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And lets not forget an even more prominent example: Upstart by Canonical that RedHat replaced with Systemd. Basically, Canonical will start at a project first,

And lets not forget an even more prominent example: Upstart by Canonical that RedHat replaced with Systemd. Basically, Canonical will start at a project first, but RedHat specifically will look for ways to not join them, and start their own project instead. Part of that is certainly due to Canonical itself, but I can't help but think a lot of it is RH making a call and then throwing more developers at something.

jzb 4y ago
Upstart’s CLA was a non-starter. Canonical has quite a history of the behavior you're dinging Red Hat for: Mir, Unity, LXD, Juju/Charms, Launchpad, and I'm sure I'm forgetting several. Also it’s Orwellianly named “Harmony” effort to popularize CLAs because Canonical has long sought to control upstream technologies - and consistently failed because they do not play well with others.
- BossingAround 4y ago
  Just to add to those wondering, CLA = Contributor License Agreement.
  - jzb 4y ago
    Ah, yes. Thank you - sorry for assuming on that one. I tend to get lazy when replying on my phone...
- necovek 4y ago
  Sure, I have acknowledged there are plenty of missteps by Canonical too. Though I don't think CLAs are a problem (FSF requires them for GNU projects too), but lack of committment not to switch to a non-free license. Unity happened as GNOME 3.0 already went in an entirely different direction (mostly led by RH engineers) from 2.x series and as Canonical simply couldn't influence GNOME design. With a paradigm shift one way or another, it was a sensible move. Launchpad was created as a tool to develop Ubuntu and free software: there was nothing else (and there still isn't) quite like it. Sure, it took a while to get it open sourced, but lack of contributions afterwards kinda proved the point that that wasn't really important (I mean, GitHub wasn't and still isn't). Mir/LXD/Juju were attempts to improve on the incumbents (Wayland/Docker mostly).
the_why_of_y 4y ago
The reason why Lennart decided to start systemd is publicly documented: the 2 facts that upstart had a serious design flaw requiring large changes, and that Canonical required copyright assignment for those changes. CLAs that unilaterally benefit a single for-profit business entity are generally seen as problematic. Read this thread: https://web.archive.org/web/20140928104327/https://plus.google.com/+KaySievers/posts/C3chC26khpq https://web.archive.org/web/20140928104327/https://plus.goog... Here, Upstart author and former Canonical employee Scott James Remnant wrote: Had the CLA not been in place, the result of the LF Collab discussions would have almost certainly been contributions of patches from +Kay Sievers and Lennart (after all, we'd all worked together on things like udev, and got along) that would have fixed all those design issues, etc. But the CLA prevented them from doing that (I won't sign the CLA myself, which is one reason I don't contribute since leaving Canonical - so I hold no grudges here), so history happened differently. After our April 2010 meeting, Lennart went away and wrote systemd, which was released in July 2010 if memory serves.

jzb 4y ago

Upstart’s CLA was a non-starter. Canonical has quite a history of the behavior you're dinging Red Hat for: Mir, Unity, LXD, Juju/Charms, Launchpad, and I'm sure I'm forgetting several. Also it’s Orwellianly named “Harmony” effort to popularize CLAs because Canonical has long sought to control upstream technologies - and consistently failed because they do not play well with others.

BossingAround 4y ago
Just to add to those wondering, CLA = Contributor License Agreement.
- jzb 4y ago
  Ah, yes. Thank you - sorry for assuming on that one. I tend to get lazy when replying on my phone...
necovek 4y ago
Sure, I have acknowledged there are plenty of missteps by Canonical too. Though I don't think CLAs are a problem (FSF requires them for GNU projects too), but lack of committment not to switch to a non-free license. Unity happened as GNOME 3.0 already went in an entirely different direction (mostly led by RH engineers) from 2.x series and as Canonical simply couldn't influence GNOME design. With a paradigm shift one way or another, it was a sensible move. Launchpad was created as a tool to develop Ubuntu and free software: there was nothing else (and there still isn't) quite like it. Sure, it took a while to get it open sourced, but lack of contributions afterwards kinda proved the point that that wasn't really important (I mean, GitHub wasn't and still isn't). Mir/LXD/Juju were attempts to improve on the incumbents (Wayland/Docker mostly).

the_why_of_y 4y ago

The reason why Lennart decided to start systemd is publicly documented: the 2 facts that upstart had a serious design flaw requiring large changes, and that Canonical required copyright assignment for those changes. CLAs that unilaterally benefit a single for-profit business entity are generally seen as problematic. Read this thread: https://web.archive.org/web/20140928104327/https://plus.google.com/+KaySievers/posts/C3chC26khpq https://web.archive.org/web/20140928104327/https://plus.goog... Here, Upstart author and former Canonical employee Scott James Remnant wrote: Had the CLA not been in place, the result of the LF Collab discussions would have almost certainly been contributions of patches from +Kay Sievers and Lennart (after all, we'd all worked together on things like udev, and got along) that would have fixed all those design issues, etc. But the CLA prevented them from doing that (I won't sign the CLA myself, which is one reason I don't contribute since leaving Canonical - so I hold no grudges here), so history happened differently. After our April 2010 meeting, Lennart went away and wrote systemd, which was released in July 2010 if memory serves.