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"If you doubt, for a nanosecond, that Canonical is a marketing organization masquerading as an engineering organization, then you’re either an unapologetic Ubun
by yungchin 16y ago
"If you doubt, for a nanosecond, that Canonical is a marketing organization masquerading as an engineering organization, then you’re either an unapologetic Ubuntu fanboy or you’re not paying attention."
1. Poisoning the well is an ugly debating trick.
2. He's somehow implying that marketing FOSS is not a useful contribution.
As for the numbers:
1. "$SUBJECT is the percentage of contribution to the GNOME codebase." ... actually, no, it's the percentage of commits. I'm not refuting the value of that metric, but misrepresenting what's measured is again a debating trick.
2. Red Hat has about 10 times the number of employees that Canonical has. Taking economies of scale into account, is the 16:1 ratio so bad?
Finally, given how well Red Hat's doing, should they really get into a fuss over any supposed free-rider phenomena?
- sliverstorm 16y ago> He's somehow implying that marketing FOSS is not a useful contribution. Whether or not it's useful, the FOSS community does have some holy ground that shall not be trod upon. The extent of that holy ground varies, but one of the basic tenants of open source is Credit Where Credit Is Due. Generally speaking, the community is very flexible, but don't be surprised if this is where the gloves come off.
- yungchin 16y agoThanks, that's a good point (I should read Homesteading the Noosphere again :)). I guess I've not been aware of (or sensitive enough to pick up) any clear offences by Canonical in this respect. Maybe that's because I only subscribe to their security notices, not the general news :)
- jberryman 16y agoI'm not a Ubuntu hater, but wrt to "Credit Where Credit Is Due", I was recently at the Ubuntu homepage: http://www.ubuntu.com/ http://www.ubuntu.com/ NO mention of "linux" or "GNU" anywhere on the page. Click on the "How Can It Be Free?" link, and no mention of GNU or the GPL. In fact the reasons they give are "1. It's Open Source" and "2. It's Managed and Funded by Canonical". Open Source is a side-effect of Free as in Freedom, a concept that Canonical is agnostic about. And I'm not sure what point 2 means. I can understand not wanting to turn people off with scary-sounding words, but even Mac like to tout the "rock solid unix foundation" on which OSX is built.
- nkassis 16y agoI think they view GNU and GPL explanations as not very friendly to their perceived audience which is the common computer user. Branding it Ubuntu in their view makes it simpler to understand. I think they want to be like OS X and relegate discussions of BSD and Mach Kernel to some really hard to find page. At least that's how i'm interpreting their pr stuff.
- jberryman 16y agoYeah, I agree. But I think the branding of Ubuntu as this "immaculately-conceived" OS is what annoys a lot of folks who know a bit about linux. I think a simple mention on their front page would be enough.
- troels 16y agoIn all respect, then perhaps the FOSS community should change perspective. Ubuntu has been one of the best PR-moves that Linux ever had. If the goal is to get people to use the software, then they contributed a great deal to the project.
- kelnos 16y agoThe problem with that semi-assertion is that the goal is differs greatly amongst OSS developers, from "I did something useful for me and am sharing it in case it's useful to anyone else," to "I'm going to take over the world by getting OSS into everyone's hands." ... and everywhere in between. Canonical clearly tends toward the latter end of the spectrum, where I imagine a company like Red Hat is somewhere in the middle.
- mbreese 16y agoGiven how Red Hat tolerates CentOS, I doubt they'll be making any sort of fuss over this.
- hartror 16y agoTolerates? It is their business model! We use CentOS all over the place in our development and internal infrastructure. But when we have to feel confident that a server can be maintained and secured reliably we happily pay our RHEL fees.
- nkassis 16y agoI think that RHN is a great value add. Letting me updates servers from a webpage at home. If you aren't a small company and have the budget, RedHat is worth the money in my view. But for non production, CentOS would be my choice too.
- macco 16y agoIt is not free-riding. Canonical cares a lot more about user-experience and the little things. It classical capitalism: everybody does what he thinks is best for her and the end everbody profits.