4 ms·

Snap has been around for 8 years and during this time it got zero traction outside of Ubuntu. Canonical is known for axing their own projects eventually when th

Snap has been around for 8 years and during this time it got zero traction outside of Ubuntu. Canonical is known for axing their own projects eventually when they fail to get traction, so it seems pretty safe to assume that the writing is on the wall for snap.

lockhouse 3y ago
In Canonical’s defense, it seems like every time they try to do something innovative, Red Hat copies the idea and implements it slightly better. Upstart -> systemd Unity -> Gnome 3 Shell Mir -> Wayland Snaps -> flatpak I’m not saying Red Hat is wrong to do this, that’s the nature of healthy competition and we all benefit from this.
- doubled112 3y ago
  Weren't Wayland and flatpak first? And GNOME 3 as well? Unity was a reaction to GNOME 3's big changes. Either way, I agree that competition is better.
  - selivanovp 3y ago
    No. Snap started as a project and got useful before flatpak. Wayland technically was before Mir, but existed as blueprints and ideas back then. Shuttleworth tried to influence its design for his vision of linux desktop, but got rejected, so Mir was created. Mir became useful way before first implementations of Wayland, but Shuttleworth idea to expand Mir and Ubuntu to phones resulted in feature creep, lack of funding and eventually to project failure. Gnome shell was also released after Unity. Both were influenced by MacOS LaF. The problem with Unity was that it was based on gnome 2 and compiz, that was a good compositor back in the days, but a dead end as a technology, as compositor should’ve been implemented on a lower level and be an integral part of DE. Shuttleworth started Mir and new Unity based on that, but both sank and Ubuntu had to revert to gnome-shell that became useful and more performant than earlier versions.
  - lockhouse 3y ago
    You’re right on all counts. My memory failed me on the order of those. Thanks for setting me straight!
- paride5745 3y ago
  The difference is that Canonical forces the contributions ownership to be handed over, while RedHat plays by accepted opensource practices. So while Canonical might have good initial ideas, the way they manage projects really kills them, e.g. snaps properly opensources might have been successful, instead they enforces the use of their proprietary server and ignore community requests (like moving /snap to /var/snap or making it configurable or allowing different servers/sources for snaps, while you can relatively easily make your own flatpak server and have users add the repo to their systems).

lockhouse 3y ago

In Canonical’s defense, it seems like every time they try to do something innovative, Red Hat copies the idea and implements it slightly better. Upstart -> systemd Unity -> Gnome 3 Shell Mir -> Wayland Snaps -> flatpak I’m not saying Red Hat is wrong to do this, that’s the nature of healthy competition and we all benefit from this.

doubled112 3y ago
Weren't Wayland and flatpak first? And GNOME 3 as well? Unity was a reaction to GNOME 3's big changes. Either way, I agree that competition is better.
- selivanovp 3y ago
  No. Snap started as a project and got useful before flatpak. Wayland technically was before Mir, but existed as blueprints and ideas back then. Shuttleworth tried to influence its design for his vision of linux desktop, but got rejected, so Mir was created. Mir became useful way before first implementations of Wayland, but Shuttleworth idea to expand Mir and Ubuntu to phones resulted in feature creep, lack of funding and eventually to project failure. Gnome shell was also released after Unity. Both were influenced by MacOS LaF. The problem with Unity was that it was based on gnome 2 and compiz, that was a good compositor back in the days, but a dead end as a technology, as compositor should’ve been implemented on a lower level and be an integral part of DE. Shuttleworth started Mir and new Unity based on that, but both sank and Ubuntu had to revert to gnome-shell that became useful and more performant than earlier versions.
- lockhouse 3y ago
  You’re right on all counts. My memory failed me on the order of those. Thanks for setting me straight!
paride5745 3y ago
The difference is that Canonical forces the contributions ownership to be handed over, while RedHat plays by accepted opensource practices. So while Canonical might have good initial ideas, the way they manage projects really kills them, e.g. snaps properly opensources might have been successful, instead they enforces the use of their proprietary server and ignore community requests (like moving /snap to /var/snap or making it configurable or allowing different servers/sources for snaps, while you can relatively easily make your own flatpak server and have users add the repo to their systems).