3 ms·

> The original PinePhone was brought up on the existing Linux Mobile projects like Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS, and Maemo Leste, and also spawned new Linux distr

> The original PinePhone was brought up on the existing Linux Mobile projects like Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS, and Maemo Leste, and also spawned new Linux distributions like Mobian and Danctnix ARM. This grew until there were 25 different projects working on the PinePhone — an apparently thriving community. What you see as a thriving community, others might see as a fragmented market. I don't know if this makes sense, but it feels like the multiple distributions and overlapping projects trades off deep development for broad development. Maybe it's the inevitable result of everybody scratching their own itch and doing what they can do, or maybe it's a sign of a community that can't work together.

v-yadli 4y ago
Well I think at this stage we can hardly call it a market -- it's not 10 different android distros that stem off from a solid codebase, but different groups of developers that interact with each other to bring up the base. When you destroy the nest for these dev groups, there will be no more software for a fancy distro to package.
ddevault 4y ago
It's not a market and it does not act like one. These are not a bunch of startups hoarding intellectual property, they're a group of open projects working together under different flags to build a single product. The work of each is incorporated into the rest.
- criddell 4y ago
  That makes sense. I was thinking it was KDE vs Gnome all over again with a lot of duplicated effort.
johnklos 4y ago
> others might see as a fragmented market So uneducated outside views matter more than the communities themselves? > multiple distributions and overlapping projects trades off deep development for broad development So volunteers are supposed to - I don't know - know better, stop working on what they want to work on, and coordinate? And it's the fault of these volunteers that there's "fragmentation"? You think this is a zero-sum game, and that volunteers are the equivalent of workers at a business who're dividing their energy amongst competing projects instead of working together. That's both incredibly naive of you and also incredibly presumptuous. On the other hand, there is the problem that work in one project can and should be usable in another, but when that doesn't happen, that's just because that's how the Linux communities are sometimes.
- freedomben 4y ago
  I agree with your positions, but the level of snark was exceeding uncalled for.
  - johnklos 4y ago
    If it seems snarky, that's because it was. It takes tremendous arrogance to project responsibility and obligation on to volunteers.

v-yadli 4y ago

Well I think at this stage we can hardly call it a market -- it's not 10 different android distros that stem off from a solid codebase, but different groups of developers that interact with each other to bring up the base. When you destroy the nest for these dev groups, there will be no more software for a fancy distro to package.

ddevault 4y ago

It's not a market and it does not act like one. These are not a bunch of startups hoarding intellectual property, they're a group of open projects working together under different flags to build a single product. The work of each is incorporated into the rest.

criddell 4y ago
That makes sense. I was thinking it was KDE vs Gnome all over again with a lot of duplicated effort.

johnklos 4y ago

> others might see as a fragmented market So uneducated outside views matter more than the communities themselves? > multiple distributions and overlapping projects trades off deep development for broad development So volunteers are supposed to - I don't know - know better, stop working on what they want to work on, and coordinate? And it's the fault of these volunteers that there's "fragmentation"? You think this is a zero-sum game, and that volunteers are the equivalent of workers at a business who're dividing their energy amongst competing projects instead of working together. That's both incredibly naive of you and also incredibly presumptuous. On the other hand, there is the problem that work in one project can and should be usable in another, but when that doesn't happen, that's just because that's how the Linux communities are sometimes.

freedomben 4y ago
I agree with your positions, but the level of snark was exceeding uncalled for.
- johnklos 4y ago
  If it seems snarky, that's because it was. It takes tremendous arrogance to project responsibility and obligation on to volunteers.