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He's talking about people complaining that Canonical are developing their own display server Mir, rather than using standards like Wayland. But people have a re

He's talking about people complaining that Canonical are developing their own display server Mir, rather than using standards like Wayland. But people have a reason to be suspicious when a company doesn't want to play ball with others. Yes, they might have a great idea that nobody else has thought of, but rather more likely they have some plan for vendor lock-in.

mugsie 10y ago
At the time Mir was started, Wayland was not the standard (and lets be honest, still isn't - X is still the standard). "Use the standard" doesn't ring true when there is none - and having multiple projects do the same thing is not a bad thing - they can learn from each other and try different approaches.
- bkor 10y ago
  A few years before Mir started Canonical said Wayland would be the next thing. That was agreed upon across desktop environments, distributions, etc.
andy_ppp 10y ago
They are giving up on Unity and moving back to Gnome; as I understand it consequently they will also move to Wayland. Here is a link: https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/04/ubuntu-unity-is-dead-back-to-gnome/ https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/04/ubu...
Vinnl 10y ago
> rather more likely they have some plan for vendor lock-in I think given Canonical's track record, this is a really unfair accusation. Yes, they did not always invest all the effort to make things like Unity work on other distros as well, but the reason for that was always prioritisation of their time (no one else took up and kept up the porting task either), never of intending lock-in. Canonical (and Mark Shuttleworth) have given a lot to the free software community, and these are exactly the disingenuous accusations that have clearly and understandably affected Mark Shuttleworth personally.
pipio21 10y ago
Who says it was the standard? Wayland it not even finished YET so really who can say it? Wanting standards defined after some competition exist and we know the best approach could be positive, but not before based on dogma on what should be better on paper but on reality. A reason to be suspicious? Personally I am suspicious of standards by committee in which anybody at a table have to be happy with unrealistic expectations. This is "software as politics". Most people don't even know what the best approach is until a least they code sever tests on the real world and work some time on the problem. Software has also some part of exploration on it. To have small focused teams exploring those ideas makes total sense. For example the original software for the Iphone was done with a small team of 10-20 people. And it took them some iterations(years of work) to really know what people wanted or needed. To same something is the standard because we say so is highly presumptuous.

mugsie 10y ago

At the time Mir was started, Wayland was not the standard (and lets be honest, still isn't - X is still the standard). "Use the standard" doesn't ring true when there is none - and having multiple projects do the same thing is not a bad thing - they can learn from each other and try different approaches.

bkor 10y ago
A few years before Mir started Canonical said Wayland would be the next thing. That was agreed upon across desktop environments, distributions, etc.

andy_ppp 10y ago

They are giving up on Unity and moving back to Gnome; as I understand it consequently they will also move to Wayland. Here is a link: https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/04/ubuntu-unity-is-dead-back-to-gnome/ https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/04/ubu...

Vinnl 10y ago

> rather more likely they have some plan for vendor lock-in I think given Canonical's track record, this is a really unfair accusation. Yes, they did not always invest all the effort to make things like Unity work on other distros as well, but the reason for that was always prioritisation of their time (no one else took up and kept up the porting task either), never of intending lock-in. Canonical (and Mark Shuttleworth) have given a lot to the free software community, and these are exactly the disingenuous accusations that have clearly and understandably affected Mark Shuttleworth personally.

pipio21 10y ago

Who says it was the standard? Wayland it not even finished YET so really who can say it? Wanting standards defined after some competition exist and we know the best approach could be positive, but not before based on dogma on what should be better on paper but on reality. A reason to be suspicious? Personally I am suspicious of standards by committee in which anybody at a table have to be happy with unrealistic expectations. This is "software as politics". Most people don't even know what the best approach is until a least they code sever tests on the real world and work some time on the problem. Software has also some part of exploration on it. To have small focused teams exploring those ideas makes total sense. For example the original software for the Iphone was done with a small team of 10-20 people. And it took them some iterations(years of work) to really know what people wanted or needed. To same something is the standard because we say so is highly presumptuous.