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I think Mark Shuttleworth is right, when he tries to improve the Ubuntu ecosystem. I needs more than code to have a great computing experience. People miss the

by macco 16y ago

I think Mark Shuttleworth is right, when he tries to improve the Ubuntu ecosystem. I needs more than code to have a great computing experience. People miss the point, when the critisize Canonical so often.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
SwellJoe 16y ago
What about this article makes you believe Shuttleworth is focused on "improving the Ubuntu ecosystem" with his position on copyright assignment? It seems to pretty clearly show focus on improving the Canonical bottom line, to me. Which is also fine...but, Open Source fans should be aware of what motivates the organizations they work with. Red Hat and Debian have a long history of choosing openness and freedom over control and profit (though Red Hat still manages to be the most profitable Linux vendor). Canonical has a less stellar record, generally speaking, with a history of unilateral decision-making, and questionable motives. Note that I'm not at all opposed to the idea of so-called "Open Core" software. Virtualmin and Cloudmin are effectively Open Core projects, with proprietary additions being where our profits come from. But, we don't have any non-employee contributors to speak of (we get a bugfix patch every three months or so, on average). Whereas Ubuntu is 99+% code written by non-employees. Their contributions to Gnome, arguably the most important single aspect of the famous Ubuntu "ease of use", are miniscule compared to Red Hat and several others. And, of course, I'm not saying that Canonical shouldn't be praised for their 1% contribution to Gnome. It's just that their contributions do not justify the level of control they desire over the community, and that the free software community should be highly suspicious when Canonical make these kinds of power grabs. In short, Canonical historically isn't all that great of a community member, and this is one more example of them putting the desires of Canonical above the desires of the Open Source community in importance. Open Core is fine, if they want to do it with their own entirely in-house written code. But, it sounds like they want the culture of Open Source to start shifting in the direction of corporate-led Open Source projects, even in situations where non-profits and communities are currently leading effectively (like Gnome).
- forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
  "Their contributions to Gnome are miniscule compared to Red Hat and several others." No, they are not minuscule. I could not use Red Hat and several others(suse, mandriva...) because for me, and for many others Linux was a pain to use, with obvious design flaws. Red Hat and others could not care less about the "normal user", they care about companies, witch is fine, but they made very little actual contributions to me if I could not use it. There is no problem having an "Open Core" strategy if the code is GPL, and you could see it. They give the company(in this case Canonical) control over the design, witch is fine too. If you don't like it you could fork or create a new project. Way easier to criticize than do anything.
  - jdub 16y ago
    The previous poster was referring to code and module contributions to the GNOME project itself, not the sprucing up of the GNOME experience in Ubuntu. GTK+, the underlying toolkit for GNOME, was substantially written and still substantially maintained by developers employed by Red Hat. If those resources had not been committed to GTK+ and GNOME, Ubuntu simply would not exist. There's a difference between what you might regard as important, and the fundamentals of who contributes to an open source project. :-)
  - SwellJoe 16y ago
    "Way easier to criticize than do anything." Yes, it is, and I do both. I've written code that ships in Ubuntu (and Debian, and Red Hat, and Fedora, and FreeBSD, etc.), and I've worked on Open Source projects for over a dozen years. I believe that grants me a right to speak on the subject, particularly since I'm not advocating a position that benefits me in any way; it merely presents my opinion as an Open Source contributor of many years.

by macco 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

SwellJoe 16y ago

What about this article makes you believe Shuttleworth is focused on "improving the Ubuntu ecosystem" with his position on copyright assignment? It seems to pretty clearly show focus on improving the Canonical bottom line, to me. Which is also fine...but, Open Source fans should be aware of what motivates the organizations they work with. Red Hat and Debian have a long history of choosing openness and freedom over control and profit (though Red Hat still manages to be the most profitable Linux vendor). Canonical has a less stellar record, generally speaking, with a history of unilateral decision-making, and questionable motives. Note that I'm not at all opposed to the idea of so-called "Open Core" software. Virtualmin and Cloudmin are effectively Open Core projects, with proprietary additions being where our profits come from. But, we don't have any non-employee contributors to speak of (we get a bugfix patch every three months or so, on average). Whereas Ubuntu is 99+% code written by non-employees. Their contributions to Gnome, arguably the most important single aspect of the famous Ubuntu "ease of use", are miniscule compared to Red Hat and several others. And, of course, I'm not saying that Canonical shouldn't be praised for their 1% contribution to Gnome. It's just that their contributions do not justify the level of control they desire over the community, and that the free software community should be highly suspicious when Canonical make these kinds of power grabs. In short, Canonical historically isn't all that great of a community member, and this is one more example of them putting the desires of Canonical above the desires of the Open Source community in importance. Open Core is fine, if they want to do it with their own entirely in-house written code. But, it sounds like they want the culture of Open Source to start shifting in the direction of corporate-led Open Source projects, even in situations where non-profits and communities are currently leading effectively (like Gnome).

forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
"Their contributions to Gnome are miniscule compared to Red Hat and several others." No, they are not minuscule. I could not use Red Hat and several others(suse, mandriva...) because for me, and for many others Linux was a pain to use, with obvious design flaws. Red Hat and others could not care less about the "normal user", they care about companies, witch is fine, but they made very little actual contributions to me if I could not use it. There is no problem having an "Open Core" strategy if the code is GPL, and you could see it. They give the company(in this case Canonical) control over the design, witch is fine too. If you don't like it you could fork or create a new project. Way easier to criticize than do anything.
- jdub 16y ago
  The previous poster was referring to code and module contributions to the GNOME project itself, not the sprucing up of the GNOME experience in Ubuntu. GTK+, the underlying toolkit for GNOME, was substantially written and still substantially maintained by developers employed by Red Hat. If those resources had not been committed to GTK+ and GNOME, Ubuntu simply would not exist. There's a difference between what you might regard as important, and the fundamentals of who contributes to an open source project. :-)
- SwellJoe 16y ago
  "Way easier to criticize than do anything." Yes, it is, and I do both. I've written code that ships in Ubuntu (and Debian, and Red Hat, and Fedora, and FreeBSD, etc.), and I've worked on Open Source projects for over a dozen years. I believe that grants me a right to speak on the subject, particularly since I'm not advocating a position that benefits me in any way; it merely presents my opinion as an Open Source contributor of many years.