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> IBM/Red Hat employees basically run the entire Linux userland This seems like a very dishonest exaggeration. > systemd components being required for GNOME (
by hnarn 7y ago
> IBM/Red Hat employees basically run the entire Linux userland
This seems like a very dishonest exaggeration.
> systemd components being required for GNOME (which incidentally breaks non-Linux OS's but who cares about those?)
Is it not true that it's completely up to GNOME to choose what platforms and operating systems they wish to target? Is it also not true that GNOME, being open source, can at any time be forked (like MATE) and developed separately by those who disagree with where the project is going? This is an age-old saga in the world of open source, and I don't see the issue.
> we're going to see it when Wayland replaces X and breaks every old app that hasn't stuck with the upgrade treadmill
What do you suggest should happen instead? Wayland shouldn't happen? Unless replacing and breaking happens, nothing happens. We can't just ship X as the default forever and hope that Wayland won't slowly die while people voluntarily tweak their installations and move over.
> As a Debian user since the early 2000s, it saddens me to think of all that we're going to lose because "Linux is not about choice."
In what way is Linux not about choice? It's such an incredible hyperbole, and it couldn't be further from the truth.
In some ways, the infected discussions around open source mirror those of free speech. People conflate "censorship" with "being ignored", just like people conflate "nobody wants to maintain your pet project" with "Linux freedom of choice is dying".
The answer has always been the same in all FOSS discussions: If you want something else to happen, put in work hours, or donate money towards realizing your vision. If you're not willing to do either of those, your individual opinions on where Project X is going are very likely just noise.
- yc12340 7y ago>> IBM/Red Hat employees basically run the entire Linux userland > This seems like a very dishonest exaggeration. Definitely a dishonest exaggeration. Google runs Linux userland. Have been for entire last decade. Unless by "userland" you means something other than "system, used by most of users".
- cyphar 7y ago> Definitely a dishonest exaggeration. Google runs Linux userland. Have been for entire last decade. Unless by "userland" you means something other than "system, used by most of users". I'm pretty sure they meant "runs" in the sense of "runs the show" (make the majority of the decisions in Linux userland projects) not in the sense of "uses".
- yc12340 7y ago> I'm pretty sure they meant "runs" in the sense of "runs the show" (make the majority of the decisions in Linux userland projects) not in the sense of "uses". I was not meaning that in some twisted way. Most computers on modern Internet are smartphones — desktop use is slowly declining. And Google runs the show on the dominant smartphone platform. Red Hat's desktop is completely irrelevant in comparison.
- cyphar 7y agoYou didn't mean it in that way, but the parent comment you were responding to did mean it in that way. I don't think anyone could in good conscience argue that RHEL Desktop is the most widely used Linux platform, so I you're not gaining much by refuting that argument. (As for your point, Google -- even on Android -- still uses plenty of software which is majority-developed by Red Hat and other Linux distribution companies. The kernel alone is an obvious example, but there are many others.)
- delfinom 7y ago>The answer has always been the same in all FOSS discussions: If you want something else to happen, put in work hours, or donate money towards realizing your vision. If you're not willing to do either of those, your individual opinions on where Project X is going are very likely just noise. This. All this whining is mostly done by those that don't contribute anything at all but leech off others work.
- lmm 7y ago> Is it also not true that GNOME, being open source, can at any time be forked (like MATE) and developed separately by those who disagree with where the project is going? It's not true when they're unwilling to commit to stable interfaces (and indeed sometimes make changes that appear to break compatibility with forks for the sake of it). The reason GNU/Linux is based on Unix isn't that Unix was the best OS design, it's that Unix's loose coupling philosophy was the only thing that made rewriting it as open-source possible at all. If the only way to fork any one Linux program is to fork all of them (and that's the path we're going down) then you don't have freedom 3 in practice, even if the program is notionally under an open-source license. > What do you suggest should happen instead? Wayland shouldn't happen? If the cost of Wayland is removing the ability to be cross-platform then yes, it shouldn't happen. Microsoft manages to make their proprietary programs run on FreeBSD. NVidia manages to make their proprietary drivers run on FreeBSD. If a flagship open-source project can't manage to run cross-platform that's pathetic.