Unity and another DE. But if we want to get beyond being a platform for hobbyists, we need to accelerate the work on Unity to keep up with Android, Chrome, Windows and Apple. And that’s more important than taking care of the needs of those who don’t share our goal of a free software norm.

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

Everyone that I care about in open source has a shared dream: they want free software to become the norm, not the exception. And Ubuntu is the only way I can see for that to happen, which is why I spend all my time on it, and why so many other people spend huge amounts of time on it too.

I simply have zero interest in the crowd who wants to be different. Leet. ‘Linux is supposed to be hard so it’s exclusive’ is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say. People being people, there are of course smart people who hold that view.

What I’m really interested in is this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a free and open platform that is THE LEADER across both consumer and enterprise computing.

With Ubuntu (and Unity) we have that. It’s amazing. Think about it – unlike years gone by, a free software platform is actually winning awards for innovative leadership in the categories that count: mobile, cloud. Investing your time and energy here might have a truly profound impact on the world.
That’s worth digging into. Just roll your eyeballs at the 1337 crowd, roll up your sleeves, find something interesting to improve, and join in. To the extent that you can master a piece, you will get what you want. If you think the grand vision should follow your whims, you won’t.

If we work hard, and work together, Ubuntu will become a widespread platform for phones, tablets and PCs. You’ll have the satisfaction of designing, building and fixing tools that are used every day by millions of people. That’s meaningful. And it’s worth looking hard at our practices to ask the question: how best to achieve that goal?
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mahesh2k

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well it's canonical and not FSF and gnu. He pays the bill for the work done at that place. why he should have the same vision like FSF and GNU? I am with him on that. If you can tolerate MS, Apple and others for their corporate stuff, what's wrong if another walled garden comes into this? If you like it use it or leave it.

zridling

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Shuttleworth has long written checks his company couldn't cash on his Ubuntu claims. Forget his desktop products, which I think are mostly silly. Did get a chance to play with Ubuntu Touch (mobile) and while it's no Android killer, it's very nice. It needs work with bars disappearing too quickly and learning which type of swipe -- or tap -- opens what. But at least it's the first promising thing Canonical has offered IMO since 2006.

40hz

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what's wrong if another walled garden comes into this

Because, with all due respect, it's not his friggin' garden to wall in. He's building his product in top of man years of development effort and coding - and millions of lines of source - he had nothing to do with, let alone pay a dime for.

That's what. :)

mahesh2k

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No. Ubuntu products arent bad its the people who dont like changes. The nature of free and open source license offers him to do that another walled garden. Is he violating gpl? No. Is he pissing off community that hates making money and changes to traditional thinking? Yes.

40hz

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No. Ubuntu products arent bad its the people who dont like changes.

Purely your own personal opinion. And not a very well considered or provable one.

The nature of free and open source license offers him to do that another walled garden.

Incorrect. If that is your interpretation of FOSS you're sadly mistaken. No matter which FOSS license (there are several BTW) you're misinterpreting here.

Is he violating gpl? No.

Hard to say. You'll need to be much more specific as to what you're talking about him doing - as well as which license you're referring to - before this can be discussed with any degree of intelligence or rationality.

Is he pissing off community that hates making money and changes to traditional thinking? Yes.

Again, your own very personal opinion - and not a very well considered or provable one.

But to each his/her own. If all of the above is truly what you believe - and you're happy with such rationalizations - then I wish you well. :)


mahesh2k

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Purely your own personal opinion. And not a very well considered or provable one.
Since when opinion need to be provable? It's opinion for a reason, not a fact, we are talking about products with taste from consumers, not a meteor 12k light years away from earth that needs proof for it's existence. Besides that comment was for zen, for his comment -"Forget his desktop products, which I think are mostly silly.". If you think I should be giving proof for my opinion, I would love to have proof for products of canonical being silly.

Incorrect. If that is your interpretation of FOSS you're sadly mistaken. No matter which FOSS license (there are several BTW) you're misinterpreting here.
Not at all. Redhat and many other OSS software providers are using Open source for their own walled garden, many of the open source SAAS services are not available unless user purchase the subscription or license. FSF and GNU never took objection on that part of OSS but more on the SAAS nature of the OSS that restricts people form code. You can go to GNU for that article from stallman. There is a reason why stallman is against OSS. He doesn't oppose paywall, he opposes paywall that restricts the code distribution. If the canonical always distributed the code of their paywall and product behind paywall, on which point you are going to take objection? Community taste of not liking their products? that's just not rational at all.


Hard to say. You'll need to be much more specific as to what you're talking about him doing - as well as which license you're referring to - before this can be discussed with any degree of intelligence or rationality.
Canonical is not losing grounds on the GPL. They have a community that keeps eye on such things. I would be interested to see even stallman finding violation of GPL from canonical. All the ubuntu code is open, even unity, and few other commercial apps included.

Again, your own very personal opinion - and not a very well considered or provable one.
Same like my first answer.

1) Give me proof for Canonical violating GPL.
2) Give me proof for canonical products being silly. And also what qualifies for being silly and how one should not be silly, examples etc.
3) What needs to be proven in order to show you how the haters of canonical and unity, don't contribute positive to the growth of respective software other than the attacks on unity, ubuntu and canonical?

KDE spokesperson talking against ubuntu policies just because ubuntu's mobile product is in competition with their kde product, shows nothing but a piss poor attitude to drive away people from ubuntu. That's enough for me to say ubuntu or say canonical is pissing off hardcore community, that dont like design changes, money making model of any other FOSS company.

Renegade

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I simply have zero interest in the crowd who wants to be different. Leet. ‘Linux is supposed to be hard so it’s exclusive’ is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say.

+1

He's bang on there. That has held Linux back.

Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

40hz

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Out of curiosity, has anybody actually bothered to follow (or do a little research to catch up) on exactly how Canonical has been operating when it comes to Mir - which is what this discussion was originally supposed to be about in case anybody is wondering?

If you do, I think you'd be far less likely to buy Canonical's story - or parrot back Mr. Shuttleworth's canned talking points and transparent ad hominem propaganda.

Just thinking out loud here.., :-\

Renegade

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^^ Nope. They lost me at Unity. I'd been using some Unbuntu distros before, but when Unity came out... Gone.
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

40hz

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@Ren - well...thats only because you're a Ubuntu hater, and opposed to progress and anybody making any money - to say nothing of being an elitist techno-snob.

"Strength through Unity.
Unity through Faith."

Or at least so goes the semi-official party line.
 :) :P ;D
« Last Edit: March 09, 2013, 09:52 AM by 40hz »