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As someone who is using Linux as my main OS for over a decade, I totally appreciate initiatives like LVFS that makes using Linux more seamless. Running Linux o

by omeid2 8y ago

As someone who is using Linux as my main OS for over a decade, I totally appreciate initiatives like LVFS that makes using Linux more seamless. Running Linux on MacBook Pro has also exposed me to the struggle of firmware updates and all that jazz. So the hard work of Richard Hughes on LVFS is not lost me but I think he could have definitely handle the whole S76 issue more professionally. The whole blog post has a very personal vendetta overtone. > The way forward from my point of view would be for System76 to spend a few hours making UpdateCapsule work correctly, another few days to build an EFI binary with the EC update, and a few more hours to write the metadata for the LVFS. I don’t require an apology, and would happily create them a OEM account on the LVFS. That is not how large organizations work. And if you're trying to build something to get large vendors on board, this demand for apology nonsense is not going to help you. PS. Don't own a S76 system, don't work for them.

rkangel 8y ago
> I don’t require an apology, and would happily create them a OEM account on the LVFS He is specifically not demanding an apology, and is explicitly saying he is happy to continue to work with them.
- omeid2 8y ago
  It implies that someone owes an apology or at least an apology is fitting but the author is willing to forgo it.
  - dralley 8y ago
    Well, it sounds like they ignored his emails for 6 months, which their point of contact with him did apologize for in the reddit thread.
- digi_owl 8y ago
  Nah, it is a passive-aggressive turn of phrase to try to make System76 look bad by being the "lesser" party. It is the kind of crap one would expect from a project spawned of the Gnome camp...
- cptskippy 8y ago
  And he's butt hurt that they shipped without LVFS so he's publicly admonishing them, trivializing the effort, and telling people to boycott their products. But at least he's willing to work with them.
  - roflc0ptic 8y ago
    He doesn't sound particularly aggrieved, and he's not telling people to boycott their products. > I don’t actually mind if System76 doesn’t use fwupd and the LVFS, I just don’t want people to buy new hardware and be disappointed. As someone uninvolved who occasionally looks at linux laptops, this is really useful information for me. One of the (apparently) core developers of (apparently) a tool that allows cross hardware compatibility for linux is saying "this laptop does not adequately support arbitrary versions of linux, and they don't have a compelling technical reason why".
    - arghwhat 8y ago
      The post is not about spreading information, but attacking them for not using LVFS. If what the author wanted to do was simply to spread information, the post would have been the length of a single Twitter post: Make note: System76 uses a custom fw update util only bundled with "Pop_OS!". The entirety about this post is to hang System76 out for their process and decision, explaining how they are wrong, and how the author is willing to forgive them for this wrongdoing without the apology the author feels is in place. The post is nothing but emotional. (I have no strong opinion about System76's decision, but I find this post format to be awful.)
      - roflc0ptic 8y ago
        Interesting that disinterested parties here are coming to such different conclusions. If sharing the process issues was valueless, it would definitely seem personal. But it doesn't seem valueless for me. When making informed judgement about which companies to throw in with, their process matters. It's like MongoDB from days of yore. There was someone who reported a bug and the mongo team were jerks about it. I've specifically chosen not to use Mongo because of that interaction. Don't want my projects hinging on dev teams with good marketing sense but poor communication skills. Don't want my hardware depending on vendors who can't make nice with the FOSS community.
justin66 8y ago
> That is not how large organizations work. Wikipedia indicates they employ 21 people. That could be off by an order of magnitude and it still wouldn't qualify as a "large organization."
- gtvwill 8y ago
  Hmm I wonder how many employees s76 actually has? because in the reply from s76 it hints towards a rather larger company than 21 people. "System76 is also focusing on several other time-intensive efforts (like building a US-based manufacturing plant, designing in-house products, and building a well-received GNOME-based OS for both System76 customers and any interested users)" Like shit if they are designing and building a manufacturing plant with 21 people in house whilst also maintaining normal business selling and maintaining hardware... My hat goes off to them...for either being amazing or being so crazy stupid to think they could pull it off!
  - kelnos 8y ago
    Eh, that's not that surprising. Making your team or company sound larger than it is in an effort to sound more legitimate or established is a time-honored tradition.
  - mondoshawan 8y ago
    Building a US-based manufacturing plant is an SVP endeavor with another company offloading 90% of the design work. Been there, done that. Designing in-house products is what they already do, and have done prior to Pop! so this shouldn't take user level app developer time that could be spent on better support for their users. Building yet another distro is a waste of time and effort and only undermines goodwill with their users (I bought a Galago Pro to run Arch, and Pop came out 6 months after I received it -- I don't want yet another vendor controlled os). When Pop came out, they retargeted efforts around supporting only that system, leaving user choice by the wayside. The end result is that it burned me in the form of a missed firmware update that killed my battery, and customer support responses that boiled down to "run Pop!". It's one thing to want to do something crazy -- it's quite another to hurt your customers in the process.
X-Istence 8y ago
How did: > I don’t require an apology Get turned into: > [...] this demand for apology nonsense [...]
- cptskippy 8y ago
  When someone says "you don't need to apologize" it implies an apology is customary/necessary given the situation but the wronged party has decided to forgo formalities and just wants to move past the wrong and move forward with making it right. Richard basically says "you don't need to apologize, just implement LVFS". This implies that the wrong which necessitated an apology was not shipping LVFS which is not the case. The only apology they might owe him is for not notifying him of the reason why they chose not to ship LVFS after spending time with him investigating using it. This situation is like spending the day with a car salesman and then leaving without buying a car when the salesman takes a potty break. Then the car salesman runs a TV commercial that says "<you> wasted my time. I don't need an apology though, just buy one of my cars."
  - Marysville 8y ago
    He said he doesn't need apology, because someone at System76 had already apologized on the reditt thread.
    - cptskippy 8y ago
      If that's the case then the matter should be closed. System76 was under no obligation to ship with LVFS support and it slipped due to other constraints. I've been reading through posts on Reddit seeing if I could get a better understanding of the timing of what happened, if anything it's worse now but it seems that Richard's principal contact at System76 held off on notifying him until the release was finalized and is no longer with the company. (https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8i6swc/system76_and_the_lvfs/dyqu04m/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8i6swc/system76_and_...) It's unclear if he left before or after the release. Judging by the all of the inaccuracies in Richard's blog post about the timing of announcements, nature of the application, and the platforms it supports, which all reflect poorly on System76 and benefit his argument; I'm inclined to agree that this is a FUD campaign to shame System76 into supporting LVFS. If you take into account his blog history of shaming companies (e.g. Razer), and his speaking about himself in the third person on reddit; Richard really sounds like a self important twat who is trying to strong arm everyone into using his software.

by omeid2 8y ago

rkangel 8y ago

> I don’t require an apology, and would happily create them a OEM account on the LVFS He is specifically not demanding an apology, and is explicitly saying he is happy to continue to work with them.

omeid2 8y ago
It implies that someone owes an apology or at least an apology is fitting but the author is willing to forgo it.
- dralley 8y ago
  Well, it sounds like they ignored his emails for 6 months, which their point of contact with him did apologize for in the reddit thread.
digi_owl 8y ago
Nah, it is a passive-aggressive turn of phrase to try to make System76 look bad by being the "lesser" party. It is the kind of crap one would expect from a project spawned of the Gnome camp...
cptskippy 8y ago
And he's butt hurt that they shipped without LVFS so he's publicly admonishing them, trivializing the effort, and telling people to boycott their products. But at least he's willing to work with them.
- roflc0ptic 8y ago
  He doesn't sound particularly aggrieved, and he's not telling people to boycott their products. > I don’t actually mind if System76 doesn’t use fwupd and the LVFS, I just don’t want people to buy new hardware and be disappointed. As someone uninvolved who occasionally looks at linux laptops, this is really useful information for me. One of the (apparently) core developers of (apparently) a tool that allows cross hardware compatibility for linux is saying "this laptop does not adequately support arbitrary versions of linux, and they don't have a compelling technical reason why".
  - arghwhat 8y ago
    The post is not about spreading information, but attacking them for not using LVFS. If what the author wanted to do was simply to spread information, the post would have been the length of a single Twitter post: Make note: System76 uses a custom fw update util only bundled with "Pop_OS!". The entirety about this post is to hang System76 out for their process and decision, explaining how they are wrong, and how the author is willing to forgive them for this wrongdoing without the apology the author feels is in place. The post is nothing but emotional. (I have no strong opinion about System76's decision, but I find this post format to be awful.)
    - roflc0ptic 8y ago
      Interesting that disinterested parties here are coming to such different conclusions. If sharing the process issues was valueless, it would definitely seem personal. But it doesn't seem valueless for me. When making informed judgement about which companies to throw in with, their process matters. It's like MongoDB from days of yore. There was someone who reported a bug and the mongo team were jerks about it. I've specifically chosen not to use Mongo because of that interaction. Don't want my projects hinging on dev teams with good marketing sense but poor communication skills. Don't want my hardware depending on vendors who can't make nice with the FOSS community.

justin66 8y ago

> That is not how large organizations work. Wikipedia indicates they employ 21 people. That could be off by an order of magnitude and it still wouldn't qualify as a "large organization."

gtvwill 8y ago
Hmm I wonder how many employees s76 actually has? because in the reply from s76 it hints towards a rather larger company than 21 people. "System76 is also focusing on several other time-intensive efforts (like building a US-based manufacturing plant, designing in-house products, and building a well-received GNOME-based OS for both System76 customers and any interested users)" Like shit if they are designing and building a manufacturing plant with 21 people in house whilst also maintaining normal business selling and maintaining hardware... My hat goes off to them...for either being amazing or being so crazy stupid to think they could pull it off!
- kelnos 8y ago
  Eh, that's not that surprising. Making your team or company sound larger than it is in an effort to sound more legitimate or established is a time-honored tradition.
- mondoshawan 8y ago
  Building a US-based manufacturing plant is an SVP endeavor with another company offloading 90% of the design work. Been there, done that. Designing in-house products is what they already do, and have done prior to Pop! so this shouldn't take user level app developer time that could be spent on better support for their users. Building yet another distro is a waste of time and effort and only undermines goodwill with their users (I bought a Galago Pro to run Arch, and Pop came out 6 months after I received it -- I don't want yet another vendor controlled os). When Pop came out, they retargeted efforts around supporting only that system, leaving user choice by the wayside. The end result is that it burned me in the form of a missed firmware update that killed my battery, and customer support responses that boiled down to "run Pop!". It's one thing to want to do something crazy -- it's quite another to hurt your customers in the process.

X-Istence 8y ago

How did: > I don’t require an apology Get turned into: > [...] this demand for apology nonsense [...]

cptskippy 8y ago
When someone says "you don't need to apologize" it implies an apology is customary/necessary given the situation but the wronged party has decided to forgo formalities and just wants to move past the wrong and move forward with making it right. Richard basically says "you don't need to apologize, just implement LVFS". This implies that the wrong which necessitated an apology was not shipping LVFS which is not the case. The only apology they might owe him is for not notifying him of the reason why they chose not to ship LVFS after spending time with him investigating using it. This situation is like spending the day with a car salesman and then leaving without buying a car when the salesman takes a potty break. Then the car salesman runs a TV commercial that says "<you> wasted my time. I don't need an apology though, just buy one of my cars."
- Marysville 8y ago
  He said he doesn't need apology, because someone at System76 had already apologized on the reditt thread.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    If that's the case then the matter should be closed. System76 was under no obligation to ship with LVFS support and it slipped due to other constraints. I've been reading through posts on Reddit seeing if I could get a better understanding of the timing of what happened, if anything it's worse now but it seems that Richard's principal contact at System76 held off on notifying him until the release was finalized and is no longer with the company. (https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8i6swc/system76_and_the_lvfs/dyqu04m/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8i6swc/system76_and_...) It's unclear if he left before or after the release. Judging by the all of the inaccuracies in Richard's blog post about the timing of announcements, nature of the application, and the platforms it supports, which all reflect poorly on System76 and benefit his argument; I'm inclined to agree that this is a FUD campaign to shame System76 into supporting LVFS. If you take into account his blog history of shaming companies (e.g. Razer), and his speaking about himself in the third person on reddit; Richard really sounds like a self important twat who is trying to strong arm everyone into using his software.