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Writing a new backend for an existing DE (Gnome3/KDE) is not the same as writing a completely new DE from scratch. A fair comparison would have been porting Gno

Writing a new backend for an existing DE (Gnome3/KDE) is not the same as writing a completely new DE from scratch. A fair comparison would have been porting Gnome3 to Wayland vs porting Unity7 (based on Gnome3) to Mir. Also, Unity8 did land much much before on the phone which was the first target.

sho_hn 10y ago
> Writing a new backend for an existing DE (Gnome3/KDE) is not the same as writing a completely new DE from scratch. Having written substantial parts of the Plasma 5 shell (also nearly a full rewrite, which may just ship stable on Wayland before Unity 8, despite having been started later, and the Wayland conversion even later), I don't agree - "writing a new backend" is a substantial amount of work when the frontend doesn't have a concept of "backend"; a lot of X11 shell code traditionally made a lot of assumptions about being on X11. We had to rewrite our dock[1] as well for example, and that's before you get to talking about turning a X11 window manager into a Wayland display server and its many additional responsibilities. And as mentioned, Wayland handily beat them to the phone, too. I don't see any evidence that Mir hasn't just been an extra expense in resources for Canonical, and that's with freeloading on activity of the Wayland community. How did it in any way accelerate their progress to production to be the odd man out? 1 = https://blogs.kde.org/2016/05/31/new-plasma-task-manager-backend-faster-better-wayland https://blogs.kde.org/2016/05/31/new-plasma-task-manager-bac...
- oofabz 10y ago
  I really like Plasma 5, thanks! :)
- Galaxeblaffer 10y ago
  Thank you so much for your work! plasma 5 is imo the first de for Linux that can compete with Windows and Mac OS visually. And as much as I would like to be a cli keyboard only user that's just never going to happen
- riskable 10y ago
  Thank you for your efforts sir! Plasma 5 has become so fundamental to my desktop it might as well be a state of matter.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ewzimm 10y ago
From the first announcement, Canonical said that the reason for developing Mir was for their specific vision of touchscreens and convergence. FLOSS is so good because people can scratch an itch out in the open where everyone can benefit from what they do, even the mistakes. When we tell people they're wrong for pursuing their own projects and instead should contribute to existing efforts, we're just encouraging them to develop in secret where nobody will critizie them. FLOSS is about choice, not everyone doing the same thing. Nobody has an obligation to develop for any project they don't want to. That's what jobs in proprietary software are for!
- jhasse 10y ago
  > When we tell people they're wrong for pursuing their own projects and instead should contribute to existing efforts, we're just encouraging them to develop in secret where nobody will critizie them. I think most people criticizing think that: FOSS and contributing to existing efforts > FOSS and pursuing your own project > FOSS and developing in secret > proprietary So you're basically saying "it could be worse, so please stop criticizing at all" ;)
  - ewzimm 10y ago
    Maybe some existing efforts need help, but I think Wayland is doing fine without Canonical. Either way, shaming developers for choosing to go their own way is toxic, just as bad as harrassing people for not taking every request on Github. Developing FLOSS can be so stressful because everyone has an idea about what everyone else is supposed to do. Imagine what would have happened if more people had that attitude about Linux developers for not following the GNU Hurd!
    - jhasse 10y ago
      It can be depressing at times, I agree with that. But I think that the majority of "criticism" wasn't shaming Canonical for starting Mir, but rather just asking "Why?". Canonicals answer consisted of many set phrases and things that just weren't true (e. g. "Wayland doesn't work on mobile" - Sailfish?). Don't you think that such a behavior can also be considered "toxic"? IMHO Canonical's reason to start Mir were mostly to be in control. For example via CLAs. I understand it, but they should also understand that many people criticize that.

sho_hn 10y ago

> Writing a new backend for an existing DE (Gnome3/KDE) is not the same as writing a completely new DE from scratch. Having written substantial parts of the Plasma 5 shell (also nearly a full rewrite, which may just ship stable on Wayland before Unity 8, despite having been started later, and the Wayland conversion even later), I don't agree - "writing a new backend" is a substantial amount of work when the frontend doesn't have a concept of "backend"; a lot of X11 shell code traditionally made a lot of assumptions about being on X11. We had to rewrite our dock[1] as well for example, and that's before you get to talking about turning a X11 window manager into a Wayland display server and its many additional responsibilities. And as mentioned, Wayland handily beat them to the phone, too. I don't see any evidence that Mir hasn't just been an extra expense in resources for Canonical, and that's with freeloading on activity of the Wayland community. How did it in any way accelerate their progress to production to be the odd man out? 1 = https://blogs.kde.org/2016/05/31/new-plasma-task-manager-backend-faster-better-wayland https://blogs.kde.org/2016/05/31/new-plasma-task-manager-bac...

oofabz 10y ago
I really like Plasma 5, thanks! :)
Galaxeblaffer 10y ago
Thank you so much for your work! plasma 5 is imo the first de for Linux that can compete with Windows and Mac OS visually. And as much as I would like to be a cli keyboard only user that's just never going to happen
riskable 10y ago
Thank you for your efforts sir! Plasma 5 has become so fundamental to my desktop it might as well be a state of matter.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ewzimm 10y ago

From the first announcement, Canonical said that the reason for developing Mir was for their specific vision of touchscreens and convergence. FLOSS is so good because people can scratch an itch out in the open where everyone can benefit from what they do, even the mistakes. When we tell people they're wrong for pursuing their own projects and instead should contribute to existing efforts, we're just encouraging them to develop in secret where nobody will critizie them. FLOSS is about choice, not everyone doing the same thing. Nobody has an obligation to develop for any project they don't want to. That's what jobs in proprietary software are for!

jhasse 10y ago
> When we tell people they're wrong for pursuing their own projects and instead should contribute to existing efforts, we're just encouraging them to develop in secret where nobody will critizie them. I think most people criticizing think that: FOSS and contributing to existing efforts > FOSS and pursuing your own project > FOSS and developing in secret > proprietary So you're basically saying "it could be worse, so please stop criticizing at all" ;)
- ewzimm 10y ago
  Maybe some existing efforts need help, but I think Wayland is doing fine without Canonical. Either way, shaming developers for choosing to go their own way is toxic, just as bad as harrassing people for not taking every request on Github. Developing FLOSS can be so stressful because everyone has an idea about what everyone else is supposed to do. Imagine what would have happened if more people had that attitude about Linux developers for not following the GNU Hurd!
  - jhasse 10y ago
    It can be depressing at times, I agree with that. But I think that the majority of "criticism" wasn't shaming Canonical for starting Mir, but rather just asking "Why?". Canonicals answer consisted of many set phrases and things that just weren't true (e. g. "Wayland doesn't work on mobile" - Sailfish?). Don't you think that such a behavior can also be considered "toxic"? IMHO Canonical's reason to start Mir were mostly to be in control. For example via CLAs. I understand it, but they should also understand that many people criticize that.