4 ms·

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Ubuntu's raison d'etre, which is to bring Free (libre) software to the world. Except the rest of the (consumer) world

by achiang 14y ago

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Ubuntu's raison d'etre, which is to bring Free (libre) software to the world. Except the rest of the (consumer) world doesn't value libre as a first-class feature. They want the shiny. The way we get to bring our values to the world is to be commercially relevant. Because otherwise, hardware vendors don't care about you, ISVs ignore you, app developers target other platforms, and so forth. Market share isn't the end goal. It's a means to the end.

jlgreco 14y ago
Seems dishonest and manipulative to me. Con a bunch of people into adopting something that doesn't really fit their needs, is just shiny, so that you can use them as leverage... that is not something I am interested in. Meanwhile all of those unskilled users are not without a cost. Free software support infrastructure is not set up to handle that many unskilled users. If Canonical is going to be giving all of those people 3rd party support themselves, that is all well and good, but it seems to me they tend to punt the ball.
- tg3 14y ago
  I don't think it's conning them into something they don't need. I think it's giving them what they want (shiny, easy to use) so that they have something that they need but don't realize it yet (libre).
- achiang 14y ago
  The entire reason why desktop Linux has been a failure is exactly because it does not fit the needs of most people. And for that audience, "shiny" is equally important as "featureful". In the modern marketplace, you can't choose either/or. It has to be both. Ubuntu wants to do both and additionally add libre. The strawman fallacy you inferred from my statement has the additional fallacy of incorrect causality. People are initially attracted to Ubuntu for a variety of reasons, and we hope to keep them because we are fit for purpose, not for whatever ideological reason or niche feature, and certainly not due to any sort of con job. Desktop Ubuntu has failed to reach that critical mass of users to be taken seriously by industry (our good friends at Valve notwithstanding), and the only logical place to jumpstart the install base is the mobile world. The mobile market is brutally competitive. Ubuntu will succeed or fail on its own merits, not because of any dishonest manipulation of innocent users.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Has desktop Linux been a failure? By what measure, adoption of people who are not in it's niche market? Would it stop being a "failure" if we got a bunch of laymen using it? Compare community desktop linux distros with community distros of something more oriented towards the masses... say.. Android. The Debian Project is a well oiled machine, coherent and consistent. Everything has a well defined process. Technically capable users don't have to sort through piles of crap to get work done. Cyanogenmod on the other hand is an utter shitfest. Standard operating procedure there is wading through clusterfucked forums looking for undocumented unofficial fixes (in prebuild binaries mind, no source) in threads thousands of posts long filled with idiots saying "hurr durr, I dropped my phone in the toilet, now this patch doesn't work". They cannot handle the size of their technologically illiterate community, and everyone attempting to use their software, technical or otherwise, suffers as a result. (This isn't even touching the issue of shittier hardware support than you would ever expect to see with desktop linux...) If piles of unwashed masses were really what desktop Linux is "missing", then community maintained Android distributions should, far from being a nightmare, be the promised land. This is plainly not the case.
    - achiang 14y ago
      You keep putting up strawmen. Show me the desktop Linux equivalent of Android, not Cyanogenmod. It doesn't exist - and you can measure that failure with any number of metrics. If Ubuntu can achieve that type of success and protect the freedom of users with the GPL (instead of the permissive BSD model for hardware makers) then we will have accomplished something in the world.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        You have missed the point. Show me the Android equivalent of Debian. Show me an Android project, with all of the unskilled users that come with it, that is anywhere near as organized as the Debian Project. Show me that legions of unskilled users have allowed this Android project to achieve hardware compatibility at all comparable to what Debian achieves on the desktop. Such a project does not exist. I assert that it does not exist in no small part because they have too many unskilled users, and because hardware support does not materialize as soon as you reach some sort of "critical mass" of unskilled users. Idiot users are toxic; anything that touches them rots. Only corporations that are prepared to completely disregard community involvement are capable of wielding an idiot userbases. Canonical is neither up to that task nor does it even appear to be pretending to be. Why? Probably because the lunatics run the asylum.
VLM 14y ago
"This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Ubuntu's raison d'etre, which is to bring Free (libre) software to the world." Here's my marketing campaign, sad as it is, its the best possible spin: "Hey world, I've got something new for you, its incompatible with everything and doesn't work with anything and can't actually do anything you want, but, hey, its new so it must be better and it does a bunch of stuff that nobody outside the dev community cares about. Oh and we "had" to take some stuff away like network transparency which is awesome, err, I mean ignore the man behind the curtain and someday VNC might work, oh and every dev who's finally gotten used to the existing weird design will have to retrain. Other than that trust me its awesome you better switch now. And by switch, I really mean it since it'll be incompatible with everything else ever written." How could anyone not drop their entire legacy installed base of hardware and software and training and switch, I mean its got transparent animated dancing robots which no one can do without, and its got electrolytes that plants crave! I'm sorry I just can't do any better given bad news.

by achiang 14y ago

jlgreco 14y ago

Seems dishonest and manipulative to me. Con a bunch of people into adopting something that doesn't really fit their needs, is just shiny, so that you can use them as leverage... that is not something I am interested in. Meanwhile all of those unskilled users are not without a cost. Free software support infrastructure is not set up to handle that many unskilled users. If Canonical is going to be giving all of those people 3rd party support themselves, that is all well and good, but it seems to me they tend to punt the ball.

tg3 14y ago
I don't think it's conning them into something they don't need. I think it's giving them what they want (shiny, easy to use) so that they have something that they need but don't realize it yet (libre).
achiang 14y ago
The entire reason why desktop Linux has been a failure is exactly because it does not fit the needs of most people. And for that audience, "shiny" is equally important as "featureful". In the modern marketplace, you can't choose either/or. It has to be both. Ubuntu wants to do both and additionally add libre. The strawman fallacy you inferred from my statement has the additional fallacy of incorrect causality. People are initially attracted to Ubuntu for a variety of reasons, and we hope to keep them because we are fit for purpose, not for whatever ideological reason or niche feature, and certainly not due to any sort of con job. Desktop Ubuntu has failed to reach that critical mass of users to be taken seriously by industry (our good friends at Valve notwithstanding), and the only logical place to jumpstart the install base is the mobile world. The mobile market is brutally competitive. Ubuntu will succeed or fail on its own merits, not because of any dishonest manipulation of innocent users.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Has desktop Linux been a failure? By what measure, adoption of people who are not in it's niche market? Would it stop being a "failure" if we got a bunch of laymen using it? Compare community desktop linux distros with community distros of something more oriented towards the masses... say.. Android. The Debian Project is a well oiled machine, coherent and consistent. Everything has a well defined process. Technically capable users don't have to sort through piles of crap to get work done. Cyanogenmod on the other hand is an utter shitfest. Standard operating procedure there is wading through clusterfucked forums looking for undocumented unofficial fixes (in prebuild binaries mind, no source) in threads thousands of posts long filled with idiots saying "hurr durr, I dropped my phone in the toilet, now this patch doesn't work". They cannot handle the size of their technologically illiterate community, and everyone attempting to use their software, technical or otherwise, suffers as a result. (This isn't even touching the issue of shittier hardware support than you would ever expect to see with desktop linux...) If piles of unwashed masses were really what desktop Linux is "missing", then community maintained Android distributions should, far from being a nightmare, be the promised land. This is plainly not the case.
  - achiang 14y ago
    You keep putting up strawmen. Show me the desktop Linux equivalent of Android, not Cyanogenmod. It doesn't exist - and you can measure that failure with any number of metrics. If Ubuntu can achieve that type of success and protect the freedom of users with the GPL (instead of the permissive BSD model for hardware makers) then we will have accomplished something in the world.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      You have missed the point. Show me the Android equivalent of Debian. Show me an Android project, with all of the unskilled users that come with it, that is anywhere near as organized as the Debian Project. Show me that legions of unskilled users have allowed this Android project to achieve hardware compatibility at all comparable to what Debian achieves on the desktop. Such a project does not exist. I assert that it does not exist in no small part because they have too many unskilled users, and because hardware support does not materialize as soon as you reach some sort of "critical mass" of unskilled users. Idiot users are toxic; anything that touches them rots. Only corporations that are prepared to completely disregard community involvement are capable of wielding an idiot userbases. Canonical is neither up to that task nor does it even appear to be pretending to be. Why? Probably because the lunatics run the asylum.

VLM 14y ago

"This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Ubuntu's raison d'etre, which is to bring Free (libre) software to the world." Here's my marketing campaign, sad as it is, its the best possible spin: "Hey world, I've got something new for you, its incompatible with everything and doesn't work with anything and can't actually do anything you want, but, hey, its new so it must be better and it does a bunch of stuff that nobody outside the dev community cares about. Oh and we "had" to take some stuff away like network transparency which is awesome, err, I mean ignore the man behind the curtain and someday VNC might work, oh and every dev who's finally gotten used to the existing weird design will have to retrain. Other than that trust me its awesome you better switch now. And by switch, I really mean it since it'll be incompatible with everything else ever written." How could anyone not drop their entire legacy installed base of hardware and software and training and switch, I mean its got transparent animated dancing robots which no one can do without, and its got electrolytes that plants crave! I'm sorry I just can't do any better given bad news.