11 ms·

Martin Gräßlin, KDE: "Good Bye, Ubuntu"

274 points by Tsiolkovsky 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
korethr 13y ago
I've not followed any of the goings on in the Ubuntu community for a while. Reading this, I get the feeling that I missed something. Did Mark Shuttleworth chew out someone in a way that makes Linus look gentle and nice, or something?
- corbet 13y ago
  I believe he must be referring to this: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295
  - hysan 13y ago
    For more info, here is his (Martin's) blog post about it: http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about-the-open-source-tea-party/ http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about...
  - josteink 13y ago
    Nice move by Mark to accuse others of full NIH (and "open source tea-partying" no less), when they announced and started working on Mir long after Wayland was already gaining traction. Ubuntu does lots of things right (being overly decisive being one of them), but this whole Mir-affair just strikes me as plain absurd.
  - sciurus 13y ago
    The LWN comments on Mark's blog post make for a good contrast. http://lwn.net/Articles/570827/ http://lwn.net/Articles/570827/
lulzmachine 13y ago
What post by Mark is he referring to?
- ywyrd 13y ago
  Most likely the "open source tea party" post wherein Mr. Shuttleworth collectivized and dismissed any and all critics as irrational haters with nothing of substance to say.
- lambda 13y ago
  This one: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295 Mir is really important work. When lots of competitors attack a project on purely political grounds, you have to wonder what THEIR agenda is. At least we know now who belongs to the Open Source Tea Party And to put all the hue and cry into context: Mir is relevant for approximately 1% of all developers, just those who think about shell development. Every app developer will consume Mir through their toolkit. By contrast, those same outraged individuals have NIH’d just about every important piece of the stack they can get their hands on… most notably SystemD, which is hugely invasive and hardly justified. What closely to see how competitors to Canonical torture the English language in their efforts to justify how those toolkits should support Windows but not Mir. But we’ll get it done, and it will be amazing. In context, this was written shortly after Martin Gräßlin had said that he would not support Mir in KWin. KWin is the KDE window manager/shell; he is one of those "1% of all developers" for whom the display server really matters. And unlike what Mark claims, KWin does not support Windows (other parts of the Qt and KDE stack do, but not KWin). So, he sees this as his time essentially being volunteered for him by Mark, to support a display server with an architecture he doesn't agree with, after he's already put the effort in to support the display server that pretty much everyone else in the desktop Linux ecosystem have been targeting. And if you don't agree with Mark, or the technical decisions made leading to Mir, you get branded as "the Open Source Tea Party", "purely political", an "outraged individual" who has "NIH'd just about every piece of the stack."
  - TallGuyShort 13y ago
Aardwolf 13y ago
I do hope KDE will keep working on Ubuntu? I have to use Ubuntu on some workstation, having KDE on it makes it reasonable (the default UI is an immediate dismiss for me, I'm clearly not the target audience of that one). To me Ubuntu is to other Linuxes, what Apple is to PC. The more closed, independent, "simple but beautiful" (noting that "simple" is not my own style and preference) variant.
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  I don't think that's a fair comparison. OS X doesn't rely on Windows developers to make it better, Ubuntu needs other developers from across the Linux community to get better. You can't really do "closed" Linux, because you (the closer) need everyone else. And, as seen with Intel's rejection of a mir patch, everyone else can shut you out.
  - Aardwolf 13y ago
    It needs them but then insults them? Ok, I got it now :)
  - Aardwolf 13y ago
    It needs them but then insults them? Ok, I got it now :)
- lmm 13y ago
  KDE has always been a second-class citizen on Ubuntu in terms of support, testing etc. (and this is Ubuntu policy - they provide a more streamlined linux and emphasise consistency over user choice. Thus any non-default desktop is less well supported than the default, and KDE's philosophy is particularly inimical to theirs). With Ubuntu moving to its own ubuntu-only display driver stack, it will be a lot more effort to support KDE on Ubuntu. If enough people care enough and step up to the plate then KDE will continue to work on Ubuntu, but I wouldn't count on that happening.
- ansgri 13y ago
  Concerning crappy Ubuntu UI, try Linux Mint. I prefer it to both Windows and OSX (best of both) after minimal customization, ie vertical maximize on title dblclick.
mariuolo 13y ago
I'm very sad to see this, but given the turn Ubuntu has taken, I'm not very surprised. Since Mr. Shuttleworth apparently decided he doesn't need the community, perhaps they should part ways amicably while they can.
- ta_koudeeu 13y ago
  what turn are you talking about ? Looking back it seems to me that ubuntu is going in a straight line from the beginning.
  - mariuolo 13y ago
    Unity is not portable. Mir isn't either. Upstart perhaps, but it's different from what the majority of other distros use. Also Canonical devs were suggested to fork the code without caring too much for a future remerging.
spindritf 13y ago
> I had to learn that it is no longer possible to criticize Ubuntu/Canonical for their technical decisions and to disagree with them. There are many users who seem to think that Ubuntu is a religion and Canonical without fail. If you criticize technical decision you are a heretic and the holy inquisition is coming after you to burn you. Ubuntu has lost it's meaning. There is no human kindness in this community any more. People criticise Ubuntu and Canonical all the time. There are countless posts and comments about the Amazon lens, and many on their decision to go with Mir over Wayland. This is ridiculously hyperbolic.
- Ygg2 13y ago
  He proably means from a position of someone developing/working with guys from Ubuntu.
- lambda 13y ago
  Of course it is possible to criticize Ubuntu or Canonical. What he means is that it's impossible for a prominent developer to criticize their technical decisions without facing a ton of hateful backlash from Ubuntu fans and Mark Shuttleworth himself. Which he knows, from experience, because he did just that, criticized the design of Mir and said that he wouldn't support it, and he got exactly that backlash. If Mark Shuttleworth actually followed the Ubuntu code of conduct http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct, we would not have gotten here: Be respectful Disagreement is no excuse for poor manners. We work together to resolve conflict, assume good intentions and do our best to act in an empathic fashion. We don't allow frustration to turn into a personal attack. A community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one. Calling people "the Open Source Tea Party", "purely political", "outraged individuals" who have "NIH'd just about every important piece of the stack" is pretty much in pure opposition to the Ubuntu code of conduct; but since Mark does this, other people feel like this kind of behavior is acceptable and pile on the attack.
  - pachydermic 13y ago
    I thought that was so childish and crass of him. I really dislike the term "Open Source Tea Party". It's just so infuriating on so many levels. First of all, it's a lazy insult - it's just applying a label (also known as name calling) to put people down without any context. It implies that these people are irrational, inflexible and idealistic, but with a bad connotation. He could have argued that those things are true in a more diplomatic way, and more importantly, by using evidence other than just claiming that mir is "important" or "a huge leap forward for gaming performance...". Instead, he just labels the people who happen to disagree with him as the tea party. Great. Secondly, I think it's fair to be concerned about what's going on with mir. Maybe he's telling the truth that they just want the best solution... I think everyone, whether you want Wayland or not, would like to move away from X. So maybe mir is the right way to go. However, they failed to make the case for this in a typical open source way. Why not improve Wayland instead of going off and doing your own thing? If the direction of Wayland is awful or wrong, why not point that out? And instead of just claiming that's the case, why not try to use evidence to prove that it's the case? I have been following this closely, but have no idea what the advantages of the two proposed systems is better... but it certainly seems that almost everyone other than Canonical is rooting for and working on Wayland, which isn't really a good sign... It's very easy to be skeptical because of all the good will they sacrificed by sticking Amazon adds in my god-damned desktop. Honestly, that seems like such a shameless land-grab for clueless users' personal data which really damages their privacy. It wouldn't even have been an issue if it was simply opt in. So, because they made that poor decision, people are skeptical, critical, maybe even a bit irrational. But that shouldn't be surprising. And even if you're being personally attacked yourself, it doesn't make it right to attack other people - many of whom aren't trying to make their contributions a business and are doing their work with pure intentions - unlike Canonical and Mark who clearly have a business angle in all this (which, in and of itself, is totally fine). Sorry for the rant, guys. I mean, do people really think "open source tea party" is at all fair?
onli 13y ago
Martin refers to http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295, I think. He wrote about it in http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about-the-open-source-tea-party/ http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about.... It is about the Mir-Support of KWin/KDE (Martin is the current KWin developer) - while KDE doesn't want to support Mir right now, and says it is about technical reasons, Shuttleworth suggested it is a political thing, which Martin didn't like at all. Seems like after his post there were some not so nice reactions. Though the comments on his blog seem to be nice enough, at first glance.
- reidrac 13y ago
  Thanks, this provides context.
  - quesebifurcan 13y ago
    see also: http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/05/mir-in-kubuntu/ http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/05/mir-in-kubuntu... for more details.
- tinco 13y ago
  I think the short of it is that Mark Shuttleworth, leader of Ubuntu, wrote an article in which he ad hominem attacks criticizers of the Mir project. The weirdest part of this attack is that he specifically mentions certain toolkits as 'competitors' who do not support Mir but do support Windows. When superficially reading this someone who has followed recent events might think this is about Intel, who has recently refused a patch to their graphics card drivers and are rather big in their opposition of Mir. But when reading more carefully, it does not really make sense to call Intel a competitor of Ubuntu in any sense. And the Intel linux graphics driver project obviously does not really support Windows. The only project that comes to mind that does fit these criteria is KWin. Why would Mark single out KWin? I don't know, but obviously Martin is rather upset about it. I get the feeling that maybe Mark just sort of jumbled some characteristics of Mir opponents together, and the jumble accidentally fit KWin perfectly. Whether it was intentional or not, Mark should really apologize for causing Martin to feel this way.
davexunit 13y ago
Canonical and the Ubuntu legion have alienated the rest of the FOSS community. It's a shame to see the distro that introduced many of us to GNU/Linux fall so far. Martin has made the right move for his personal sanity.
- saosebastiao 13y ago
  Came to say this. As a poor Supply Chain student with a sluggish windows desktop, I installed Ubuntu in my desperation to finish a paper I was writing. It introduced me to the world of Linux, Free Software, and programming in general (starting with R in my first job as a supply chain analyst). I just installed Arch. It pains me to say it, but I can't put up with Ubuntu's "My way or the highway" antics any more. It is a shame.
pessimizer 13y ago
While I very much dislike the direction of Ubuntu, and am irritated by the paranoid management style of Shuttleworth - this seems a very emotional response to a very vague, very mild criticism. Of course, nobody needs an excuse to stop working for Ubuntu for free, so if it bothers him so much this is the best decision.
- general_failure 13y ago
  What's paranoid about his management style?
general_failure 13y ago
This is how Open source politics looks like. Mark may have said hurtful things but these Devs like martin take things way too personally.
angryasian 13y ago
I've google wayland and mir but still does anyone with a little more insight know was to why technically one is better than the other ?
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  I don't know the specifics, but most of the backlash against Mir is political (and rightly deserved). Canonical had originally stated they were going to support wayland, like most other distros, but were suddenly overcome with a huge case of NIH and decided to make their own. While in the early stages of development Canonical released some "technical information" which basically blatantly lied about wayland and it's capabilities. Mostly Mir exists because Canonical had a huge case of NIH. Sorry for not having any technical information.
  - takluyver 13y ago
    For completeness: Canonical still claims that they couldn't do what they wanted, especially with mobile devices, using Wayland. Or at least, they would have needed to write various non-standard extensions to the Wayland protocol which would make it incompatible with vanilla Wayland. The best source for this is this blog by someone working at Canonical: http://blog.cooperteam.net/search/label/mir http://blog.cooperteam.net/search/label/mir I don't understand graphics systems enough to evaluate their claims, and I've yet to hear an impartial analysis of them. Possibly no-one who can evaluate them is impartial.
- ww520 13y ago
  I don't know the specifics. Following some links in here and just saw this. http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/05/mir-in-kubuntu/ http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/05/mir-in-kubuntu...
_of 13y ago
According to Wikipedia [1] an ecosystem is "a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system." I wish bloggers can find a better term for referring to something specific to software development. An ecosystem is a specific term in ecology. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  Remove the living organisms component, and it's almost exactly what people are talking about when they refer to a software ecosystem. I don't see your problem.
- untog 13y ago
  Definitions change.
jballanc 13y ago
From the article: > I cannot remember that I have ever been insulted in public, in fact I'm not used to getting insulted at all. And if people normally are able to say sorry. I and many others asked Mark to withdraw his comment and post an apology instead. Ok, see here's the problem. The developer community, and especially the FOSS portion of the developer community, love to tout the fact that the community is a "meritocracy". But what does that mean? Certainly, insulting individuals (as opposed to their work product) is not in the spirit of a meritocracy. ...but neither is asking for an apology. Ubuntu/Canonical/Shuttleworth have made a technical decision. If the FOSS community is a meritocracy, the fate of their products will be determined by the merit of those decisions. That they also spilled so many vitriolic words in the direction of the "competition" should matter not at all. If the FOSS community is a meritocracy, then the appropriate reaction would be to continue making the best decisions possible, producing the best products possible, and ignoring anything anyone says that does not speak to the merits of those decisions or products. ...if this is a meritocracy. Perhaps it's high time we drop the charade of "meritocracy" and admit that software projects, FOSS or otherwise, are run by humans with human emotions and human reactions, and that for better or worse, the majority of the developer community makes decisions based more on emotion than on a dispassionate evaluation of a project's merits.
- unfamiliar 13y ago
  There's no reason it can't be a meritocracy run by humans with human emotions.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - jballanc 13y ago
    That would be true if the vast majority of people could have their emotional reactions but still make decisions based on pure merit. How many people do you know like that? Do you think this describes the majority of the people in the FOSS world?
  - Nelson69 13y ago
    There sort of is. We're talking about a meritocracy regarding things that aren't done yet. X.org vs Wayland vs Mir... You tell me which one has better merits; other than X, I've only read blogs and seen some screenshots and block diagrams. You could maybe base the merit on the process, but I think they'd all lose.
rburhum 13y ago
What a lot of people (surprisingly) miss is that Open Source in general has several distinct camps: - the ethically politically motivated: there are many sides of the spectrum here. Copyleft GNU advocates are a good example. Writing GPLv3/v2 is an issue of freedom and the code the write is a political statement - the open source as a business model types: another category with different sides of the spectrum. Companies that dual-license as a restriction mechanism is another example. One license model allows anyone to use it with a GPLv3 license, while the author company really expects to make money of the consuming companies that do not want (or cannot) use that license. The consuming company has to buy another "commercial" license that does not require them to GPL anything. - the I-just-want-to-build-cool-stuff camp: I found it on GitHub, so I just fork and use it. Often, they don't really understand licensing restrictions (or care). It is about hacking. - the I-want-this camp: They may be seriously fed up with a particular piece of software. So much, that they are starting a new Open Source software and putting a lot of intellectual (and emotional) effort to build something they envision. Criticisms to the project are direct criticisms to the person. After all, the motivation for creating the project was personal. - etc The point of this, is that it is easy to forget that the motivation for using and creating Open Source for all these camps is drastically different. It is easy to get political, be attacked by zealots, get personal, or emotionally offensive.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Yhippa 13y ago
Learned something new today. SABDFL: Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for life. That initialism actually goes to his Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABDFL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABDFL.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
adrianlmm 13y ago
Wait a minute, doesn't this guy works for BlueSystems on the NetRunner distro? why does he says good bye to Ubuntu? he doesn't even use it?
- chris_wot 13y ago
  Try reading the article again. He states that Canonical put pressure on him to make Mir specific changes to KWin. And, bizarrely, got him to do a walk through of the KWin codebase, without telling him!!!
bovermyer 13y ago
Well dang. Now I have to find another go-to Linux distro.
- niuzeta 13y ago
  Mint.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    Which is just a re-packaged, slightly buggier Ubuntu...
    - niuzeta 13y ago
      Should've specified as a Mint Debian edition. The thing is wonderous.
      - ta_koudeeu 13y ago
        except when then suddenly release an update pack that breaks the whole os, which is every update pack. Just use debian.
        niuzeta 13y ago
        I loved my debian and I still do. But the last hdd fail prompted me to try something new and I was very busy at the time. Naturally I wanted the OS to work 'just outside the box'. I'm reasonably satisfied with the Mint now. Sort of.
  - bovermyer 13y ago
    I was thinking of going with Debian, actually. I don't know, it's been forever since I shopped around for a good Linux distro.
    - dfrey 13y ago
      Debian is great so long as you don't require current versions of packages.
mindcrime 13y ago
That's a bummer. It sucks when someone is driven out of a community by the behavior of others. :-( Sadly, this isn't unheard of in the F/OSS world, and this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Even more sadly, it probably won't be the last.
- general_failure 13y ago
  Well, this is by design of FOSS. FOSS is about freedom. One can do whatever they want. I don't see what is sad about this. The drama is what is nonsensical.
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    Well, this is by design of FOSS. I could not disagree more. Nothing about being part of the FOSS world mandates acting like a dick. FOSS is about freedom. One can do whatever they want. Just because you are free to do something, doesn't mean that you should do it, or that you're not an asshole for doing it. I'm not in any way suggesting that Mark or anybody else should be denied their right to free speech. But verbally abusing somebody else for having a different belief is still being a dick, even so. I don't see what is sad about this. OK, tell me this... who benefits from this outcome? As far as I can tell, the answer is "nobody". OTOH, who suffers? Well, potentially everybody who's part of the KDE on Ubuntu ecosystem. And the person who's being bullied and abused into walking away from something that he would probably prefer to remain involved in, IF it weren't for the asshole'ish behavior. The drama is what is nonsensical I don't see it. If somebody is being a dick, calling them out for their behavior is hardly "nonsensical drama". It's just being forthright and honest.
Ologn 13y ago
I use Ubuntu on my desktop and have sent a number of patches to them and their upstreams when I encountered problems. One thing about Ubuntu is that, if you put Android to one side (Android basically uses the Linux kernel, but does not use things such as libc etc.), Ubuntu is the largest Linux desktop by far. Wikipedia web logs show them coming at 77 times the number of their nearest competitor, Fedora ( http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOpera... ). Combine this massive user base, which often is not of the traditional Unix user background, with its automated bug report tools like apport, and traditional bug reporting trouble ticket web sites like Launchpad, and you have a massive exposure of the traditional Linux/X/fdo/Gnome ecosystem to users. Which means many of the "eyeballs for bugs" can, and sometimes does, come from Ubuntu. I have mostly looked at the evince/poppler/cairo applications and dependencies, and it seems to me that far more bugs are discovered on Ubuntu than in any of the other distro bug trouble ticket systems. If apport reports were more carefully maintained, that number would increase by some multiple. I have also noticed that Canonical is good for patching bugs reported anywhere on Ubuntu. For example, if a patch or bug report is languishing in the Debian trouble ticket system, Ubuntu will sometimes grab it and apply it to Ubuntu. So reported unfixed bugs in Debian, with patches languishing in its trouble ticket system, will be patched in Ubuntu. For example, this ( http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=570904 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=570904 ) bug report was never touched by any Debian developer, but it was patched downstream on Ubuntu. The thing about Ubuntu is it seems to have bad relations with so many of its upstreams in the FLOSS community. Linux. X. Gnome. Debian. Banshee. And I guess in this specific case KDE. It is too bad that things are not working more smoothly, where the massive user base exposing bugs is not flowing upstream more smoothly, and making Linux, Debian, Gnome better products. However much Ubuntu forks things, it is still very dependent on these upstreams, Gnome included. Yes, Gnome included - take a close look, Unity changes some things, but there are still tons of dependencies on Gnome. And Ubuntu really is dependent on the FLOSS community. When Ubuntu finds a massive fd.o or Gnome bug, it tends to get patched quickly. The entire ecosystem of all distros is looking at it. I have seen a lot of Unity only bugs languish. Basically, 99% of them have to be fixed by a Canonical engineer. Usually this does not happen, even if it is a major bug you sometimes have to wait a long time. Ubuntu has the user base but it does not have the developer base.
shmerl 13y ago
Unfortunately Mark Shuttleworth didn't stick with a proper decision not to create a rift: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 > We considered and spoke with several proprietary options, on the basis that they might be persuaded to open source their work for a new push, and we evaluated the cost of building a new display manager, informed by the lessons learned in Wayland. We came to the conclusion that any such effort would only create a hard split in the world which wasn’t worth the cost of having done it. There are issues with Wayland, but they seem to be solvable, we’d rather be part of solving them than chasing a better alternative. So Wayland it is. I still don't understand what made him change his mind completely and disregard all the problems, which the rift created by Mir would cause. Bothering others to support Mir would be a common occurrence now and a direct consequence of this completely unnecessary "hard split". And it's unacceptable to bug people constantly when they say they aren't interested in that support.
- general_failure 13y ago
  And where have you seen proof of constant bugging? Can you point me to some public discussion?
  - shmerl 13y ago
    You can ask the OP who complained about it in the first place.
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
Not related to the content of the post but: Does anyone know why clicking the link to this page in Firefox/Ubuntu makes the active light on my webcam come on for a second just as the page finishes loading?
- scott_karana 13y ago
  I'm guessing that it's related to Google Hangouts, which is integrated in every Google+ page. If you have the Google Talk plugin (or whatever it's called now) you can do video chat right in the browser. Some bug with the drivers, I presume? (I have all the add-ons in Firefox 24.0, but no light for me)
denysonique 13y ago
He once even accused me of 'attacking' him. > If I as a developer feel personally attacked (and I did that) the chances that I with the maintainer hat on will revert my patch goes down and not up My 'attacking' him comment: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c17 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c17 His comment accusing me of attacking him: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c20 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c20
- forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
  Wow! I had similar experience proposing patches and people feeling offended because I criticized their "sacred" selected options. People identify with their work, so if you criticize their work, they fell criticized. "Trust me on this one, I am the one right because it is me and I have so much experience than anybody else..." It seems at the end of the day FOSS is not different than other organizations in the power fights area.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  He apologised for his comment later on. [1] but certainly, he reacted with emotion - I don't see you doing any personal attacks! 1. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c20 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c20
Mikeb85 13y ago
I think alot of people have unrealistic expectations of open-source in general. Open source has nothing to do with community, merit, etc... Open source has little to nothing to do with collaboration. What open source IS, is a Darwinian paradigm for software. Software is made, released into the wild. It succeeds, or it doesn't. If you don't like it, you fork it, release back into the wild, and whichever version is better lives on. Linus, Mark Shuttleworth, RMS, etc... - they don't owe shit to anyone. People used to rag on SUSE for their deal with Microsoft, and now they rag on Canonical. But guess what - SUSE survived and is still a billion dollar business (it was sold to Attachmate recently for 2.2 billion), and Canonical is making the most popular desktop distro, and the only desktop vendor with the balls to take on the mobile space. BTW, I fully support Martin's decision to abandon Ubuntu if he wants to. Ubuntu is obviously going ahead with Mir and Unity, if it becomes difficult to support, switch to SUSE, or Debian, or fork Ubuntu...
- ewzimm 13y ago
  I would like to make a small connection. Novell bought SUSE in 2003 when they were losing business. They continued lose business while SUSE grew, so they tried to squeeze maximum profits out of SUSE by laying off a lot of their staff and making a marketing/patent deal with Microsoft. They still ended up having to sell out. SUSE is still going strong thanks to a great community.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    > SUSE is still going strong thanks to a great community. And $225 million in yearly revenue doesn't hurt... Personally, openSUSE has always been my favourite distro. A bit sentimental perhaps, my first Linux was SUSE 6 back in the day, running 13.1 now. So fast and so flexible...
    - ewzimm 13y ago
      SUSE has done a great job maintaining its projects, and I especially like how they focus on building things that are useful to anyone rather than just themselves. With the recent troubles between Ubuntu and KDE, I wonder if Kubuntu will be able to maintain its status as the leading KDE distribution.
cs702 13y ago
Regardless of what the people involved say or write publicly, this conflict and others like it are really about power. With several dozen million Ubuntu desktop users worldwide[1], Canonical has become the gravitational center of the FLOSS desktop and a promising platform for other form factors. No other FLOSS desktop comes even remotely close in terms of mass adoption. As a consequence, many other FLOSS projects that historically have perceived themselves as more important "upstream projects" to the Ubuntu desktop have now become, effectively, contributing projects to Ubuntu. It is now they who depend on Canonical to reach and interact with the vast majority of FLOSS desktop users. For the individuals who identify themselves with those other projects, this tectonic shift in power has not been enjoyable. More and more of them are gradually realizing that if they want to continue working with Canonical, it will have to be on Canonical's terms. -- [1] There were over 25 million Ubuntu users at last count: http://blog.canonical.com/2013/10/01/ubuntu-pre-installed-and-in-retail-worldwide/ http://blog.canonical.com/2013/10/01/ubuntu-pre-installed-an...
- prg318 13y ago
  How does KDE depend on Ubuntu? It's not like KDE will cease to exist if KDE is not included in Ubuntu. And besides, Canonical is more than welcome manage their patches for KWin (or fork KWin) if they really want it to be included in their distribution with their own unique Windowing stack (Mir). I think the problem here is the attitude coming from Mark Shuttleworth which is a terrible example for the rest of the Ubuntu community. Regardless of what Shuttleworth believes, KDE is a own standalone open source project and does not owe anything to Canonical/Ubuntu.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    And likewise Canonical owes nothing to KDE. I think KDE wants to be on Ubuntu more than Canonical wants KDE...
    - ww520 13y ago
      If that's the case, why would Canonical lobby hard to patch Mir into KDE?
kuchaguangjie 13y ago
I want to say fuck fuck fuck Unity! just let gnome-classic back, it's so perfect, so easy to use & do customization. Ubuntu should keep simple & easy to use, that's why ubuntu is popular. You ubuntu people waste time to develop unity for years, the result is that you fucked the users up, and now you continue want to do that endlessly, ubuntu is come less & less popular. You know what, I installed ubuntu12.04 while it come out, but I am very disappointed, I wasted a whole day try to make it easy to use, but I give up finally, and re-installed the ubuntu10.04 instead. When ubuntu 13.04 come out, I did this again, and changed back to ubuntu 10.04 again. Now ubuntu 13.10 come out, I just want to say, fuck off, I will never install it. You know what, you have been waste time for years to do negative work to make ubuntu worse. What's wrong with you people, I just don't get it ... I still like ubuntu, but I am already start to try other linux distribution out, like Mint, I want to say that, if ubuntu keep in this direction, I probably will say good by to Ubuntu which I have used for 7 years, since ubuntu 7.10 when I was still in collage. Maybe you think I am a little impolite, I do loved ubuntu, I am just expressing my disappointment about what you ubuntu people have done to this lovely os for recent years!
- ciupicri 13y ago
  I'm not an Ubuntu user, but I thought that it was possible to use other desktop environments like KDE, XFCE, LXDE etc.
  - keithpeter 13y ago
    It is at present, and I expect it will be possible to use other desktops for 14.04, which is important as it is a Long Term Support release with support for 5 years. I'm a bit hazy about what happens when Mir replaces X. I gather that this particular argument is about ensuring that the compositor for KDE will work with Mir, or, more accurately, who does the work to ensure that KWin will work on Mir.
- tod222 13y ago
  Look into the MATE Desktop Environment. [1] "MATE is a fork of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux…" [1] http://mate-desktop.org/ http://mate-desktop.org/
mVChr 13y ago
Am I the only one here who thinks Martin (and others) are being way too sensitive? Here is Mark's comment that (I believe) Martin is so upset about: > Mir is really important work. When lots of competitors attack a project on purely political grounds, you have to wonder what THEIR agenda is. At least we know now who belongs to the Open Source Tea Party ;) Really? This is what the uproar is about?
- adrianlmm 13y ago
  No, he is being to dramatic, I think he wants attention.
bashcoder 13y ago
This is a cautionary tale. It's unwise to burn bridges after a conflict, because you never know what the future may hold. Justified or not, leaving a stink bomb in your wake is a bad resume builder. It makes people more wary, not more confident. The pain from interpersonal conflicts is real and powerful. But how we handle ourselves during conflict says more about us than any amount of code we'll ever write.
Aldo_MX 13y ago
> All of that without ever asking whether we are interested at all. In case of the telco I was not even asked whether I would want to participate and whether I have time for that. I experienced this as a constant pressure and a disrespect to our own decisions. This is one of the reasons that demotivated me from developing FLOSS, the constant pressure and lack of respect towards the taken decisions.
- general_failure 13y ago
  That conclusion is absurd and totally wrong on so many levels. It's the same as saying: "This is one of the reasons that demotivated me from developing commercial software, the constant pressure and lack of respect towards the taken decisions."
  - Aldo_MX 13y ago
    I can presume that you didn't even understand the context before jumping into your conclusion. My conclusion is not towards FLOSS, but towards the hostility of people behind FLOSS...
drill_sarge 13y ago
Since Ubuntu is just "let's sync repos from debian testing every 6 months and add our own crap" just use debian testing. You even get rolling release. Btw, I know nobody who uses standard Ubuntu. Everyone uses some variant like Xubuntu, Kubuntu etc. which are really well put together distros for the average user.

274 points by Tsiolkovsky 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

I've not followed any of the goings on in the Ubuntu community for a while. Reading this, I get the feeling that I missed something. Did Mark Shuttleworth chew out someone in a way that makes Linus look gentle and nice, or something?

corbet 13y ago
I believe he must be referring to this: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295
- hysan 13y ago
  For more info, here is his (Martin's) blog post about it: http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about-the-open-source-tea-party/ http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about...
- josteink 13y ago
  Nice move by Mark to accuse others of full NIH (and "open source tea-partying" no less), when they announced and started working on Mir long after Wayland was already gaining traction. Ubuntu does lots of things right (being overly decisive being one of them), but this whole Mir-affair just strikes me as plain absurd.
- sciurus 13y ago
  The LWN comments on Mark's blog post make for a good contrast. http://lwn.net/Articles/570827/ http://lwn.net/Articles/570827/

lulzmachine 13y ago

What post by Mark is he referring to?

ywyrd 13y ago
Most likely the "open source tea party" post wherein Mr. Shuttleworth collectivized and dismissed any and all critics as irrational haters with nothing of substance to say.
lambda 13y ago
This one: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295 Mir is really important work. When lots of competitors attack a project on purely political grounds, you have to wonder what THEIR agenda is. At least we know now who belongs to the Open Source Tea Party And to put all the hue and cry into context: Mir is relevant for approximately 1% of all developers, just those who think about shell development. Every app developer will consume Mir through their toolkit. By contrast, those same outraged individuals have NIH’d just about every important piece of the stack they can get their hands on… most notably SystemD, which is hugely invasive and hardly justified. What closely to see how competitors to Canonical torture the English language in their efforts to justify how those toolkits should support Windows but not Mir. But we’ll get it done, and it will be amazing. In context, this was written shortly after Martin Gräßlin had said that he would not support Mir in KWin. KWin is the KDE window manager/shell; he is one of those "1% of all developers" for whom the display server really matters. And unlike what Mark claims, KWin does not support Windows (other parts of the Qt and KDE stack do, but not KWin). So, he sees this as his time essentially being volunteered for him by Mark, to support a display server with an architecture he doesn't agree with, after he's already put the effort in to support the display server that pretty much everyone else in the desktop Linux ecosystem have been targeting. And if you don't agree with Mark, or the technical decisions made leading to Mir, you get branded as "the Open Source Tea Party", "purely political", an "outraged individual" who has "NIH'd just about every piece of the stack."
- TallGuyShort 13y ago

Aardwolf 13y ago

I do hope KDE will keep working on Ubuntu? I have to use Ubuntu on some workstation, having KDE on it makes it reasonable (the default UI is an immediate dismiss for me, I'm clearly not the target audience of that one). To me Ubuntu is to other Linuxes, what Apple is to PC. The more closed, independent, "simple but beautiful" (noting that "simple" is not my own style and preference) variant.

dkuntz2 13y ago
I don't think that's a fair comparison. OS X doesn't rely on Windows developers to make it better, Ubuntu needs other developers from across the Linux community to get better. You can't really do "closed" Linux, because you (the closer) need everyone else. And, as seen with Intel's rejection of a mir patch, everyone else can shut you out.
- Aardwolf 13y ago
  It needs them but then insults them? Ok, I got it now :)
- Aardwolf 13y ago
  It needs them but then insults them? Ok, I got it now :)
lmm 13y ago
KDE has always been a second-class citizen on Ubuntu in terms of support, testing etc. (and this is Ubuntu policy - they provide a more streamlined linux and emphasise consistency over user choice. Thus any non-default desktop is less well supported than the default, and KDE's philosophy is particularly inimical to theirs). With Ubuntu moving to its own ubuntu-only display driver stack, it will be a lot more effort to support KDE on Ubuntu. If enough people care enough and step up to the plate then KDE will continue to work on Ubuntu, but I wouldn't count on that happening.
ansgri 13y ago
Concerning crappy Ubuntu UI, try Linux Mint. I prefer it to both Windows and OSX (best of both) after minimal customization, ie vertical maximize on title dblclick.

mariuolo 13y ago

I'm very sad to see this, but given the turn Ubuntu has taken, I'm not very surprised. Since Mr. Shuttleworth apparently decided he doesn't need the community, perhaps they should part ways amicably while they can.

ta_koudeeu 13y ago
what turn are you talking about ? Looking back it seems to me that ubuntu is going in a straight line from the beginning.
- mariuolo 13y ago
  Unity is not portable. Mir isn't either. Upstart perhaps, but it's different from what the majority of other distros use. Also Canonical devs were suggested to fork the code without caring too much for a future remerging.

spindritf 13y ago

> I had to learn that it is no longer possible to criticize Ubuntu/Canonical for their technical decisions and to disagree with them. There are many users who seem to think that Ubuntu is a religion and Canonical without fail. If you criticize technical decision you are a heretic and the holy inquisition is coming after you to burn you. Ubuntu has lost it's meaning. There is no human kindness in this community any more. People criticise Ubuntu and Canonical all the time. There are countless posts and comments about the Amazon lens, and many on their decision to go with Mir over Wayland. This is ridiculously hyperbolic.

Ygg2 13y ago
He proably means from a position of someone developing/working with guys from Ubuntu.
lambda 13y ago
Of course it is possible to criticize Ubuntu or Canonical. What he means is that it's impossible for a prominent developer to criticize their technical decisions without facing a ton of hateful backlash from Ubuntu fans and Mark Shuttleworth himself. Which he knows, from experience, because he did just that, criticized the design of Mir and said that he wouldn't support it, and he got exactly that backlash. If Mark Shuttleworth actually followed the Ubuntu code of conduct http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct, we would not have gotten here: Be respectful Disagreement is no excuse for poor manners. We work together to resolve conflict, assume good intentions and do our best to act in an empathic fashion. We don't allow frustration to turn into a personal attack. A community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one. Calling people "the Open Source Tea Party", "purely political", "outraged individuals" who have "NIH'd just about every important piece of the stack" is pretty much in pure opposition to the Ubuntu code of conduct; but since Mark does this, other people feel like this kind of behavior is acceptable and pile on the attack.
- pachydermic 13y ago
  I thought that was so childish and crass of him. I really dislike the term "Open Source Tea Party". It's just so infuriating on so many levels. First of all, it's a lazy insult - it's just applying a label (also known as name calling) to put people down without any context. It implies that these people are irrational, inflexible and idealistic, but with a bad connotation. He could have argued that those things are true in a more diplomatic way, and more importantly, by using evidence other than just claiming that mir is "important" or "a huge leap forward for gaming performance...". Instead, he just labels the people who happen to disagree with him as the tea party. Great. Secondly, I think it's fair to be concerned about what's going on with mir. Maybe he's telling the truth that they just want the best solution... I think everyone, whether you want Wayland or not, would like to move away from X. So maybe mir is the right way to go. However, they failed to make the case for this in a typical open source way. Why not improve Wayland instead of going off and doing your own thing? If the direction of Wayland is awful or wrong, why not point that out? And instead of just claiming that's the case, why not try to use evidence to prove that it's the case? I have been following this closely, but have no idea what the advantages of the two proposed systems is better... but it certainly seems that almost everyone other than Canonical is rooting for and working on Wayland, which isn't really a good sign... It's very easy to be skeptical because of all the good will they sacrificed by sticking Amazon adds in my god-damned desktop. Honestly, that seems like such a shameless land-grab for clueless users' personal data which really damages their privacy. It wouldn't even have been an issue if it was simply opt in. So, because they made that poor decision, people are skeptical, critical, maybe even a bit irrational. But that shouldn't be surprising. And even if you're being personally attacked yourself, it doesn't make it right to attack other people - many of whom aren't trying to make their contributions a business and are doing their work with pure intentions - unlike Canonical and Mark who clearly have a business angle in all this (which, in and of itself, is totally fine). Sorry for the rant, guys. I mean, do people really think "open source tea party" is at all fair?

onli 13y ago

Martin refers to http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295, I think. He wrote about it in http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about-the-open-source-tea-party/ http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about.... It is about the Mir-Support of KWin/KDE (Martin is the current KWin developer) - while KDE doesn't want to support Mir right now, and says it is about technical reasons, Shuttleworth suggested it is a political thing, which Martin didn't like at all. Seems like after his post there were some not so nice reactions. Though the comments on his blog seem to be nice enough, at first glance.

reidrac 13y ago
Thanks, this provides context.
- quesebifurcan 13y ago
  see also: http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/05/mir-in-kubuntu/ http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/05/mir-in-kubuntu... for more details.
tinco 13y ago
I think the short of it is that Mark Shuttleworth, leader of Ubuntu, wrote an article in which he ad hominem attacks criticizers of the Mir project. The weirdest part of this attack is that he specifically mentions certain toolkits as 'competitors' who do not support Mir but do support Windows. When superficially reading this someone who has followed recent events might think this is about Intel, who has recently refused a patch to their graphics card drivers and are rather big in their opposition of Mir. But when reading more carefully, it does not really make sense to call Intel a competitor of Ubuntu in any sense. And the Intel linux graphics driver project obviously does not really support Windows. The only project that comes to mind that does fit these criteria is KWin. Why would Mark single out KWin? I don't know, but obviously Martin is rather upset about it. I get the feeling that maybe Mark just sort of jumbled some characteristics of Mir opponents together, and the jumble accidentally fit KWin perfectly. Whether it was intentional or not, Mark should really apologize for causing Martin to feel this way.

davexunit 13y ago

Canonical and the Ubuntu legion have alienated the rest of the FOSS community. It's a shame to see the distro that introduced many of us to GNU/Linux fall so far. Martin has made the right move for his personal sanity.

saosebastiao 13y ago
Came to say this. As a poor Supply Chain student with a sluggish windows desktop, I installed Ubuntu in my desperation to finish a paper I was writing. It introduced me to the world of Linux, Free Software, and programming in general (starting with R in my first job as a supply chain analyst). I just installed Arch. It pains me to say it, but I can't put up with Ubuntu's "My way or the highway" antics any more. It is a shame.

pessimizer 13y ago

While I very much dislike the direction of Ubuntu, and am irritated by the paranoid management style of Shuttleworth - this seems a very emotional response to a very vague, very mild criticism. Of course, nobody needs an excuse to stop working for Ubuntu for free, so if it bothers him so much this is the best decision.

general_failure 13y ago
What's paranoid about his management style?

general_failure 13y ago

This is how Open source politics looks like. Mark may have said hurtful things but these Devs like martin take things way too personally.

angryasian 13y ago

I've google wayland and mir but still does anyone with a little more insight know was to why technically one is better than the other ?

dkuntz2 13y ago
I don't know the specifics, but most of the backlash against Mir is political (and rightly deserved). Canonical had originally stated they were going to support wayland, like most other distros, but were suddenly overcome with a huge case of NIH and decided to make their own. While in the early stages of development Canonical released some "technical information" which basically blatantly lied about wayland and it's capabilities. Mostly Mir exists because Canonical had a huge case of NIH. Sorry for not having any technical information.
- takluyver 13y ago
  For completeness: Canonical still claims that they couldn't do what they wanted, especially with mobile devices, using Wayland. Or at least, they would have needed to write various non-standard extensions to the Wayland protocol which would make it incompatible with vanilla Wayland. The best source for this is this blog by someone working at Canonical: http://blog.cooperteam.net/search/label/mir http://blog.cooperteam.net/search/label/mir I don't understand graphics systems enough to evaluate their claims, and I've yet to hear an impartial analysis of them. Possibly no-one who can evaluate them is impartial.
ww520 13y ago
I don't know the specifics. Following some links in here and just saw this. http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/05/mir-in-kubuntu/ http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/05/mir-in-kubuntu...

_of 13y ago

According to Wikipedia [1] an ecosystem is "a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system." I wish bloggers can find a better term for referring to something specific to software development. An ecosystem is a specific term in ecology. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem

dkuntz2 13y ago
Remove the living organisms component, and it's almost exactly what people are talking about when they refer to a software ecosystem. I don't see your problem.
untog 13y ago
Definitions change.

jballanc 13y ago

From the article: > I cannot remember that I have ever been insulted in public, in fact I'm not used to getting insulted at all. And if people normally are able to say sorry. I and many others asked Mark to withdraw his comment and post an apology instead. Ok, see here's the problem. The developer community, and especially the FOSS portion of the developer community, love to tout the fact that the community is a "meritocracy". But what does that mean? Certainly, insulting individuals (as opposed to their work product) is not in the spirit of a meritocracy. ...but neither is asking for an apology. Ubuntu/Canonical/Shuttleworth have made a technical decision. If the FOSS community is a meritocracy, the fate of their products will be determined by the merit of those decisions. That they also spilled so many vitriolic words in the direction of the "competition" should matter not at all. If the FOSS community is a meritocracy, then the appropriate reaction would be to continue making the best decisions possible, producing the best products possible, and ignoring anything anyone says that does not speak to the merits of those decisions or products. ...if this is a meritocracy. Perhaps it's high time we drop the charade of "meritocracy" and admit that software projects, FOSS or otherwise, are run by humans with human emotions and human reactions, and that for better or worse, the majority of the developer community makes decisions based more on emotion than on a dispassionate evaluation of a project's merits.

unfamiliar 13y ago
There's no reason it can't be a meritocracy run by humans with human emotions.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jballanc 13y ago
  That would be true if the vast majority of people could have their emotional reactions but still make decisions based on pure merit. How many people do you know like that? Do you think this describes the majority of the people in the FOSS world?
- Nelson69 13y ago
  There sort of is. We're talking about a meritocracy regarding things that aren't done yet. X.org vs Wayland vs Mir... You tell me which one has better merits; other than X, I've only read blogs and seen some screenshots and block diagrams. You could maybe base the merit on the process, but I think they'd all lose.

rburhum 13y ago

What a lot of people (surprisingly) miss is that Open Source in general has several distinct camps: - the ethically politically motivated: there are many sides of the spectrum here. Copyleft GNU advocates are a good example. Writing GPLv3/v2 is an issue of freedom and the code the write is a political statement - the open source as a business model types: another category with different sides of the spectrum. Companies that dual-license as a restriction mechanism is another example. One license model allows anyone to use it with a GPLv3 license, while the author company really expects to make money of the consuming companies that do not want (or cannot) use that license. The consuming company has to buy another "commercial" license that does not require them to GPL anything. - the I-just-want-to-build-cool-stuff camp: I found it on GitHub, so I just fork and use it. Often, they don't really understand licensing restrictions (or care). It is about hacking. - the I-want-this camp: They may be seriously fed up with a particular piece of software. So much, that they are starting a new Open Source software and putting a lot of intellectual (and emotional) effort to build something they envision. Criticisms to the project are direct criticisms to the person. After all, the motivation for creating the project was personal. - etc The point of this, is that it is easy to forget that the motivation for using and creating Open Source for all these camps is drastically different. It is easy to get political, be attacked by zealots, get personal, or emotionally offensive.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Yhippa 13y ago

Learned something new today. SABDFL: Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for life. That initialism actually goes to his Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABDFL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABDFL.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

adrianlmm 13y ago

Wait a minute, doesn't this guy works for BlueSystems on the NetRunner distro? why does he says good bye to Ubuntu? he doesn't even use it?

chris_wot 13y ago
Try reading the article again. He states that Canonical put pressure on him to make Mir specific changes to KWin. And, bizarrely, got him to do a walk through of the KWin codebase, without telling him!!!

bovermyer 13y ago

Well dang. Now I have to find another go-to Linux distro.

niuzeta 13y ago
Mint.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  Which is just a re-packaged, slightly buggier Ubuntu...
  - niuzeta 13y ago
    Should've specified as a Mint Debian edition. The thing is wonderous.
    - ta_koudeeu 13y ago
      except when then suddenly release an update pack that breaks the whole os, which is every update pack. Just use debian.
      - niuzeta 13y ago
        I loved my debian and I still do. But the last hdd fail prompted me to try something new and I was very busy at the time. Naturally I wanted the OS to work 'just outside the box'. I'm reasonably satisfied with the Mint now. Sort of.
- bovermyer 13y ago
  I was thinking of going with Debian, actually. I don't know, it's been forever since I shopped around for a good Linux distro.
  - dfrey 13y ago
    Debian is great so long as you don't require current versions of packages.

mindcrime 13y ago

That's a bummer. It sucks when someone is driven out of a community by the behavior of others. :-( Sadly, this isn't unheard of in the F/OSS world, and this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Even more sadly, it probably won't be the last.

general_failure 13y ago
Well, this is by design of FOSS. FOSS is about freedom. One can do whatever they want. I don't see what is sad about this. The drama is what is nonsensical.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  Well, this is by design of FOSS. I could not disagree more. Nothing about being part of the FOSS world mandates acting like a dick. FOSS is about freedom. One can do whatever they want. Just because you are free to do something, doesn't mean that you should do it, or that you're not an asshole for doing it. I'm not in any way suggesting that Mark or anybody else should be denied their right to free speech. But verbally abusing somebody else for having a different belief is still being a dick, even so. I don't see what is sad about this. OK, tell me this... who benefits from this outcome? As far as I can tell, the answer is "nobody". OTOH, who suffers? Well, potentially everybody who's part of the KDE on Ubuntu ecosystem. And the person who's being bullied and abused into walking away from something that he would probably prefer to remain involved in, IF it weren't for the asshole'ish behavior. The drama is what is nonsensical I don't see it. If somebody is being a dick, calling them out for their behavior is hardly "nonsensical drama". It's just being forthright and honest.

Ologn 13y ago

I use Ubuntu on my desktop and have sent a number of patches to them and their upstreams when I encountered problems. One thing about Ubuntu is that, if you put Android to one side (Android basically uses the Linux kernel, but does not use things such as libc etc.), Ubuntu is the largest Linux desktop by far. Wikipedia web logs show them coming at 77 times the number of their nearest competitor, Fedora ( http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOpera... ). Combine this massive user base, which often is not of the traditional Unix user background, with its automated bug report tools like apport, and traditional bug reporting trouble ticket web sites like Launchpad, and you have a massive exposure of the traditional Linux/X/fdo/Gnome ecosystem to users. Which means many of the "eyeballs for bugs" can, and sometimes does, come from Ubuntu. I have mostly looked at the evince/poppler/cairo applications and dependencies, and it seems to me that far more bugs are discovered on Ubuntu than in any of the other distro bug trouble ticket systems. If apport reports were more carefully maintained, that number would increase by some multiple. I have also noticed that Canonical is good for patching bugs reported anywhere on Ubuntu. For example, if a patch or bug report is languishing in the Debian trouble ticket system, Ubuntu will sometimes grab it and apply it to Ubuntu. So reported unfixed bugs in Debian, with patches languishing in its trouble ticket system, will be patched in Ubuntu. For example, this ( http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=570904 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=570904 ) bug report was never touched by any Debian developer, but it was patched downstream on Ubuntu. The thing about Ubuntu is it seems to have bad relations with so many of its upstreams in the FLOSS community. Linux. X. Gnome. Debian. Banshee. And I guess in this specific case KDE. It is too bad that things are not working more smoothly, where the massive user base exposing bugs is not flowing upstream more smoothly, and making Linux, Debian, Gnome better products. However much Ubuntu forks things, it is still very dependent on these upstreams, Gnome included. Yes, Gnome included - take a close look, Unity changes some things, but there are still tons of dependencies on Gnome. And Ubuntu really is dependent on the FLOSS community. When Ubuntu finds a massive fd.o or Gnome bug, it tends to get patched quickly. The entire ecosystem of all distros is looking at it. I have seen a lot of Unity only bugs languish. Basically, 99% of them have to be fixed by a Canonical engineer. Usually this does not happen, even if it is a major bug you sometimes have to wait a long time. Ubuntu has the user base but it does not have the developer base.

shmerl 13y ago

Unfortunately Mark Shuttleworth didn't stick with a proper decision not to create a rift: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 > We considered and spoke with several proprietary options, on the basis that they might be persuaded to open source their work for a new push, and we evaluated the cost of building a new display manager, informed by the lessons learned in Wayland. We came to the conclusion that any such effort would only create a hard split in the world which wasn’t worth the cost of having done it. There are issues with Wayland, but they seem to be solvable, we’d rather be part of solving them than chasing a better alternative. So Wayland it is. I still don't understand what made him change his mind completely and disregard all the problems, which the rift created by Mir would cause. Bothering others to support Mir would be a common occurrence now and a direct consequence of this completely unnecessary "hard split". And it's unacceptable to bug people constantly when they say they aren't interested in that support.

general_failure 13y ago
And where have you seen proof of constant bugging? Can you point me to some public discussion?
- shmerl 13y ago
  You can ask the OP who complained about it in the first place.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago

Not related to the content of the post but: Does anyone know why clicking the link to this page in Firefox/Ubuntu makes the active light on my webcam come on for a second just as the page finishes loading?

scott_karana 13y ago
I'm guessing that it's related to Google Hangouts, which is integrated in every Google+ page. If you have the Google Talk plugin (or whatever it's called now) you can do video chat right in the browser. Some bug with the drivers, I presume? (I have all the add-ons in Firefox 24.0, but no light for me)

denysonique 13y ago

He once even accused me of 'attacking' him. > If I as a developer feel personally attacked (and I did that) the chances that I with the maintainer hat on will revert my patch goes down and not up My 'attacking' him comment: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c17 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c17 His comment accusing me of attacking him: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c20 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c20

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
Wow! I had similar experience proposing patches and people feeling offended because I criticized their "sacred" selected options. People identify with their work, so if you criticize their work, they fell criticized. "Trust me on this one, I am the one right because it is me and I have so much experience than anybody else..." It seems at the end of the day FOSS is not different than other organizations in the power fights area.
chris_wot 13y ago
He apologised for his comment later on. [1] but certainly, he reacted with emotion - I don't see you doing any personal attacks! 1. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c20 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c20

Mikeb85 13y ago

I think alot of people have unrealistic expectations of open-source in general. Open source has nothing to do with community, merit, etc... Open source has little to nothing to do with collaboration. What open source IS, is a Darwinian paradigm for software. Software is made, released into the wild. It succeeds, or it doesn't. If you don't like it, you fork it, release back into the wild, and whichever version is better lives on. Linus, Mark Shuttleworth, RMS, etc... - they don't owe shit to anyone. People used to rag on SUSE for their deal with Microsoft, and now they rag on Canonical. But guess what - SUSE survived and is still a billion dollar business (it was sold to Attachmate recently for 2.2 billion), and Canonical is making the most popular desktop distro, and the only desktop vendor with the balls to take on the mobile space. BTW, I fully support Martin's decision to abandon Ubuntu if he wants to. Ubuntu is obviously going ahead with Mir and Unity, if it becomes difficult to support, switch to SUSE, or Debian, or fork Ubuntu...

ewzimm 13y ago
I would like to make a small connection. Novell bought SUSE in 2003 when they were losing business. They continued lose business while SUSE grew, so they tried to squeeze maximum profits out of SUSE by laying off a lot of their staff and making a marketing/patent deal with Microsoft. They still ended up having to sell out. SUSE is still going strong thanks to a great community.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  > SUSE is still going strong thanks to a great community. And $225 million in yearly revenue doesn't hurt... Personally, openSUSE has always been my favourite distro. A bit sentimental perhaps, my first Linux was SUSE 6 back in the day, running 13.1 now. So fast and so flexible...
  - ewzimm 13y ago
    SUSE has done a great job maintaining its projects, and I especially like how they focus on building things that are useful to anyone rather than just themselves. With the recent troubles between Ubuntu and KDE, I wonder if Kubuntu will be able to maintain its status as the leading KDE distribution.

cs702 13y ago

Regardless of what the people involved say or write publicly, this conflict and others like it are really about power. With several dozen million Ubuntu desktop users worldwide[1], Canonical has become the gravitational center of the FLOSS desktop and a promising platform for other form factors. No other FLOSS desktop comes even remotely close in terms of mass adoption. As a consequence, many other FLOSS projects that historically have perceived themselves as more important "upstream projects" to the Ubuntu desktop have now become, effectively, contributing projects to Ubuntu. It is now they who depend on Canonical to reach and interact with the vast majority of FLOSS desktop users. For the individuals who identify themselves with those other projects, this tectonic shift in power has not been enjoyable. More and more of them are gradually realizing that if they want to continue working with Canonical, it will have to be on Canonical's terms. -- [1] There were over 25 million Ubuntu users at last count: http://blog.canonical.com/2013/10/01/ubuntu-pre-installed-and-in-retail-worldwide/ http://blog.canonical.com/2013/10/01/ubuntu-pre-installed-an...

prg318 13y ago
How does KDE depend on Ubuntu? It's not like KDE will cease to exist if KDE is not included in Ubuntu. And besides, Canonical is more than welcome manage their patches for KWin (or fork KWin) if they really want it to be included in their distribution with their own unique Windowing stack (Mir). I think the problem here is the attitude coming from Mark Shuttleworth which is a terrible example for the rest of the Ubuntu community. Regardless of what Shuttleworth believes, KDE is a own standalone open source project and does not owe anything to Canonical/Ubuntu.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  And likewise Canonical owes nothing to KDE. I think KDE wants to be on Ubuntu more than Canonical wants KDE...
  - ww520 13y ago
    If that's the case, why would Canonical lobby hard to patch Mir into KDE?

kuchaguangjie 13y ago

I want to say fuck fuck fuck Unity! just let gnome-classic back, it's so perfect, so easy to use & do customization. Ubuntu should keep simple & easy to use, that's why ubuntu is popular. You ubuntu people waste time to develop unity for years, the result is that you fucked the users up, and now you continue want to do that endlessly, ubuntu is come less & less popular. You know what, I installed ubuntu12.04 while it come out, but I am very disappointed, I wasted a whole day try to make it easy to use, but I give up finally, and re-installed the ubuntu10.04 instead. When ubuntu 13.04 come out, I did this again, and changed back to ubuntu 10.04 again. Now ubuntu 13.10 come out, I just want to say, fuck off, I will never install it. You know what, you have been waste time for years to do negative work to make ubuntu worse. What's wrong with you people, I just don't get it ... I still like ubuntu, but I am already start to try other linux distribution out, like Mint, I want to say that, if ubuntu keep in this direction, I probably will say good by to Ubuntu which I have used for 7 years, since ubuntu 7.10 when I was still in collage. Maybe you think I am a little impolite, I do loved ubuntu, I am just expressing my disappointment about what you ubuntu people have done to this lovely os for recent years!

ciupicri 13y ago
I'm not an Ubuntu user, but I thought that it was possible to use other desktop environments like KDE, XFCE, LXDE etc.
- keithpeter 13y ago
  It is at present, and I expect it will be possible to use other desktops for 14.04, which is important as it is a Long Term Support release with support for 5 years. I'm a bit hazy about what happens when Mir replaces X. I gather that this particular argument is about ensuring that the compositor for KDE will work with Mir, or, more accurately, who does the work to ensure that KWin will work on Mir.
tod222 13y ago
Look into the MATE Desktop Environment. [1] "MATE is a fork of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux…" [1] http://mate-desktop.org/ http://mate-desktop.org/

mVChr 13y ago

Am I the only one here who thinks Martin (and others) are being way too sensitive? Here is Mark's comment that (I believe) Martin is so upset about: > Mir is really important work. When lots of competitors attack a project on purely political grounds, you have to wonder what THEIR agenda is. At least we know now who belongs to the Open Source Tea Party ;) Really? This is what the uproar is about?

adrianlmm 13y ago
No, he is being to dramatic, I think he wants attention.

bashcoder 13y ago

This is a cautionary tale. It's unwise to burn bridges after a conflict, because you never know what the future may hold. Justified or not, leaving a stink bomb in your wake is a bad resume builder. It makes people more wary, not more confident. The pain from interpersonal conflicts is real and powerful. But how we handle ourselves during conflict says more about us than any amount of code we'll ever write.

Aldo_MX 13y ago

> All of that without ever asking whether we are interested at all. In case of the telco I was not even asked whether I would want to participate and whether I have time for that. I experienced this as a constant pressure and a disrespect to our own decisions. This is one of the reasons that demotivated me from developing FLOSS, the constant pressure and lack of respect towards the taken decisions.

general_failure 13y ago
That conclusion is absurd and totally wrong on so many levels. It's the same as saying: "This is one of the reasons that demotivated me from developing commercial software, the constant pressure and lack of respect towards the taken decisions."
- Aldo_MX 13y ago
  I can presume that you didn't even understand the context before jumping into your conclusion. My conclusion is not towards FLOSS, but towards the hostility of people behind FLOSS...

drill_sarge 13y ago

Since Ubuntu is just "let's sync repos from debian testing every 6 months and add our own crap" just use debian testing. You even get rolling release. Btw, I know nobody who uses standard Ubuntu. Everyone uses some variant like Xubuntu, Kubuntu etc. which are really well put together distros for the average user.