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I find it interesting in the comments that most people are claiming that Canonical's time would be better spent contributing to existing projects, but isn't the

by Osiris 14y ago

I find it interesting in the comments that most people are claiming that Canonical's time would be better spent contributing to existing projects, but isn't the nature of Open Source to be constantly forking, iterating, and contributing new code when you think the existing stuff isn't good enough? Aren't these attitudes the basis of why many subsystems in Linux have been around for decades? Others complain about fragmentation, which is another obtuse argument when you count the number Linux distributions available, the number of open source packages, and the entire nature of GitHub with their "please fork me" button. Open Source is by nature fragmented. If they want to go run off and do their own thing, what's the problem? It's their time and money. If what they write is crap, no other distributions will use it. If it's awesome, it has a lot of potential, but the community should decide after it's released, not before.

Shish2k 14y ago
Forking, iterating, and contributing new code are all good things. Reinventing the wheel, coming up with a square, and then getting the majority of users (by virtue of being the default, not by being the best), is not so good. The complaint is that Canonical is doing the latter with a lot of things.
andor 14y ago
isn't the nature of Open Source to be constantly forking, iterating, and contributing new code when you think the existing stuff isn't good enough? You can always start from scratch if existing projects don't cut it. When talking about a windows manager (like Unity) or display manager (like Mir), starting from scratch is, financially, a pretty big decision, so you should make it an informed decision. The weird thing is that Canonical never even contacted the Wayland developers. It's weird because they should be interested in any mistakes Wayland made on their way (to not make them again), and because it's so easy in the open source community. If you find a bug in your Intel graphics driver you just go to freenode and talk to the developer that wrote that code. Same for Wayland, and most other projects. If they really want to be better than Wayland, they should learn from Wayland's mistakes, not make the same mistakes again.

by Osiris 14y ago

Shish2k 14y ago

Forking, iterating, and contributing new code are all good things. Reinventing the wheel, coming up with a square, and then getting the majority of users (by virtue of being the default, not by being the best), is not so good. The complaint is that Canonical is doing the latter with a lot of things.

andor 14y ago

isn't the nature of Open Source to be constantly forking, iterating, and contributing new code when you think the existing stuff isn't good enough? You can always start from scratch if existing projects don't cut it. When talking about a windows manager (like Unity) or display manager (like Mir), starting from scratch is, financially, a pretty big decision, so you should make it an informed decision. The weird thing is that Canonical never even contacted the Wayland developers. It's weird because they should be interested in any mistakes Wayland made on their way (to not make them again), and because it's so easy in the open source community. If you find a bug in your Intel graphics driver you just go to freenode and talk to the developer that wrote that code. Same for Wayland, and most other projects. If they really want to be better than Wayland, they should learn from Wayland's mistakes, not make the same mistakes again.