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I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world. They set their own agenda with limited cooperation. The F

I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world. They set their own agenda with limited cooperation. The FOSS obsession with "community" and "integration" is myopic and abhorrent. As if everyone must converge on one approach, one vanguard. There are scantly any problem domains where only one solution applies. Now, Canonical keeping to themselves has a very crucial advantage: they leave everyone else alone. They stay in their corner, they don't bother, they don't intervene. They don't start a massive integration effort to drag everyone else in every time they devise something new. We should be commending Canonical for this.

mannykannot 11y ago
>I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world. That is why I watch its progress with a certain degree of suspicion (disclaimer: I am a user of Apple and Canonical products.)
hohenheim 11y ago
Canonical's contribution is welcomed as long as people could continue it without getting blocked by their IP. There is no obsession over "community" or "integration" as you stated. It is a valid concern that if others can not contribute freely, we are killing the essential of what made Ubuntu possible.
weland 11y ago
> Now, Canonical keeping to themselves has a very crucial advantage: they leave everyone else alone. They stay in their corner, they don't bother, they don't intervene I certainly get why it would be in their interest to not have much collaboration. But if that's a problem for them, they should not have based their business around GPLd products. All these problems could very easily go away if Ubuntu were a FreeBSD distribution, not a Linux one. This "stay in their corner, don't bother, don't intervene" does bother developers who increasingly have to code for Windows, OS X, Linux and, separately, Ubuntu. It's very unpleasant, and they're getting a lot of hate because users are suffering just because Canonical's business plan was shit.
creshal 11y ago
> They set their own agenda with limited cooperation. Canonical depends on their community for everything from the very OS (Debian) to marketing to support. Yet, they're crippling their community at the same time with their IP policy and their general refusal to integrate with software projects they depend on for survival. This is, simply, unsustainable. Canonical cannot fork everything and do their own thing (not without quickly going bankrupt – unlike Apple, which has no problem with say, developing their own SMB stack if needed); and they cannot continue alienating potential (and current) users and upstream sources.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Which is Canonical's problem, and no one else's. Again, this is a positive. Canonical get to experiment without tangling other parties in. Why are you treating this as zero-sum?
  - creshal 11y ago
    > Which is Canonical's problem, and no one else's. It then becomes the problem of its users, and rapidly the problem of userland developers, because users expect their software to just work in Ubuntu. Developers can now go and waste effort just to comply to Canonical's de facto walled garden, or lose all Ubuntu users (furthering the "Linux is too complicated and fragmented!" narrative). Everybody loses, nobody wins.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      Assuming binary-only distribution, you already have this problem for a multitude of distros. If you're employing such a proprietary model, you'll obviously have problems you'll need to overcome. Assuming source distribution, I do not see any special effort required. This is a protectionist, anti-choice argument.
      - creshal 11y ago
        > Assuming source distribution, I do not see any special effort required. No special effort to support Mir/Unity/upstart? Other Ubuntu-only APIs, standards, UX, Kernel/Library versions not employed by other distributions, …? (Upstart was killed when even Canonical realized it was impossible to demand of everyone else to support their special snowflake init system.)
madez 11y ago
Not all agendas and interests are born equal. That someone else does the same thing does not make it any better. It is insulting from you to call the demand for inclusion and giving back as "myopic" and "abhorrent". Like with social interaction, we don't need everybody to be the same, but we very much demand some core principles to be followed. Would you call that myopic and abhorrent?
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  I don't even know what "demanding inclusion" means here. Most complaints about Canonical's exclusivity underpin a utopian fantasy that everyone in the Linux community must converge towards one holy solution. Any deviation is considered "fragmentation" and brutally discouraged.
  - madez 11y ago
    I was referring to Canonical's decision to make it difficult for others to use their work, thereby excluding others from their work.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    There are two ways of looking at this, and those ways depend entirely on how you use Linux. One way is that, by having a "one holy solution", you avoid fragmentation and get more stuff working on end-user's systems with minimal hassle. This is why, for example, Steam targets Ubuntu. They're the 800lb gorilla of the Linux world, and if someone is a desktop Linux user, odds are high they're using Ubuntu rather than anything else. They target the most users with the least hassle. The end user doesn't want to mess with dependencies, compilation, desktop environments, and so forth. They want their shit to work. Fragmentation is an impediment to this from a usability standpoint, and that's before we even talk about security (e.g. Android). The other way is that by these tightly integrated, non-interoperable stacks like Unity and Systemd make life miserable for every other Linux user in the world who values the ability that they can sample this init system, that window manager, etc, and build a system that fits their needs much more closely than any of the tightly integrated one-size-fits-all solutions. This isn't a false dichotomy either - there are no companies out there nowadays that make good software that works really well for end users with minimal hassle, while allowing the degree of customization and interchangeability that power users demand. So pick your poison, I guess.
cwyers 11y ago
Here's a good example. Canonical comes up with a replacement for sysvinit called Upstart. Everyone agrees sysvinit is a dumpster fire on wheels careening around at high speed, so a new init system is welcomed as a Good Thing. Some people from Red Hat wanted to contribute improvements to Upstart, but Canonical insisted on a Contributor Licensing Agreement that would allow Canonical to relicense the work however they wanted, including commercially. Shockingly, Red Hat employees couldn't get clearance to do uncompensated labor for a Canonical project like that, so rather than contribute to Upstart, we got systemd. Eventually, systemd became so [PICK ONE OF SUCCESSFUL OR BELIGERENT] that Debian adopted it. And at that point... game over for Upstart. Ubuntu uses systemd now. Because they don't have the resources to package everything for Upstart if Debian is moving to systemd. The thing is, Canonical isn't that well resourced. Look at who contributes to the Linux kernel.[1] Looking at the top 10 sponsors of contributors, we see some of the usual suspects -- Intel, Red Hat, Linaro, Samsung, IBM, SuSE. We see "Vision Engraving Systems," weirdly. Going out of the top 10, a lot of hardware vendors, spits Oracle, FOSS Outreach Program for Women, Pengutronix... I mean, look at the homepage for Pengutronix. [2] It's some 90s era HTML 4.01 they've got going on there. But they're able to make significant contributions to the Linux kernel. Canonical isn't on the list. Canonical has NEVER been on the list, so far as I can tell. You can look all up and down the stack, there's a handful of Canonical-only projects they contribute to, but they're a rounding error in overall Linux development. Which is their right, of course -- the GPL doesn't insist upon contributing back. And I would agree that shaming Canonical about community isn't productive. At the same time, Apple isn't what they are, it's what they want to be but are failing at being. Apple can get away with incorporating BSD code into their OS but still writing vast swaths of it themselves because Apple doesn't need any of the BSDs to adopt launchd to make it feasible for them to keep running it. Apple has money and can pay people to write code. And on the desktop, OS X has twice the market share of every Linux distro combined, so they can get developers to write applications for their OS even though it doesn't follow the lead of the rest of the BSD-derived OSes. (And yes, I know that OS X resembles a BSD distro far, far less than Ubuntu resembles Debian.) You're right that Canonical wants to be the Apple of the Linux world. But they're not succeeding at it and they're not GOING to succeed without some way of becoming profitable that has yet eluded them. And developers don't want the burden of having to support Canonicals quixiotic insistence that they are the Apple of the Linux world. [1] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linux-foundation/who-writes-linux-2015 http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linux-foundation... (Also, why do I have to tell the Linux Foundation who I work for in order to read this report?) [2] http://www.pengutronix.de/index_en.html http://www.pengutronix.de/index_en.html
eptcyka 11y ago
>I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world. They set their own agenda with limited cooperation. I'm not sure why would anyone think this is a good thing

mannykannot 11y ago

>I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world. That is why I watch its progress with a certain degree of suspicion (disclaimer: I am a user of Apple and Canonical products.)

hohenheim 11y ago

Canonical's contribution is welcomed as long as people could continue it without getting blocked by their IP. There is no obsession over "community" or "integration" as you stated. It is a valid concern that if others can not contribute freely, we are killing the essential of what made Ubuntu possible.

weland 11y ago

> Now, Canonical keeping to themselves has a very crucial advantage: they leave everyone else alone. They stay in their corner, they don't bother, they don't intervene I certainly get why it would be in their interest to not have much collaboration. But if that's a problem for them, they should not have based their business around GPLd products. All these problems could very easily go away if Ubuntu were a FreeBSD distribution, not a Linux one. This "stay in their corner, don't bother, don't intervene" does bother developers who increasingly have to code for Windows, OS X, Linux and, separately, Ubuntu. It's very unpleasant, and they're getting a lot of hate because users are suffering just because Canonical's business plan was shit.

creshal 11y ago

> They set their own agenda with limited cooperation. Canonical depends on their community for everything from the very OS (Debian) to marketing to support. Yet, they're crippling their community at the same time with their IP policy and their general refusal to integrate with software projects they depend on for survival. This is, simply, unsustainable. Canonical cannot fork everything and do their own thing (not without quickly going bankrupt – unlike Apple, which has no problem with say, developing their own SMB stack if needed); and they cannot continue alienating potential (and current) users and upstream sources.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Which is Canonical's problem, and no one else's. Again, this is a positive. Canonical get to experiment without tangling other parties in. Why are you treating this as zero-sum?
- creshal 11y ago
  > Which is Canonical's problem, and no one else's. It then becomes the problem of its users, and rapidly the problem of userland developers, because users expect their software to just work in Ubuntu. Developers can now go and waste effort just to comply to Canonical's de facto walled garden, or lose all Ubuntu users (furthering the "Linux is too complicated and fragmented!" narrative). Everybody loses, nobody wins.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Assuming binary-only distribution, you already have this problem for a multitude of distros. If you're employing such a proprietary model, you'll obviously have problems you'll need to overcome. Assuming source distribution, I do not see any special effort required. This is a protectionist, anti-choice argument.
    - creshal 11y ago
      > Assuming source distribution, I do not see any special effort required. No special effort to support Mir/Unity/upstart? Other Ubuntu-only APIs, standards, UX, Kernel/Library versions not employed by other distributions, …? (Upstart was killed when even Canonical realized it was impossible to demand of everyone else to support their special snowflake init system.)

madez 11y ago

Not all agendas and interests are born equal. That someone else does the same thing does not make it any better. It is insulting from you to call the demand for inclusion and giving back as "myopic" and "abhorrent". Like with social interaction, we don't need everybody to be the same, but we very much demand some core principles to be followed. Would you call that myopic and abhorrent?

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
I don't even know what "demanding inclusion" means here. Most complaints about Canonical's exclusivity underpin a utopian fantasy that everyone in the Linux community must converge towards one holy solution. Any deviation is considered "fragmentation" and brutally discouraged.
- madez 11y ago
  I was referring to Canonical's decision to make it difficult for others to use their work, thereby excluding others from their work.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  There are two ways of looking at this, and those ways depend entirely on how you use Linux. One way is that, by having a "one holy solution", you avoid fragmentation and get more stuff working on end-user's systems with minimal hassle. This is why, for example, Steam targets Ubuntu. They're the 800lb gorilla of the Linux world, and if someone is a desktop Linux user, odds are high they're using Ubuntu rather than anything else. They target the most users with the least hassle. The end user doesn't want to mess with dependencies, compilation, desktop environments, and so forth. They want their shit to work. Fragmentation is an impediment to this from a usability standpoint, and that's before we even talk about security (e.g. Android). The other way is that by these tightly integrated, non-interoperable stacks like Unity and Systemd make life miserable for every other Linux user in the world who values the ability that they can sample this init system, that window manager, etc, and build a system that fits their needs much more closely than any of the tightly integrated one-size-fits-all solutions. This isn't a false dichotomy either - there are no companies out there nowadays that make good software that works really well for end users with minimal hassle, while allowing the degree of customization and interchangeability that power users demand. So pick your poison, I guess.

cwyers 11y ago

Here's a good example. Canonical comes up with a replacement for sysvinit called Upstart. Everyone agrees sysvinit is a dumpster fire on wheels careening around at high speed, so a new init system is welcomed as a Good Thing. Some people from Red Hat wanted to contribute improvements to Upstart, but Canonical insisted on a Contributor Licensing Agreement that would allow Canonical to relicense the work however they wanted, including commercially. Shockingly, Red Hat employees couldn't get clearance to do uncompensated labor for a Canonical project like that, so rather than contribute to Upstart, we got systemd. Eventually, systemd became so [PICK ONE OF SUCCESSFUL OR BELIGERENT] that Debian adopted it. And at that point... game over for Upstart. Ubuntu uses systemd now. Because they don't have the resources to package everything for Upstart if Debian is moving to systemd. The thing is, Canonical isn't that well resourced. Look at who contributes to the Linux kernel.[1] Looking at the top 10 sponsors of contributors, we see some of the usual suspects -- Intel, Red Hat, Linaro, Samsung, IBM, SuSE. We see "Vision Engraving Systems," weirdly. Going out of the top 10, a lot of hardware vendors, spits Oracle, FOSS Outreach Program for Women, Pengutronix... I mean, look at the homepage for Pengutronix. [2] It's some 90s era HTML 4.01 they've got going on there. But they're able to make significant contributions to the Linux kernel. Canonical isn't on the list. Canonical has NEVER been on the list, so far as I can tell. You can look all up and down the stack, there's a handful of Canonical-only projects they contribute to, but they're a rounding error in overall Linux development. Which is their right, of course -- the GPL doesn't insist upon contributing back. And I would agree that shaming Canonical about community isn't productive. At the same time, Apple isn't what they are, it's what they want to be but are failing at being. Apple can get away with incorporating BSD code into their OS but still writing vast swaths of it themselves because Apple doesn't need any of the BSDs to adopt launchd to make it feasible for them to keep running it. Apple has money and can pay people to write code. And on the desktop, OS X has twice the market share of every Linux distro combined, so they can get developers to write applications for their OS even though it doesn't follow the lead of the rest of the BSD-derived OSes. (And yes, I know that OS X resembles a BSD distro far, far less than Ubuntu resembles Debian.) You're right that Canonical wants to be the Apple of the Linux world. But they're not succeeding at it and they're not GOING to succeed without some way of becoming profitable that has yet eluded them. And developers don't want the burden of having to support Canonicals quixiotic insistence that they are the Apple of the Linux world. [1] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linux-foundation/who-writes-linux-2015 http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linux-foundation... (Also, why do I have to tell the Linux Foundation who I work for in order to read this report?) [2] http://www.pengutronix.de/index_en.html http://www.pengutronix.de/index_en.html

eptcyka 11y ago

>I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world. They set their own agenda with limited cooperation. I'm not sure why would anyone think this is a good thing