13 ms·

Does Canonical have any coherent explanation for why they are still pressing on with their own incompatible rewrite of a display server when a perfectly good on

by comex 13y ago

Does Canonical have any coherent explanation for why they are still pressing on with their own incompatible rewrite of a display server when a perfectly good one was already in development?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
acabal 13y ago
My guess is that they're doing it so they can have control over the pace of development and features. I think Shuttleworth got burned by the early-days Gnome Shell debacle--he felt that they had no input on or control over what Gnome Shell was to become, so he went his own way with Unity. Mir might be his attempt to control the stack in anticipation of getting burned again. After all, supporting Wayland means working in a committee-ish environment, with principal developers not on the payroll and thus not able to be whipped at a certain pace, and without a dictator's say in the direction of the product. What if he wants feature Z included in the next dev cycle to support cool new mobile hardware? With Wayland, he'd have to play politics with the developers and pray. With Mir, he can just order it. Not to say that I think it's a good decision. In fact I think it's one of the most ruinous decisions for the Linux community that Canonical could have possibly made. Graphics support has been the biggest thorn in Linux's side for years, and dividing the ecosystem at a time when Valve is poised to finally revolutionize things is pretty despicable. But I can see the short-sighted business logic behind it.
- Jasper_ 13y ago
  > I think Shuttleworth got burned by the early-days Gnome Shell debacle--he felt that they had no input on or control over what Gnome Shell was to become, so he went his own way with Unity. As someone who was there from the beginning, this is false. The hackfest where some of the initial goals of GNOME Shell were planned out in 2008 at Canonical offices. We were wondering why some of the Canonical guys who were listed as RSVPing weren't there... until we went to lunch and saw that they were having their own private meeting. I don't think we'll ever know what was discussed -- perhaps their indicator system. Canonical employees were participating in the Boston hackfests in 2008 and 2009 and we welcomed their presence; they actually had a lot of good ideas which we integrated. I, personally, never had any issues with Canonical's work and I think all of my coworkers would agree. I'm really not sure where this perceived "us vs. them" animosity came from, but I never felt it personally. They're still absolutely welcome to contribute back to GNOME if they want to (and, to be fair, some still do).
  - SEJeff 13y ago
    I was at the Boston summit in 2010 (for the snowy hackfest mainly) and distinctly remember some unpleasant and very public back and forth between (I believe) Jon William McCann and a Canonical employee who was trying to troll shell and was rightfully called out for their foolishness. I got a _distinct_ feeling of us vs them, but that was in 2010.
- epsylon 13y ago
  > Valve is poised to finally revolutionize things is pretty despicable. Valve's announcement is only a few days old. Mir precedes it by months.
- StavrosK 13y ago
  > After all, supporting Wayland means working in a committee-ish environment, with principal developers not on the payroll and thus not able to be whipped at a certain pace, and without a dictator's say in the direction of the product. That's certainly unbiased wording.
SCdF 13y ago
No. They want to have control, and they think they are large enough to get away with it. They're probably right.
jfoster 13y ago
Canonical's explanation is on this page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir/Spec https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir/Spec
- comex 13y ago
  It's a short, vague explanation that, other than a correction for a significant inaccuracy in the original version (which I think demonstrates a serious lack of research!), has had no update since it was originally published several months ago, despite the almost universal criticism of Canonical's reasoning by the community. I don't think this is particularly coherent.
  - walid 13y ago
    It is definitely not vague and seems to be very coherent in their description of features that both X and Wayland are lacking. I'm not a Linux dev but their points seem well justified.
    - contingencies 13y ago
      They have maintainability across a wide number of devices as a requirement. They have low powered devices with existing, third-party, potentially closed source graphics drivers as a requirement. I don't know about anyone else here, but every time I set up a new system I have to waste hours getting X11 and the console resolution working right. Sometimes, they never work right. Add to that modern features like display brightness, backlit keyboards, power management, external monitor outputs, and touchscreen input with gesture support and it's unrealistic for X11 to spread to the vast number of new, lower powered devices with less technical users without some serious further work to standardize and normalize handling of differences. Therefore I am glad, for the nontechnical majority of the world, that someone out there is bothering to try to make a reference open source mechanism for removing these problems so an install doesn't end in crashes with weird kernel boot messages about drm and BIOS upgrades and X configurations and input device drivers... even if I continue to use gentoo myself.
      - 13y ago
j_s 13y ago
Perhaps the ability to re-license for commercial use? http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html > They can relicense Mir (and any other GPLv3 projects they own) under licenses > that keep their hardware partners happy, and they can ship in the phone market

by comex 13y ago

Does Canonical have any coherent explanation for why they are still pressing on with their own incompatible rewrite of a display server when a perfectly good one was already in development?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

acabal 13y ago

My guess is that they're doing it so they can have control over the pace of development and features. I think Shuttleworth got burned by the early-days Gnome Shell debacle--he felt that they had no input on or control over what Gnome Shell was to become, so he went his own way with Unity. Mir might be his attempt to control the stack in anticipation of getting burned again. After all, supporting Wayland means working in a committee-ish environment, with principal developers not on the payroll and thus not able to be whipped at a certain pace, and without a dictator's say in the direction of the product. What if he wants feature Z included in the next dev cycle to support cool new mobile hardware? With Wayland, he'd have to play politics with the developers and pray. With Mir, he can just order it. Not to say that I think it's a good decision. In fact I think it's one of the most ruinous decisions for the Linux community that Canonical could have possibly made. Graphics support has been the biggest thorn in Linux's side for years, and dividing the ecosystem at a time when Valve is poised to finally revolutionize things is pretty despicable. But I can see the short-sighted business logic behind it.

Jasper_ 13y ago
> I think Shuttleworth got burned by the early-days Gnome Shell debacle--he felt that they had no input on or control over what Gnome Shell was to become, so he went his own way with Unity. As someone who was there from the beginning, this is false. The hackfest where some of the initial goals of GNOME Shell were planned out in 2008 at Canonical offices. We were wondering why some of the Canonical guys who were listed as RSVPing weren't there... until we went to lunch and saw that they were having their own private meeting. I don't think we'll ever know what was discussed -- perhaps their indicator system. Canonical employees were participating in the Boston hackfests in 2008 and 2009 and we welcomed their presence; they actually had a lot of good ideas which we integrated. I, personally, never had any issues with Canonical's work and I think all of my coworkers would agree. I'm really not sure where this perceived "us vs. them" animosity came from, but I never felt it personally. They're still absolutely welcome to contribute back to GNOME if they want to (and, to be fair, some still do).
- SEJeff 13y ago
  I was at the Boston summit in 2010 (for the snowy hackfest mainly) and distinctly remember some unpleasant and very public back and forth between (I believe) Jon William McCann and a Canonical employee who was trying to troll shell and was rightfully called out for their foolishness. I got a _distinct_ feeling of us vs them, but that was in 2010.
epsylon 13y ago
> Valve is poised to finally revolutionize things is pretty despicable. Valve's announcement is only a few days old. Mir precedes it by months.
StavrosK 13y ago
> After all, supporting Wayland means working in a committee-ish environment, with principal developers not on the payroll and thus not able to be whipped at a certain pace, and without a dictator's say in the direction of the product. That's certainly unbiased wording.

SCdF 13y ago

No. They want to have control, and they think they are large enough to get away with it. They're probably right.

jfoster 13y ago

Canonical's explanation is on this page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir/Spec https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir/Spec

comex 13y ago
It's a short, vague explanation that, other than a correction for a significant inaccuracy in the original version (which I think demonstrates a serious lack of research!), has had no update since it was originally published several months ago, despite the almost universal criticism of Canonical's reasoning by the community. I don't think this is particularly coherent.
- walid 13y ago
  It is definitely not vague and seems to be very coherent in their description of features that both X and Wayland are lacking. I'm not a Linux dev but their points seem well justified.
  - contingencies 13y ago
    They have maintainability across a wide number of devices as a requirement. They have low powered devices with existing, third-party, potentially closed source graphics drivers as a requirement. I don't know about anyone else here, but every time I set up a new system I have to waste hours getting X11 and the console resolution working right. Sometimes, they never work right. Add to that modern features like display brightness, backlit keyboards, power management, external monitor outputs, and touchscreen input with gesture support and it's unrealistic for X11 to spread to the vast number of new, lower powered devices with less technical users without some serious further work to standardize and normalize handling of differences. Therefore I am glad, for the nontechnical majority of the world, that someone out there is bothering to try to make a reference open source mechanism for removing these problems so an install doesn't end in crashes with weird kernel boot messages about drm and BIOS upgrades and X configurations and input device drivers... even if I continue to use gentoo myself.
    - 13y ago

j_s 13y ago

Perhaps the ability to re-license for commercial use? http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html > They can relicense Mir (and any other GPLv3 projects they own) under licenses > that keep their hardware partners happy, and they can ship in the phone market