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Elementary OS is imploding
- octoberfranklin 5y ago
- _jplc 5y agoProbably not intentional, but Lunduke is using Danielle's dead name in there. Just sayin'.
- faho 5y agoFor those who don't know, Danielle is transgender, and this article is using her name from before she came out, what is known as the "dead name". Using it now is incredibly rude.
- Bancakes 5y ago
- sebastianlay 5y agoI follow the development of elementary for a while now and even contributed a little bit from time to time and this is honestly the first time I heard of this name change. So I think it is an easy mistake to make and would not automatically assume malice here.
- faho 5y agoHer twitter (which Lunduke links to, and copied tweets from) very prominently features her new name. I'm not saying it can't be accidental (in which case you do what you do when you've accidentally been rude - apologize, correct your mistake and move on), but it is at least careless.
- pell 5y agoA few years ago Lunduke kept sharing some views that I would place in the more “reactionary“ spectrum. I’m not sure he ever distanced himself from that. He did interview Danielle a few years back however.(1) So maybe it simply was a careless mistake. (1) https://www.networkworld.com/article/3130760/elementary-os-04-review-and-interview-with-the-founder.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/3130760/elementary-os-0...
- ddtaylor 5y ago> Her twitter (which Lunduke links to, and copied tweets from) very prominently features her new name. It's worth mentioning the twitter handle is still "DanielFore"
- faho 5y agoThis is incorrect, the twitter handle is "DaniElainaFore" - https://mobile.twitter.com/DaniElainaFore https://mobile.twitter.com/DaniElainaFore As you can see in the linked screenshots. Try to open the old handle and you will find one tweet telling you she's moved to the new one.
- ddtaylor 5y agoThis handle is actually pretty new since the post-sex transition.
- faho 5y agoThis handle is in the archive links the article points to, and that's the important part. Lunduke had this handle on his screen, and either missed it or chose to ignore it on purpose. The former is careless and sloppy, especially if you're trying to do journalism. The latter is very rude, to put it mildly.
- jkepler 5y ago
- chekibreki 5y ago
- boomboomsubban 5y agoCalling someone by their chosen name isn't gender politics, it's just common courtesy.
- thomasedwards 5y agoHate to break it to you my guy, but that is not ‘gender politics’, it‘s just her name and her pronouns. If you use he/him and I say she/her, that’s rude. It’s no different.
- nyanpasu64 5y agoIt's not just rude in general, but actively hurtful to the person being named.
- slightwinder 5y agoNo, this is rude in any frame of mind. A person changed their name, and some people can't just accept it because of the reason for the name-change. If it had been any other reason, be marriage, adoption, religion some nerdy humor or what else...everyone would accept it without making a buzz about it.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoIt's more than a name change though isn't it? It's access to women only spaces and women only sports etc. This is what people are really upset about. I don't think people actually care about name changes.
- embik 5y agoI don’t see Danielle trying to compete in women only sports here, so this boils down to throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler and being rude because you (as in Lunduke, not you as a poster Im answering to) think you have a right to determine how a person feels about themselves, more than the person. There is no excuse for it.
- young_unixer 5y agoEven from my point of view that transgender people don't exist (at least not on earth, our science hasn't developed a way to change the sexual cromosomes throughout the human body yet) I would still call someone by the name that they call themselves, even if it's a name that tipically isn't associated to their actual gender.
- nobodywasishere 5y agoWhether someone is transgender or not has nothing to do with whether they decide to physically transition. As well, a person's "actual gender" is the one felt deeply as a part of themselves, not based the sex they were assigned at birth.
- orestarod 5y agoDoesn't gender lose its meaning if it's not tied to sex? As in, it is just a person's psych? I am not saying it negatively, I am all for sex having no predetermined effect on someone's behavior. But if there as many genders as there are people, it is no longer a useful term.
- pell 5y agoAccording to the theory, gender and biological sex are not inherently tied to each other. You might enjoy reading this essay if you are interested in learning more about this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/18/typical-mind-and-gender-identity/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/18/typical-mind-and-gende...
- DoctorOW 5y ago> Doesn't gender lose its meaning if it's not tied to sex? As in, it is just a person's psych? What do you mean by "sex"? Would a woman who goes through menopause no longer be a woman because she's not fertile? What about someone born intersex with multiple or no recognizable genitals? What about a woman with a Y Chromosome? That's not hypothetical it's recognized by actual biologists. The reason it's under diagnosed is because it rarely shows symptoms so it's only something someone already taking a DNA test would find out. Fun fact though, when you meet someone, you forgo the strip search, DNA test, and ultrasound required to actually verify these things. Not only is gender not based on sex, YOU don't base your evaluation of it on sex. Instead you've picked a number of unrelated arbitrary qualities, which is what scientists and I call "dumb". If we're assigning genders willy nilly why should you be in charge of everyone? Let everyone pick for themselves.
- input_sh 5y agoHonestly, probably intentional. I mean, you can't write an article about a Twitter thread where above each tweet you see the name Danielle and still call her Daniel accidentally. And this isn't the first time that Lunduke is behaving... reactionary, to put it mildly.
- slightwinder 5y agoHabit is a strong force, and not everyone is reading display-names all the time. Especially on twitter I usually naviagate by the profile-picture, not the names, because people change their display-names all the time, making them unreliable.
- skrebbel 5y ago> Honestly, probably intentional. Assuming bad intent doesn't often help clear up conflicts on the internet.
- input_sh 5y agoWe're talking about a guy who has another substack called Conservative Nerds and "Pronouns: Dude / Duder" in his Twitter bio dead naming a trans person. Bad intent is a safe assumption. I'd obviously love to be proven wrong and see an edited version of the post, but I'm 99.999% sure that will not happen. He knows exactly what he's doing.
- mpfundstein 5y ago
- input_sh 5y agoAnd where did I imply otherwise? It's just a shitty thing to do, and I'm backing up my claim that it's such on purpose.
- josteink 5y ago[flagged]
- boredpudding 5y agoHacker News should just remove the link to the blog and replace it with the actual twitter thread. There's no additional information provided by Lunduke, and based on earlier work by Lunduke, it unfortunately looks intentional.
- koenvdb 5y agoThe deleted tweets are added by him. So it does have a bit of additional information.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jafoi 5y agoOf course there is additional information in this link: it shows tweets that were deleted and Cassidy's retort.
- FR10 5y agoI think the context, although minimal is important as someone who isnt following Elementary closely.
- mpfundstein 5y ago
- wooque 5y ago
- AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
- xanaxagoras 5y ago
- albertgoeswoof 5y agoI really fear for startups and OSS these days. The co-founders are arguing about 30k's worth of shares. The reality is that with their talent they could earn that *per month* at FAANG. Who is going to build the next generation of tech, if everyone is sitting at cushy remote jobs building ad-tech?
- nyellin 5y agoOSS founder here! (At robusta.dev - kubernetes stuff) Funding is very good these days for OSS startups, especially related to kubernetes and cloud. That said, I wouldn't recommend that anyone become a founder for the cash. It's just not worth the stress. The thrill of inventing something, finding product market fit, building a team and product from zero, working on the GTM... Worth everything I own and more. Would pay to do it.
- hutzlibu 5y ago"Would pay to do it." If you can afford to work for free or even paying for the privilege to work, than this is very good for you, but not helpful for anyone who needs to make a living first. But thanks for providing a counter example, that there is indeed money in OSS.
- honkycat 5y agoOh man I can't imagine working a 9-5 the freedom of entrepreneurship is calling to me
- rightbyte 5y agoIt is only freedom if you succeed enough. I would argue being a wage worker gives you more freedom in practice in most cases.
- fvold 5y agoHah, that's funny to me, because after my second burnout, I'm just super happy working for someone else. I don't have to care about bringing in customers, my signature is only on one contract (employment contract), and the finances, taxes, hiring, and all of that is handled over there. [gestures vaguely to the left] I love it. I just sit at my desk and write code. This is what I'm happy doing, which makes me feel free.
- andrepew 5y agoAnd this is a textbook example of why you create a shareholder agreement when you start a company with other people. Much easier to come up with equitable terms when nobody has done any work and the company isn’t worth anything yet.
- jwsteigerwalt 5y agoGood, bad, or indifferent, we all learn from a glimpse into the actual negotiations; unfortunately they may all be for not in this case.
- neilalexander 5y agoAll else aside, elementaryOS has (had?) an awful lot of promise. Linux desktop environments and graphical applications are often wildly inconsistent and not attractive to look at. It has been nice to watch the development of a desktop that not only tries to looks the part but also has relatively few surprises in real use. It's a shame that another great open source project will suffer due to human differences.
- 28304283409234 5y agoReading this on ElementaryOS 6.1, paid for and all. After RedHat (the non-enterprise RedHat that is), Debian, Arch, this ElementaryOS was such a breath of fresh air. I really don't want to go back to XFCE or Gnome. I hope that somehow they still figure it out. :-/
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rg111 5y ago> Linux desktop environments and graphical applications are often wildly inconsistent and not attractive to look at. Totally false. I have used KDE Neon, Kubuntu, and Pop OS. All of them are very nice to look at and have a consistent approach towards aesthetics.
- IAmEveryone 5y agoElementary's "attractiveness" always felt skin-deep to me, triggering some uncanny valley effects more than enjoyment. Even the basic premise that what people like about Apple is adequately described by "attractive to look at" shows the error in thinking.
- gurkendoktor 5y agoI don't think that's the basic premise. elementary is not just a GTK theme, they have their own set of apps (for better or for worse) which follow their HIG, they are rewriting productivity apps to use the EDS backend throughout the system, they are trying to improve gesture support everywhere... It feels a lot like what made OS X so great about a decade ago.
- JoachimS 5y agoThe story makes me wonder if they did have a partner agreement. If they have an agreement, does it include a clause about engagement in the company? It sound to me an agreement, or at least such a clause is missing. I always recommend writing (and signing) and partner agreement. And include a clause about the expected engagement of a partner.
- Barrin92 5y agobleeding money and key people leaving is the main story here I think with the drama being a side effect. Seems to be a repeating story with these distros that are stacked on top of already well curated distros. To me it just doesn't seem sustainable because the work that goes into this is just immense compared to what surplus value you get out of it. Makes me wonder if the novel things these projects add wouldn't be better served simply as separate packages, removing a lot of the maintenance and costs.
- kybernetyk 5y ago>But Cass followed up later with an email that he didn’t want to give up his shares in the company. Well, it's his property. Why should he give it up/away? That's also the risk you take when you go with someone else into business - that they simply can stop working and keep 50% (or whatever share) of the business and it's their good right to do so.
- glenngillen 5y agoThe risk was not having these things sorted out at the start. It’s pretty standard to have vesting schedules, even for founders. For exactly this kind of situation. Most Series A investors will stipulate such a requirement, and if there was already a vesting schedule it all resets as part of the investment. Similarly it’s less common, but still not uncommon, to have provisions for leavers. Either some kind of prenegotiated basis to determine how you calculate fair value and buy back the share. Or I have seen something that was more like a reverse vesting in that the ownership expires X years after you leave. The benefit of sorting all this stuff upfront isn’t just to avoid negotiating at the worst time when emotions are high. The game theory aspect of it requires you to balance not getting screwed with what seems fair if you’re the one that leaves.
- sergiomattei 5y agoElementary isn’t new, I wouldn’t be surprised if the vesting schedule ran its course.
- l33tman 5y agoYes reverse vesting (which is common) means that you start by owning your, say, 33% share from the start and each month you stay your quitting penalty reduces by 1%. So if you quit 1 month in you need to sell back 32% at basically no cost. Since you own all the stock up front the founder participates fully in shareholder voting and you don't get taxed for receiving valuable stock later (although there might be issues with the actual reverse vesting agreement from a tax law standpoint as it is a form that ties your employment with benefits).
- 5y ago
- ecmascript 5y agoSad to see, I have always looked on Elementary as a nice alternative to Windows and Mac. I am kind of glad to see that even if the founders seem kind of politically active they haven't pushed it on the official elementary site or repos. Usually today people seem to want to push politics everywhere, so kudos to them on not doing it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- UncleSlacky 5y agoNot surprised - I've had a bad feeling about Elementary ever since they tried to guilt people into paying for it: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2883114/should-you-pay-for-elementary-os.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/2883114/should-you-pay-for...
- reflexco 5y agoI respectfully disagree. Regular donation prompts bring in peanuts. If there was a thriving economy for end-user open-source software then we could blame them, but it's just not how it is right now.
- UncleSlacky 5y agoI have no problem with encouraging donations. My objection was to the language they used initially, e.g. from the article I linked: "We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software."
- sergiomattei 5y agoCo-founders can be brutal when greedy. Best to them.
- steerablesafe 5y agoKeep calm and continue using Debian.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Sosh101 5y agoI know how hard it can be to keep these kind of projects going as a small team, but seriously - 5% pay cut is all they'll give before they call it quits? (well one of them)
- toyg 5y agoIf they are working for sub-20k salaries, they're already impoverished.
- ThePhysicist 5y agoHad the same issue with my first startup. 50:50 split, no agreement in place for the eventuality of a founder disagreement or one founder leaving the company. We were able to negotiate an acceptable solution but emotionally it was quite draining and it tarnished a good relationship/friendship. Also, in the end the company was not worth much, so in retrospect much quibble and stress about nothing. I think the problem is that in the eyes of a founder their company is always worth a lot, as they tend to see the potential instead of the status quo. That said trying to leave a company that isn't profitable while keeping a 50 % stake and offloading the job of getting to profitability to your co-founder is pretty toxic. Asking to retain a small stake depending on the duration of your tenure seems reasonable though. For a bootstrapped company I think a 4-6 year vesting schedule is reasonable, though it highly depends on the situation of the company. Some businesses are still nowhere near profitable or stable after 4 years, so they won't survive one founder leaving with 50 % of the shares as it will make future investment highly unlikely (most VCs would never touch a company with a 50 % shareholder that has already left) and will destroy the morale of the remaining founders (as they will often think that half of their work will go towards someone who no longer contributes in a meaningful way to the company).
- sergiosgc 5y agoHaving a shootout agreement in place I think is the best option: At any moment, a founder may wish to buy someone else's equity, or may wish to sell his own. At that moment, he proposes a transaction value. The counter-party has the choice to take either side of the transaction. Example: Alice wants out. She proposes that Bob buys her shares for 50k. Bob may either accept the purchase, if he thinks the price is correct, or he must sell his own shares to Alice if he thinks the proposal is over-valued. There are more details to this, like a horizon allowing for funds to be sought, the possibility of financing by the company or dealing with more than two partners, but this is the gist of it.
- unethical_ban 5y ago>Alice wants out. She proposes that Bob buys her shares for 50k. Bob may either accept the purchase, if he thinks the price is correct, or he must sell his own shares to Alice if he thinks the proposal is over-valued. "I want out now, at $1,000,000 a share. What? You think my stake is only worth $50,000? Well then, sell me the company!"
- pacifika 5y agoApart from this disagreement, donationware is super tough, the conversion rates aren't great in general -- and this will reinforce the assumption that linux users don't want to pay. It's a shame all round.
- tayistay 5y agoThey had a strategy to monetize their App Store, so it wasn't totally donation-ware. I think they fumbled by being purists and not accepting closed-source software in their store. I was initially excited about the concept until I looked more closely and found a pretty high commission, the open-source requirement, and some half-baked programming language. These were foolish missteps.
- eole666 5y agoFor me using elementary OS for a bit was truly awful: its UX was the worst I ever used. It just felt like a gnome reskin, some clunky apps and insane defaults settings on top of ubuntu making everything worse just to please mac users. And yet it doesn't bring anything new on the table and is still way less pleasing to use than macOS (or mac has been doing really bad since the last time I used it). If some few people really find it nice to use, good for them. But it's no suprise elementary OS is failing.
- james-redwood 5y agoCompletely agree. Booted Jolnir up on a VM when it came out and I was very much unimpressed.
- l30n4da5 5y ago> For me using elementary OS for a bit was truly awful: its UX was the worst I ever used. 100% agree. When I tried to use it a long while ago, it was not good. UI felt clunky and almost unresponsive when compared to similar desktop environments.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 5y agoThere is no money anymore in Desktop linux (and it is debatable there ever was) I mean there's no money anymore in Desktop computing period. But Linux is stuck with GTK and QT/C++ while a lot has moved to .NET and Swift (and other tech - heck even Electron) All most people need now is a web terminal.
- fnord123 5y ago> But Linux is stuck with GTK and QT/C++ while a lot has moved to .NET and Swift (and other tech - heck even Electron) Are you saying Linux should move to .NET or Swift? Are there specific changes in Gtk and Qt that aren't being addressed in the changes from Gtk3 to Gtk4 and Qt5 to Qt6 that are would be addressed by .NET and Swift? > I mean there's no money anymore in Desktop computing period. I agree with this, but there are tonnes of add-ons that could keep the lights on. For example, cloud services (email, identity management, keychain management, cloud backup) integrated in the desktop APIs.
- raverbashing 5y ago> Are you saying Linux should move to .NET or Swift? No, I'm saying they need to move out of C/C++. But Electron has filled 99% of that, to be fair. Qt has QtQuick at least. And even though GTK and Qt have bindings to other languages they're far from good
- fnord123 5y ago> No, I'm saying they need to move out of C/C++. But Electron has filled 99% of that, to be fair. Electron has filled 99% of all memory it comes in contact with, amirite? But seriously, qml and QtQuick are pretty good. PyGobject is also pretty good. And 50% of gnome shell is in javascript[1] using GJS[2], so I don't think it's stuck on C/C++ or the bindings are far from good. Do you have more specific gripes about them? [1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell [2] https://www.gtk.org/docs/language-bindings/javascript/ https://www.gtk.org/docs/language-bindings/javascript/
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- pjmlp 5y ago
- ricardobeat 5y agoSeems totally reasonable to keep your shares, if it’s in the low numbers. If not, sell some back to get under 20% or something and not have any control over the company. Forcing your ex-partner to part ways with 100% of their shares is a hostile move.
- l30n4da5 5y agoI was thinking this, too. The only person being completely unreasonable here is Danielle.
- jafoi 5y ago
- peignoir 5y agoalways do detailed equity vesting…
- Macha 5y agoElementary is a decade old - what time period would you suggest vesting should last?
- trabant00 5y agoI didn't understand from the start how another Linux Desktop Environment can make a business. We already have at least 4 good ones.
- traveler01 5y agoThis is one great example on why Linux do desktop is failing hard in my opinion. People spend more time arguing about BS than anything else. Guy wasn't happy with his pay, left to another company and now he's asking even more, from a failing company. If he just wants to kill what's left he should just say it.
- simion314 5y agoNah, the thing is there is no single way to create a Desktop for Linux, What I want from a Linux Desktop is opposite what GNOME users want, what Red Hat or Canonical want is also different from what volunteers want. Windows and Mac have 1 direction, the big ego dude on top will decide where things go and all the developers will have no choice and implement it. Other big issue is money, volunteers that work a few hours in some weekends can't have same output as someone paid to work 8 hours a day. If I had a ton of money I would hire a big team of developers from eastern europe, fork KDE and give them a clear direction(fix all major bugs, fix design issues, make it just work on certain hardware) Edit: there will never be "One Linux Desktop" we will always have at least 2 or 3 very popular ones, one for power users, one for GNOME/Apple types and one for minimalists
- oblio 5y ago> Edit: there will never be "One Linux Desktop" we will always have at least 2 or 3 very popular ones, one for power users, one for GNOME/Apple types and one for minimalists And all those "very popular ones" put together with the less popular ones will have 1% of market share and will never have high quality common commercial applications or high quality first party drivers or games that run on all distributions, etc. It's a sad story, and I say this as someone who used to be on desktop Linux for years and years and have been around FOSS for 15+ years.
- simion314 5y agoIt is what it is, we can't force people to work on GNOME and honestly Linux is not such a great of a kernel, the world needs something modern maybe Fuschia.
- rlt 5y agoTo be frank, Danielle is delusional. Someone who has worked on a company for ~10 years absolutely should be able to profit from a future sale of the company. It seems the most fair thing would be to simply issue new stock grants with a vesting schedule. If the company sold tomorrow they'd still (rightfully) split it evenly but over time Cassidy's shares would be diluted.
- withinboredom 5y agoThe antiquated word you are looking for is: pension.
- matsemann 5y agoWell, when that person didn't want to reverse the deal (pay 26k and get 100% of the company), that kinda tells that there is no way 45% of the company is worth a 100k.
- smcl 5y agoYeah if the deleted tweets are true then that part sort of reveals how cold and ruthless the move is. I mean it's "just business" so technically nobody should expect anything less. But still I bet it feels like a real gut punch to have to deal with a former friend or colleague as if they're an adversary like this.
- smoldesu 5y agoI... I think I agree. Their tacit collusion with GNOMEs harmful policy push that started ~2 years ago burned a lot of goodwill, and the lack of meaningful changes started to go far beyond whay you'd expect for a minimalist operating system. At this point, I think they're in the same delusional mindset as the GNOME foundation, eg.: "our users don't know what's best for them!" It's very frustrating to watch desktop Linux head down this path, and it's started to severely limit the amount of software I can comfortably use on my desktop. Unless sonething changes, I seriously worry for the future of similar Linux projects that fight for control and refuse to collaborate meaningfully.
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- seibaby 5y agoForgive my naivety, but if one person wants to continue working on a FOSS codebase and the other wants to leave, can't the former just let them keep their worthless stake as the company goes out of business, start a new company, rehire the same staff, and resume work?
- maratc 5y agoI doubt they can also take the assets, of which there are (at least) codebase, name, graphics, and domain name. Forking is AOK though, but that's a bit like starting from scratch.
- ghusbands 5y agoIf the company has the money and the continuing founder doesn't, how do they afford to "rehire the same staff"? If company money gets used, the courts that eventually get involved would likely treat the new company as owned by the old.
- actionfromafar 5y agoElementaryOS is leaving a lot of money on the table. The reason is that they have an established user base, and there is an app store, which is very curated. People would be more than willing to pay for apps on that app store. Not so many developers are willing, though. The thing is, to publish on the app store, the source code must be publicly available on for instance, github. If they allowed app developers to sell truly commercial software, ElementaryOS could be a self growing machine, and they could give away the OS for "free" and keep the OS open source. Maybe it's not as "pure" as what they are doing now, but on the other hand they could reach so many more people if they had more monetary resources.
- gurkendoktor 5y agoelementary is already moving in the right direction by trying to combine flatpak and AppCenter (=payments) -> https://blog.elementary.io/elementary-appcenter-flatpak/ https://blog.elementary.io/elementary-appcenter-flatpak/ From there it's not a huge jump to allow flatpaks that are closed source and/or not written with GTK, certainly more realistic than with non-sandboxed DEBs. But as a former elementary user and micro-contributor, I also think that the App Store model has been a disaster for elementary OS. It means that developers who are perfectly capable of fixing the buggy stock apps are incentivized to instead start their own app and (fail to, presumably) get paid for it. Random example from a very prolific developer in the golden age of eOS 5: https://appcenter.elementary.io/com.github.artemanufrij.playmymusic/ https://appcenter.elementary.io/com.github.artemanufrij.play... Now this app has been abandoned, and instead of taking over this developer's personal app, the next person who wants to write a music player will start another one. And so on.
- actionfromafar 5y agoIf they got decently paid, by allowing proprietary apps, one of the competing apps could stick around by virtue of actually making money. The ElementaryOS company would also get more cash, and could, (like Apple!) improve a core set of apps. A "kernel" of good quality Linux apps could also spread to other distributions, and hopefully slowly coalesce around GTK and "ElementaryOS" style GUI as a de-facto standard. (Since the other distros are more accepting of jumbled GUI styles anyway, why not make your app on ElementaryOS first, and distribute that version on the other Linux versions, too.) Anyway, the hurdle is not technical - flatpaks or no flatpaks. The hurdle is strategy and ideology.
- _zooted 5y agoHaving interacted with Danielle a few times in the community I can say that she is very difficult to work with and obviously doesn't know what it takes to scale a project like elementaryOS up. It's actually amazing it's made it this far.
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- koreanguy 5y ago
- account42 5y ago> elementary OS, a Linux distribution that is currently ranked as one of the top 10 distros (according to DistroWatch.com) All DistroWatch measures is how popular a distro's page on DistroWatch is, it says nothing about how popular the distro itself is.
- aidenn0 5y agoEven if they were in the top 10, I bet the average HNer would struggle to name 10 distros. You are right that the distrowatch.com page rankings are fairly divorced from other measures of popularity: MX Linux, (apparently a Debian fork by the antiX people) sits at #1 and there are 3 Arch forks above Arch itself, which doesn't manage to crack the top 20.
- mekster 5y agoWith the quality of elementary OS, I thought it required several full time developers to keep up but not knowing how it could make enough money, I even thought it's some rich guy's toy project spending out of pocket money or something but surprised it's run by a few guys with very small revenue and the company's worth seems somehow very small with the talent they got. Could be a bargain for someone to just hire those guys but of course it means the end of elementary OS but the developers deserve better environment.
- toyg 5y ago> the company's worth seems somehow very small with the talent they got They started a project on the basis of refusing to compromise (on aesthethic-usability choices), in a niche (desktop Linux) that most users choose trying to escape such refusals by mainstream desktop platforms. They are trying to monetize on a platform (again, Linux) where most people are ideologically bent on producing and consuming software for free. It's like they are actively fighting the platform and the ecosystem at every turn. The surprise is not how small they are, but how long they've managed to survive on donations.
- aero-glide2 5y agoMaintaining a distro sounds like an extremely monotonous task. Makes it much harder when your userbase isn't increasing.
- chekibreki 5y agoThis is sad to read, but I could never take Elementary OS seriously, due to the custom browser. Not using Firefox (or even Chromium) is inexcusable. The higher integration of the custom browser (whose name I can't remember) does not even come close to outweighing the omission of Firefox with all of its mature features and add-ons. The browser is arguably the most important piece of software in a desktop PC. Yes, I know I can install it. But then it is not integrated nicely and then why use Elementary OS at all?
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- Dave3of5 5y agoHmm yes a very common situation actually. I suspect this will lead to the collapse and dissolution of the company. Hopefully the OSS part will continue.
- chimen 5y agoSad news. Elementary is the only distro with a decent UI.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- james-redwood 5y agoA decent UI out the box you mean: one that doesn’t require a few minutes of tinkering around to make more palatable. But ZorinOS 16 is beautiful, as is Deepin.
- thi2 5y agoShame, I always liked elementaryOS.
- qualudeheart 5y agoWhy not cater to a specific industry in need of custom operating systems? The government, natsec, finance and web3 sectors are all flush with cash and in need of good, dedicated, operating systems. ElementOS could be the OS driving the Web3 industry and the first OS with built in NFT support. This could be implemented either as a new feature for Elementary proper or as a custom Elementary version. Early access to Elementary Web3 edition could be distributed via an Opensea NFT auction.
- iJohnDoe 5y agoWhat a shame Elementary OS is my daily driver. It’s a joy to use. I hope they can set their differences aside and do what’s best for the community.
- throwaway894345 5y agoIn the early days of Elementary OS, I wanted to get involved and help contribute, but even then it was evident that these two were deeply dysfunctional human beings. They generally got along, but they both seemed to think of themselves as the next coming of Steve Jobs. This (and the scary low quality of the source code) put me off of elementaryOS entirely.
- ro-ka 5y agoI never looked in the source code, but had the same feeling about the founders back then.
- Mikeb85 5y agoI mean, there's really no value versus Ubuntu or Fedora. It's basically Ubuntu + different DE + more bugs. Not surprising they haven't been able to make much money from it.
- zelon88 5y agoSeems pretty cut and dry. The partner can cash out 50% of a valuable company now or he can control 5% of a bankrupt abandoned mess in 10 years. Leaving with >50% of the coffers and still expecting the company to provide value for 10 years knowing the current financial state is just disingenuous.
- tayistay 5y agoAs a full-time indie app dev, I was insulted by Elementary OS in the same way one might be insulted when being lowballed. IIRC they wanted 30% of revenue and your code had to be open source. Nope! I have to make a living.
- TheAceOfHearts 5y agoIsn't 30% the industry standard for app stores? Valve takes 30% of game sales. Apple takes 30% of app store sales and subscriptions. Although I agree that it's pretty high especially for an indie developer.
- tayistay 5y agoApple currently charges 15% for <$1m revenue. Yes, 30% is pretty standard, however they're also asking you to give up your IP. The open source only policy makes no sense from a business standpoint. Their justification was so the software can be vetted, which is nice for the user, but precludes any developer who has actual proprietary tech (in my case, GPU algorithms, etc.) Add to that an inferior knock-off of the macOS UX, a half-baked programming language they want you to use, and it's not exactly a winning combo for a developer. Instead of being purists, they could have highlighted the open-source apps in their store with a badge, giving the user a choice. They could have used say Rust or Go instead of inventing their own language. They could have better differentiated their design from macOS.
- Brian_K_White 5y agoIt's funny. I read the article and do not arrive at the same obvious/apparent conclusion the auther theirself does about Cassidy's position being reasonable, merely legal. To me the reasonable thing to do is if you want to get out then get out, sell back your stake. If you want to stay in then stay in, work on the project full time or work out some new plan where all stakeholders agree to switch to day jobs and put this into hobby mode. But if you just want to maintain a stake to collect rent, and demand cash that doesn't even exist, seriously F that guy. The only reason he's in the legal right to be this douchy is because they failed to write their 'pre-nup' properly, not because he's actually in the right and his position and expectations are reasonable.
- npteljes 5y agoI share your opinion. The second demand from the lawyer sounds like me when FOMO makes me lose my touch. Not at all reasonable and lacking the warmth of humanity.
- twblalock 5y agoWhen people buy stock in any company, they don't consider only the current value of the company as if it were to be liquidated today: they also consider future earnings, which they hope will increase the future value of their shares. The same logic applies when selling. If a co-founder sells back their stake, why should the current value of the company be the sole basis for pricing the sale? As with any other stock, owning shares represents a claim on a portion of the value created by the company's future earnings. If someone is going to sell that claim, they are entitled to take that into account. That's not rent-seeking; it's compensation for giving up a claim on future earnings. Of course, all of this assumes that Elementary OS has a bright future ahead of it as a business which will increase its earnings and value, which seems unlikely. The founders seem to be arguing over a company that is worth less than a new Camry. But still!
- horsawlarway 5y agoMy guess is that he thinks that someone will buy the company when they become insolvent, and there's some cash to be made, but that he can't get it right now if the other founder isn't willing to sell. Honestly - I have no idea if he's right, but I think the Pantheon DE is relatively pretty, and has some nice pieces. Combine with the fact that it's a fairly popular distro with new users... and I suspect there's at least a chance he's right (I'd still bet against it happening, though). But for 23k... if I were in his shoes I'd probably also take that bet. I'd much rather have a chance at 100k (even if low odds) over 1.5 month's salary at the new gig.
- dudul 5y agoIs hiring lawyers to fight over ~$20k a good move?
- jrm4 5y agoI think it's important to remember that none of this makes any sense. "Desktop Operating System" is a thing that has essentially been solved for over 20 years. Apple gets paid partly because it keeps a pretty good one going. Microsoft gets paid to tweak them and mostly make them worse. So it's easy to get fooled into thinking you can make money by making a "good" operating system, because very large companies are visibly overpaid for doing so.