3 ms·
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 S
by 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 agoI 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.