8 ms·

What an awful move. Note that they are deliberately hurting open source software by restricting contributions for a purely political reason. Obviously it will

by tinco 13y ago

What an awful move. Note that they are deliberately hurting open source software by restricting contributions for a purely political reason. Obviously it will result in an Ubuntu fork of the intel drivers, which will eventually lead to a situation where the only consequence is a more painful workflow for Ubuntu core contributers and early adopters looking for up to date drivers.

pjmlp 13y ago
Does not surprise me. Many guys in FOSS tend to like Intel, but not all Intel departments are FOSS friendly. Even the graphics division, tends to put more resources into DirectX tooling and processors like the PowerVR family, than what they contribute to X.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- thomasjames 13y ago
  This is not about FOSS, it is about one man's vision to circumvent the mainstream developer community. Ubuntu chose to make the transition from pre-configuring Debian and making compiz themes for Gnome to trying its hand at systems-level programming. It would be somewhat self-assured of them to assume that all hardware vendors, who are already heavily invested in Linux, as a platform, would necessarily pick up the slack, especially when those investments did not foresee a move like Mir.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    I don't say otherwise, just that Intel as a company is a corporation like any other, with contributions to FOSS also driven by internal politics.
    - kbuck 13y ago
      I don't think it's entirely a corporate move here. Free software contributions aren't infinite; if you have $N developers working on integrating support for display servers, then it's simple math that having to support two display servers means that you'll have $N/2 developers working on each, and will therefore get half the work done (and, since they'll probably still have to support X11 for a while, make that $N/3). Ubuntu selfishly forked Mir instead of choosing to try to use Wayland (especially when they had originally committed to using Wayland[1]), so the burden is on them here. It also doesn't help that Canonical employees were using the inclusion of XMir support as political fodder[2]. [1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 [2] https://twitter.com/olliries/status/375704285083738112 https://twitter.com/olliries/status/375704285083738112
thomasjames 13y ago
You are of course assuming Ubuntu can maintain Intel drivers, which given their upstream contribution track record might be a tall order.
- krschultz 13y ago
  This is a great comment in that it shows the cognitive dissonance of slamming Canonical for trying to commit upstream while also slamming them for their past lack of upstream commits, in a handy Twitter length package.
  - mayhew 13y ago
    Sorry, but sending code upstream for their distribution-specific display server (which has no technical reasons for existing) isn't benefiting the rest of the community.
- chrismsnz 13y ago
  Given the size and content of the patches under discussion here, I think they'll be fine maintaining that level of Mir integration with the Intel drivers themselves.
  - snogglethorpe 13y ago
    Sure, Intel's actions are more symbolic than anything else. Ubuntu has received a lot of flack for their aggressively NIH attitude, but being able to point to support for their NIH-motivated products in other widely-used software would signify some amount of acceptance of their actions in the wider community. I think their are many people who don't want to send that signal.
adamors 13y ago
What are you even talking about? Most of the Wayland developers work at Intel. Also, not even other *buntu maintainers are going with Mir, so unless you are equating Canonical with open source, you must be a tad lost.
- tinco 13y ago
  Oh yeah, all of those Wayland developers: https://github.com/nobled/wayland/graphs/contributors https://github.com/nobled/wayland/graphs/contributors I'm not equating Canonical with open source, I'm equating what they're making with open source. Because it is. What are you even talking about?
  - forgottenpass 13y ago
    I don't know how github generates that data, but if you page through this: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/log/?qt=author&q= http://cgit.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/log/?qt=author&q... It paints a very different picture about the distribution of authorship.
    - tinco 13y ago
      Hmm, you are right. That's a bit awkward, git doesn't actually track authors, it just tracks committers. So there's actually a bunch of authors, and krh is just committing for them. Woops, sorry about that :) Would like to see a graph that shows authorship though, very interested in how large and active the wayland dev team actually is.
mmgutz 13y ago
Ubuntu is the one that decided to go their own way. Why does Intel have to support them?
mayhew 13y ago
Ubuntu is creating Mir for political reasons. There's no reason for upstream projects to maintain code that only benefits a single distribution.
- damien 13y ago
  Yep, all of their technical reasons have pretty much been debunked. The reason for Mir's existence is mainly about project control. As Matthew Garrett mentions[1], they likely need that control for Ubuntu Phone to be able to relicense the code to keep their hardware partners happy. [1] http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html
  - bad_user 13y ago
    This is why I think licenses such as AGPL and GPLv3 are hurting open-source (and Free Software). The intentions behind them are good, but in practice they are used in parallel with commercial licenses that have nothing to do with open-source.
    - bkor 13y ago
      Wayland is not under such licences. It uses the MIT license.
      - profquail 13y ago
        I think bad_user is talking about Mir: it's licensed under GPLv3 [1].
        bkor 13y ago
        My point was more that license was no reason, Wayland already has a good license. Mir is first under a different license to then require a special CLA to be able to license it differently. In Wayland everyone has the same rights.
damien 13y ago
I don't see how it's political to let Canonical keep the burden of maintaining code that only they care about...
- azakai 13y ago
  Is that what is happening here? Intel's explanation of "The Management" handing down orders doesn't imply technical reasons were the motivation. It's unclear. If there are technical reasons - like the one you mentioned - let's hear them, they might be valid.
  - asveikau 13y ago
    Does anyone else see the "-The Management" comment as having more than a tinge of sarcasm? I think people are taking it a little too seriously.
    - nknighthb 13y ago
      http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/commit/?id=0c697aee9b3767be7d1e04e4e4f9d304f23b188a http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/com... Note "Ordered-by:" line, clearly intended to communicate Chris Wilson was ordered to do this, rather than doing it of his own accord.
      - asveikau 13y ago
        You still see no attempt at humor or lightheartedness in this? May I remind you that his email ends in .co.uk, so many people may need to apply a "British humour filter". Most of his commits have "Signed-off-by:" with a name; he replaced "signed-off" with "ordered" and the name with a vague reference to "The Management". The further context I was thinking of was this: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/commit/?id=58a7611ccfda88c7cbcc62b25b787d6b0fa64081 http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/com...
        13y ago
tjdetwiler 13y ago
This is something Canonical should have considered before developing they're own display server. The community attitude from the start seems to generally be "we won't carry support upstream", so this doesn't seem unreasonable.
- tinco 13y ago
  Who's saying Canonical hasn't considered this? If this truly reflects the community attitude towards a new open source project than that is an awful thing. No one is saying it, but Wayland is just a display server, and worse, it's just a display server that's been developed on by just one guy in what is clearly his spare time. For years, and it's still not something we can readily use. If instead of Canonical this was just a random dude with a kickstarter project, promising that if he built this something new he would get NVidia and AMD in on it we'd all be cheering them on. We want a replacement for X. Wether it's Wayland or Mir, the community shouldn't care. If both of them grow up to be great display servers, then the projects can have their choice. Why make that choice now, when Mir isn't anything yet, and Wayland looks like an infinite road to nowhere? So there you have it, a bad comment about Wayland. Why? Because I'm frustrated. X has been a pain in our collective asses for so many years, and the project that was going to change that receives almost no support. It's just this one guy going at it. No vendor support, no distro support. No one wants to touch it, so it takes 5 years to get to this point where it seems like it's almost ready for adoption, but still no one builds a desktop environment for it or any vendor interest. Then a company just goes for it, allocates significant resources to it, and even uses its connections and leverage to get vendors in on it, and makes sure there's going to be a desktop environment for it. And the whole community just goes 'boo!'? what is that about? What's the community got to lose? Why is it hurt? What has it invested in wayland? I'll say it. Nothing. Just some code some dude made that's possibly going to be obsolete if Canonical succeeds. And if not, then Canonical made some obsolete code, which is their business risk, not ours to judge over. If you ask me, the community should be positive. What have we got to gain? A possible X successor that's got multi-vendor support and a desktop environment that works. It's going to have a nice interface, takes up a lot of design clues from wayland and generally is going to kick ass if it works out.
  - 13y ago
bkor 13y ago
The reason for starting Mir is still unclear to me. The is a very real cost of maintaining Mir. If you're not Canonical, why would you spend money, time and complexity for an unclear benefit? Better have it stay Canonical-only.

by tinco 13y ago

pjmlp 13y ago

Does not surprise me. Many guys in FOSS tend to like Intel, but not all Intel departments are FOSS friendly. Even the graphics division, tends to put more resources into DirectX tooling and processors like the PowerVR family, than what they contribute to X.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
thomasjames 13y ago
This is not about FOSS, it is about one man's vision to circumvent the mainstream developer community. Ubuntu chose to make the transition from pre-configuring Debian and making compiz themes for Gnome to trying its hand at systems-level programming. It would be somewhat self-assured of them to assume that all hardware vendors, who are already heavily invested in Linux, as a platform, would necessarily pick up the slack, especially when those investments did not foresee a move like Mir.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  I don't say otherwise, just that Intel as a company is a corporation like any other, with contributions to FOSS also driven by internal politics.
  - kbuck 13y ago
    I don't think it's entirely a corporate move here. Free software contributions aren't infinite; if you have $N developers working on integrating support for display servers, then it's simple math that having to support two display servers means that you'll have $N/2 developers working on each, and will therefore get half the work done (and, since they'll probably still have to support X11 for a while, make that $N/3). Ubuntu selfishly forked Mir instead of choosing to try to use Wayland (especially when they had originally committed to using Wayland[1]), so the burden is on them here. It also doesn't help that Canonical employees were using the inclusion of XMir support as political fodder[2]. [1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 [2] https://twitter.com/olliries/status/375704285083738112 https://twitter.com/olliries/status/375704285083738112

thomasjames 13y ago

You are of course assuming Ubuntu can maintain Intel drivers, which given their upstream contribution track record might be a tall order.

krschultz 13y ago
This is a great comment in that it shows the cognitive dissonance of slamming Canonical for trying to commit upstream while also slamming them for their past lack of upstream commits, in a handy Twitter length package.
- mayhew 13y ago
  Sorry, but sending code upstream for their distribution-specific display server (which has no technical reasons for existing) isn't benefiting the rest of the community.
chrismsnz 13y ago
Given the size and content of the patches under discussion here, I think they'll be fine maintaining that level of Mir integration with the Intel drivers themselves.
- snogglethorpe 13y ago
  Sure, Intel's actions are more symbolic than anything else. Ubuntu has received a lot of flack for their aggressively NIH attitude, but being able to point to support for their NIH-motivated products in other widely-used software would signify some amount of acceptance of their actions in the wider community. I think their are many people who don't want to send that signal.

adamors 13y ago

What are you even talking about? Most of the Wayland developers work at Intel. Also, not even other *buntu maintainers are going with Mir, so unless you are equating Canonical with open source, you must be a tad lost.

tinco 13y ago
Oh yeah, all of those Wayland developers: https://github.com/nobled/wayland/graphs/contributors https://github.com/nobled/wayland/graphs/contributors I'm not equating Canonical with open source, I'm equating what they're making with open source. Because it is. What are you even talking about?
- forgottenpass 13y ago
  I don't know how github generates that data, but if you page through this: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/log/?qt=author&q= http://cgit.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/log/?qt=author&q... It paints a very different picture about the distribution of authorship.
  - tinco 13y ago
    Hmm, you are right. That's a bit awkward, git doesn't actually track authors, it just tracks committers. So there's actually a bunch of authors, and krh is just committing for them. Woops, sorry about that :) Would like to see a graph that shows authorship though, very interested in how large and active the wayland dev team actually is.

mmgutz 13y ago

Ubuntu is the one that decided to go their own way. Why does Intel have to support them?

mayhew 13y ago

Ubuntu is creating Mir for political reasons. There's no reason for upstream projects to maintain code that only benefits a single distribution.

damien 13y ago
Yep, all of their technical reasons have pretty much been debunked. The reason for Mir's existence is mainly about project control. As Matthew Garrett mentions[1], they likely need that control for Ubuntu Phone to be able to relicense the code to keep their hardware partners happy. [1] http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html
- bad_user 13y ago
  This is why I think licenses such as AGPL and GPLv3 are hurting open-source (and Free Software). The intentions behind them are good, but in practice they are used in parallel with commercial licenses that have nothing to do with open-source.
  - bkor 13y ago
    Wayland is not under such licences. It uses the MIT license.
    - profquail 13y ago
      I think bad_user is talking about Mir: it's licensed under GPLv3 [1].
      - bkor 13y ago
        My point was more that license was no reason, Wayland already has a good license. Mir is first under a different license to then require a special CLA to be able to license it differently. In Wayland everyone has the same rights.

damien 13y ago

I don't see how it's political to let Canonical keep the burden of maintaining code that only they care about...

azakai 13y ago
Is that what is happening here? Intel's explanation of "The Management" handing down orders doesn't imply technical reasons were the motivation. It's unclear. If there are technical reasons - like the one you mentioned - let's hear them, they might be valid.
- asveikau 13y ago
  Does anyone else see the "-The Management" comment as having more than a tinge of sarcasm? I think people are taking it a little too seriously.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/commit/?id=0c697aee9b3767be7d1e04e4e4f9d304f23b188a http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/com... Note "Ordered-by:" line, clearly intended to communicate Chris Wilson was ordered to do this, rather than doing it of his own accord.
    - asveikau 13y ago
      You still see no attempt at humor or lightheartedness in this? May I remind you that his email ends in .co.uk, so many people may need to apply a "British humour filter". Most of his commits have "Signed-off-by:" with a name; he replaced "signed-off" with "ordered" and the name with a vague reference to "The Management". The further context I was thinking of was this: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/commit/?id=58a7611ccfda88c7cbcc62b25b787d6b0fa64081 http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/com...
      - 13y ago

tjdetwiler 13y ago

This is something Canonical should have considered before developing they're own display server. The community attitude from the start seems to generally be "we won't carry support upstream", so this doesn't seem unreasonable.

tinco 13y ago
Who's saying Canonical hasn't considered this? If this truly reflects the community attitude towards a new open source project than that is an awful thing. No one is saying it, but Wayland is just a display server, and worse, it's just a display server that's been developed on by just one guy in what is clearly his spare time. For years, and it's still not something we can readily use. If instead of Canonical this was just a random dude with a kickstarter project, promising that if he built this something new he would get NVidia and AMD in on it we'd all be cheering them on. We want a replacement for X. Wether it's Wayland or Mir, the community shouldn't care. If both of them grow up to be great display servers, then the projects can have their choice. Why make that choice now, when Mir isn't anything yet, and Wayland looks like an infinite road to nowhere? So there you have it, a bad comment about Wayland. Why? Because I'm frustrated. X has been a pain in our collective asses for so many years, and the project that was going to change that receives almost no support. It's just this one guy going at it. No vendor support, no distro support. No one wants to touch it, so it takes 5 years to get to this point where it seems like it's almost ready for adoption, but still no one builds a desktop environment for it or any vendor interest. Then a company just goes for it, allocates significant resources to it, and even uses its connections and leverage to get vendors in on it, and makes sure there's going to be a desktop environment for it. And the whole community just goes 'boo!'? what is that about? What's the community got to lose? Why is it hurt? What has it invested in wayland? I'll say it. Nothing. Just some code some dude made that's possibly going to be obsolete if Canonical succeeds. And if not, then Canonical made some obsolete code, which is their business risk, not ours to judge over. If you ask me, the community should be positive. What have we got to gain? A possible X successor that's got multi-vendor support and a desktop environment that works. It's going to have a nice interface, takes up a lot of design clues from wayland and generally is going to kick ass if it works out.
- 13y ago

bkor 13y ago

The reason for starting Mir is still unclear to me. The is a very real cost of maintaining Mir. If you're not Canonical, why would you spend money, time and complexity for an unclear benefit? Better have it stay Canonical-only.