5 ms·

Mistakes made and addressed

123 points by Mithrandir 13y ago

leokun 13y ago
Cool how Shuttleworth also apologized for the tea party remark. Seemed kind of wrong for him to make it. Too bad he didn't address the gist of the fixubuntu site though, he didn't even link to it I think. Avoiding making the Streisand effect worse? Maybe he's already addressed the privacy issues?
- m_ram 13y ago
  The privacy issues were discussed in Sept. 2012, a month before Quantal was released. 22-Sept: Slashdot thread http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/22/1319216/ubuntu-will-now-have-amazon-ads-pre-installed/ http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/22/1319216/ubuntu-will-n... 23-Sept: HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049 23-Sept: Shuttleworth blog post http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182
  - AsymetricCom 13y ago
    >discussed. that's a different concept than addressed.
- mdeslaur 13y ago
  There's no way to make a global search box on par with iOS, Android, OS X and Windows without sending the search string to a central server. The box is marked "search your computer and online sources", there are other search boxes in the dash to search locally, and there is a simple toggle switch to turn off the online portion in the privacy applet in the system settings. The commands on the fixubuntu site are unnecessary, the simple toggle switch in the privacy applet solves the problem for people who want to disable online access in the global search box.
AsymetricCom 13y ago
Is this a mistake that was addressed or was this a tell of the policies of Ubuntu? I really doubt that Shuttleworth is going to destroy the trove of commercially-valuable personal information that is Unity and Zeitgeist. Clearly, he didn't address anything. He just backtracked. This isn't about the Ubuntu logo, as much as Shuttleworth wishes it to be.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
btilly 13y ago
OK, great. So Ubuntu only accidentally sent the nasty letter, and didn't mean to offend a lot of people who got offended with the tea party remark. But no addressing of the privacy complaints the fixubuntu site had. And explicitly only apologizing to non-technical critics just reinforces the validity of the complaints that 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... had.
- eitland 13y ago
  I too was puzzled about the very specific language to apologise non-technical people. Isn't technical criticism what we want?
  - onli 13y ago
    I'm a bit confused by that section as well. Is Martins feedback given this categorization technical feedback? > Unless critique is focused on improving the software in question it is pretty much a waste of the time of the people who are trying to improve the software in question. The criticism was not focused on improving the software in question (Mir). That could mean he regards it as waste of time - or if we do the additional step and realize we are talking about the _software_ solution of the display-server as a whole, it might be not meant by that. I don't know.
  - btilly 13y ago
    The only technical criticism that he wants is how to make Ubuntu better. The technical criticism that he received is that he can't try to make Ubuntu better by making KWin worse. KWin is not responsible for distros. If a distro has a distro specific patch, the distro has to maintain that patch themselves.
- mdeslaur 13y ago
  Because technical criticism is welcome, and the tea party remark never applied to technical critics.
  - 13y ago
sagarm 13y ago
At a high level, I accept Shuttleworth's apology. I do not believe that it is a company policy to use trademark law to silence complaints. Some nuances: > Judge the policy. In this case Canonical has a trademark > policy that enables community members to use the marks > (good) and allows for satire and sucks sites even in > jurisdictions where the local law does not (great!). > Failing to have a policy would not be a bonus point in this review :) In the US, anybody (not just community members) has a clear right to use the mark for satire and criticism. However, I'm sure there is some jurisdiction where this is not the case. Shuttleworth is not claiming that the license is needed in the US. I was not aware of Shuttleworth's "tea party" comment; he was right to apologize for making it. Based on his post, he was making an analogy between certain types of unconstructive criticism of Ubuntu -- ad hominems, conspiracy theories, and racism -- and behavior he associated with the tea party. That behavior is, of course, not limited to just the tea party, nor is it true for everyone associated with the tea party.
senthilnayagam 13y ago
thanks for the spin mark, lets talk about privacy as well
denrober 13y ago
I just don't understand all this hate towards Canonical. You can turn it off. Yes it was awkwardly rolled out but you can turn it off. What about google search as you type? Google Analytics, hell even the Ghostery plugin tracks data. Is this just the joy of supporting the underdog then hating them when they succeed? Now I don't work for Ubuntu, I don't use Ubuntu (I do use Mint which is derived from Ubuntu). When I think about the things that Apple and Microsoft have done and do I really think adding remote search is really low on the offense list. I mean they aren't making chemical weapons! Again most of this comment is I just don't get all the hate.
- honestcoyote 13y ago
  I can understand it. In these days of constant public and private surveillance, some people want a haven and want it to be consistently safe. One of the great selling points of Linux is that it was such a haven. Linux was supposed to be one of the few things left which wasn't trying to make a buck by watching you. Ubuntu's little Amazon search wasn't very much compared to what Google, Facebook, or the NSA have been up to, but it was still a violation of the spirit of Linux and the unspoken rules and customs many people expect from OSS. For many people, this is a betrayal.
  - XorNot 13y ago
    Basically, have you ever stopped using software because it asked to install the Ask! toolbar by default in the installer? I mean goddamn Java from Oracle does this, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's all those little rejections which slowly wear you down, because it feels like you have to be constantly vigilant.
  - jfoster 13y ago
    It's not as though they're trying to commit it into the kernel, though. There's about a million other Linux-based operating systems that can be used. Isn't it a healthy thing that they try to take different paths to success? Canonical is trying to monetize the consumer side of their OS. Red Hat sells support to enterprise. If you care about Linux, it should be a good thing that these companies are trying to make some money and be sustainable businesses.
general_failure 13y ago
OK everyone kiss each other. lets get this over
cryptolect 13y ago
It's cold in hell tonight.
pachydermic 13y ago
I have been pretty pissed at Canonical lately for a number of missteps they have made but a few of them do seem like legitimate mistakes. Mark is not really a PR guy and you can tell - a lot of what he has done has just kind of fanned the flames. I don't think I need to remind you, but even in a sarcastic tone, "open source tea party" and "we have root" are inflammatory things to say. I think he addresses some of these problems pretty well in this post, and I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt here. Think about all that he has accomplished and the amount that Ubuntu has helped the Linux community grow. So kudos to him for having the balls to apologize. I accept that apology, and I think that a lot of people (including myself) have had some venomous things to say about him as well as Canonical which probably weren't fair. So we could probably all back off here and focus on the real issues. ...but... He's still not talking about the two elephants in the room. The Unity lens is fundamentally fucked up. It should be opt-in. Period. It's clearly an infringement on users' privacy and totally not in the spirit of libre software or Linux. I can't really trust Canonical - even though they've given us all so much - because of this issue. So long as they don't back down from this I'm going to look at everything they do with a critical and possibly cynical eye... it just clearly looks like they're selling out their users. It is really just sad to see them selling out to Amazon like this, and I wish it didn't have to be this way. I can't really fathom the amount of money Mark has spent on Ubuntu. I don't really know how he can make it work as a business. But the Amazon search in the lens just seems like a morally wrong and short-sighted way to go. The second issue which we all need to address is Mir. The technical arguments are completely over my head, but I feel like Canonical hasn't fully made the case for why they've decided to fragment the community and do their own thing. This could just be me not understanding what's going on, but pretty much everyone who's developing this stuff seems to be on Wayland's side... why is that (and is that)? It's worth considering, but I feel like Canonical should be engaging the community, although with all the flaming that goes on I can see why they don't. We all want the best free software we can get, but some serious thought needs to be devoted to the ramifications and rationale for having two display servers. So that's the end of this long rant - let me know what you think.
- jcastro 13y ago
  > It is really just sad to see them selling out to Amazon like this, and I wish it didn't have to be this way. I think many people confuse the smart scopes as "selling out to Amazon." The lenses integrate a bunch of online sources, some are commercial, some are not. You can try it by hitting the super key and doing something like `wiki:metallica` or `code:discourse` (which searches github for projects, etc.). There's something like 100 sources for information in the dash. Amazon is just one of them. It's closer to something like Watson for the Mac or the integrated search in Android. Unfortunately people just assume that Ubuntu has "amazon spyware". If you don't like the integrated online search it's one switch to turn it off and Unity will revert to offline-only searches in the Dash.
Create 13y ago
☑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(public_relations)#Techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(public_relations)#Techni...
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
I tend to think favorably of Canonical and very highly of Shuttleworth, but in this case I'm already pissed of after reading only the first part of the post. This is just highly manipulative PR speak. First there's the repeated suggestion that Canonical is "generous" in allowing all kinds of use of its trademark, where however that kind of use, like satire, is protected by law. It's like saying "look how generous I am to stop for pedestrians at a red light". Second there's the ludicrous analogy between the a bug in the code and the incident. A bug in code, no matter how bad, doesn't compare to an act of aggression aimed at a specific party. The internet did not overreact, it was Canonical that acted with disproportionate aggression. Shuttleworth fails to recognize that and still tries to cover it up by accusing his critics of being unreasonable. A better technical analogy would not be a bug, but deliberately installing malware. This is not an apology. It's a defense combined with an underhanded attack an Canonical's critics. I wasn't one of the "vocal non-technical critics". Now I am. This attitude stinks.
- chc 13y ago
  > First there's the repeated suggestion that Canonical is "generous" in allowing all kinds of use of its trademark, where however that kind of use, like satire, is protected by law. It's like saying "look how generous I am to stop for pedestrians at a red light". Satire is not categorically protected by law and the usage in question was not clearly satire by usual definitions. You should investigate matters more carefully before getting "pissed," because your information seems to be coming from questionable sources. > Second there's the ludicrous analogy between the a bug in the code and the incident. A bug in code, no matter how bad, doesn't compare to an act of aggression aimed at a specific party. The internet did not overreact, it was Canonical that acted with disproportionate aggression. All this was was words. To call a letter requesting that a site not infringe on Canonical's trademarks "an act of aggression" is a bit of an overstatement. Computer bugs have caused several orders of magnitudes greater harm.
  - onli 13y ago
    I'd like to add that Canonical has for years protected the word ubuntu, and it did so coherently. Projects which were not official projects should not use the name in their url or their name. See getdeb/playbuntu as an example: http://blog.getdeb.net/2008/08/playbuntu-is-now-playdeb-beta-starts.html http://blog.getdeb.net/2008/08/playbuntu-is-now-playdeb-beta.... fixbuntu couldn't be easily confused with an official ubuntu project, but still. But projects like the (independent) local support forums sure were allowed to use the name, they got an official approval. See also the trademark license: http://www.canonical.com/intellectual-property-policy http://www.canonical.com/intellectual-property-policy (though I'm annoyed by their use of "intellectual property", I tend to support Stallmans position on this one) So his first paragraphs - how it is handled and that this is done in a good way normally - seem to be correct to me. Try to create a distribution of Windows (think reactOS), name it Windows something, and compare the reaction.
jarofgreen 13y ago
So, cheap pop at Debian in an apology? Ummm ...
- jarofgreen 13y ago
  Heh, quite fun watching the score on this go up and down, a controversial statement? I see @dlgeek has also commented on this.
outside1234 13y ago
Never Mark Shuttleworth's fault. Someone playing politics with an open source project or some unknown staffer who made a "mistake" - never the culture he built or his over the top response to said open source project not adopting the divine direction that he has taken. Nope, not Mark Shuttleworth's fault.
dlgeek 13y ago
What was with the crack at Debian?[0]. Given how reliant Ubuntu is on Debian's work and the amount historical animosity that there's been (a lot of which Mark directly caused with the early interactions between the projects), fanning the flames just seems incredibly stupid. [0] "Debian started arguing about whether it should remove all references to the distro-that-shall-not-be-named but then decided to argue about whether it should enforce its own trademarks which lead to an argument about… oh never mind."
- nicholassmith 13y ago
  Someone submitted patches for Debian that changed Ubuntu to 'the disto which shall not be name', and then it spiralled out from there.
eCa 13y ago
> Please accept my apologies if you [...] felt offended by the label. That's not an apology for using the label, that's a [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
Wow, I find it amazing how hard is for him to apologize for the "tea party" remark. It took him almost a month, then he uses another person's mistake as an example, and then in a small remark at the end, he apologizes. I guess it is "better late than never". But it speaks about how little social skills some geeks have(he was programmer before billionaire).
oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
The fact that Shuttleworth describes fixubuntu.com using the phrase "folks behind a “sucks” site" demonstrates his entirely dismissive attitude of a very important issue, here being raised by ONE person, not in a "sucks" style whatsoever.
- NateDad 13y ago
  That's not the point. He's saying the site is critical of Canonical and Ubuntu, and he's fine with that. "Sucks site" was just a shorthand.
  - oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
    Come on - 'a "sucks" site' implies one that is wholly, disproportionately, and/or subjectively critical. fixubuntu.com is none of those things. Shuttleworth's wording was - I think, intentionally - used to disparage and discredit it as a source of useful information.
protomyth 13y ago
'Last week, the less-than-a-month-at-Canonical new guy sent out the toughest template letter to the folks behind a “sucks” site.' This is not an excuse and reflects poorly on all management when you throw the new guy under the bus. The only response to this[1] is "I" not "the new guy". You are the captain of the ship and don't get to hide behind the new guy. 1) If there is legal consequences and not PR, then you probably shouldn't state anything about what happened inside and should only speak the absolute truth or the parts your lawyer let's you.
rdsubhas 13y ago
Just stop reading this shit. | I made a mistake myself when I used the label “open source tea party” to refer to the vocal non-technical critics of work that Canonical does He's still sticking with labelling vocal technical critics as the open source tea party. Just read it carefully once again. | That was unnecessary and quite possibly equally offensive to members of the real Tea Party (hi there!) and the people with vocal non-technical criticism of work that Canonical does | Please accept my apologies if you have been a vocal non-technical critic of Canonical’s software and felt offended by the label Well this non-apology apology completely insults the intelligence of anyone reading it. Edit: Formatting

123 points by Mithrandir 13y ago

Cool how Shuttleworth also apologized for the tea party remark. Seemed kind of wrong for him to make it. Too bad he didn't address the gist of the fixubuntu site though, he didn't even link to it I think. Avoiding making the Streisand effect worse? Maybe he's already addressed the privacy issues?

m_ram 13y ago
The privacy issues were discussed in Sept. 2012, a month before Quantal was released. 22-Sept: Slashdot thread http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/22/1319216/ubuntu-will-now-have-amazon-ads-pre-installed/ http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/22/1319216/ubuntu-will-n... 23-Sept: HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049 23-Sept: Shuttleworth blog post http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  >discussed. that's a different concept than addressed.
mdeslaur 13y ago
There's no way to make a global search box on par with iOS, Android, OS X and Windows without sending the search string to a central server. The box is marked "search your computer and online sources", there are other search boxes in the dash to search locally, and there is a simple toggle switch to turn off the online portion in the privacy applet in the system settings. The commands on the fixubuntu site are unnecessary, the simple toggle switch in the privacy applet solves the problem for people who want to disable online access in the global search box.

AsymetricCom 13y ago

Is this a mistake that was addressed or was this a tell of the policies of Ubuntu? I really doubt that Shuttleworth is going to destroy the trove of commercially-valuable personal information that is Unity and Zeitgeist. Clearly, he didn't address anything. He just backtracked. This isn't about the Ubuntu logo, as much as Shuttleworth wishes it to be.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

btilly 13y ago

OK, great. So Ubuntu only accidentally sent the nasty letter, and didn't mean to offend a lot of people who got offended with the tea party remark. But no addressing of the privacy complaints the fixubuntu site had. And explicitly only apologizing to non-technical critics just reinforces the validity of the complaints that 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... had.

eitland 13y ago
I too was puzzled about the very specific language to apologise non-technical people. Isn't technical criticism what we want?
- onli 13y ago
  I'm a bit confused by that section as well. Is Martins feedback given this categorization technical feedback? > Unless critique is focused on improving the software in question it is pretty much a waste of the time of the people who are trying to improve the software in question. The criticism was not focused on improving the software in question (Mir). That could mean he regards it as waste of time - or if we do the additional step and realize we are talking about the _software_ solution of the display-server as a whole, it might be not meant by that. I don't know.
- btilly 13y ago
  The only technical criticism that he wants is how to make Ubuntu better. The technical criticism that he received is that he can't try to make Ubuntu better by making KWin worse. KWin is not responsible for distros. If a distro has a distro specific patch, the distro has to maintain that patch themselves.
mdeslaur 13y ago
Because technical criticism is welcome, and the tea party remark never applied to technical critics.
- 13y ago

sagarm 13y ago

At a high level, I accept Shuttleworth's apology. I do not believe that it is a company policy to use trademark law to silence complaints. Some nuances: > Judge the policy. In this case Canonical has a trademark > policy that enables community members to use the marks > (good) and allows for satire and sucks sites even in > jurisdictions where the local law does not (great!). > Failing to have a policy would not be a bonus point in this review :) In the US, anybody (not just community members) has a clear right to use the mark for satire and criticism. However, I'm sure there is some jurisdiction where this is not the case. Shuttleworth is not claiming that the license is needed in the US. I was not aware of Shuttleworth's "tea party" comment; he was right to apologize for making it. Based on his post, he was making an analogy between certain types of unconstructive criticism of Ubuntu -- ad hominems, conspiracy theories, and racism -- and behavior he associated with the tea party. That behavior is, of course, not limited to just the tea party, nor is it true for everyone associated with the tea party.

senthilnayagam 13y ago

thanks for the spin mark, lets talk about privacy as well

denrober 13y ago

I just don't understand all this hate towards Canonical. You can turn it off. Yes it was awkwardly rolled out but you can turn it off. What about google search as you type? Google Analytics, hell even the Ghostery plugin tracks data. Is this just the joy of supporting the underdog then hating them when they succeed? Now I don't work for Ubuntu, I don't use Ubuntu (I do use Mint which is derived from Ubuntu). When I think about the things that Apple and Microsoft have done and do I really think adding remote search is really low on the offense list. I mean they aren't making chemical weapons! Again most of this comment is I just don't get all the hate.

honestcoyote 13y ago
I can understand it. In these days of constant public and private surveillance, some people want a haven and want it to be consistently safe. One of the great selling points of Linux is that it was such a haven. Linux was supposed to be one of the few things left which wasn't trying to make a buck by watching you. Ubuntu's little Amazon search wasn't very much compared to what Google, Facebook, or the NSA have been up to, but it was still a violation of the spirit of Linux and the unspoken rules and customs many people expect from OSS. For many people, this is a betrayal.
- XorNot 13y ago
  Basically, have you ever stopped using software because it asked to install the Ask! toolbar by default in the installer? I mean goddamn Java from Oracle does this, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's all those little rejections which slowly wear you down, because it feels like you have to be constantly vigilant.
- jfoster 13y ago
  It's not as though they're trying to commit it into the kernel, though. There's about a million other Linux-based operating systems that can be used. Isn't it a healthy thing that they try to take different paths to success? Canonical is trying to monetize the consumer side of their OS. Red Hat sells support to enterprise. If you care about Linux, it should be a good thing that these companies are trying to make some money and be sustainable businesses.

general_failure 13y ago

OK everyone kiss each other. lets get this over

cryptolect 13y ago

It's cold in hell tonight.

pachydermic 13y ago

I have been pretty pissed at Canonical lately for a number of missteps they have made but a few of them do seem like legitimate mistakes. Mark is not really a PR guy and you can tell - a lot of what he has done has just kind of fanned the flames. I don't think I need to remind you, but even in a sarcastic tone, "open source tea party" and "we have root" are inflammatory things to say. I think he addresses some of these problems pretty well in this post, and I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt here. Think about all that he has accomplished and the amount that Ubuntu has helped the Linux community grow. So kudos to him for having the balls to apologize. I accept that apology, and I think that a lot of people (including myself) have had some venomous things to say about him as well as Canonical which probably weren't fair. So we could probably all back off here and focus on the real issues. ...but... He's still not talking about the two elephants in the room. The Unity lens is fundamentally fucked up. It should be opt-in. Period. It's clearly an infringement on users' privacy and totally not in the spirit of libre software or Linux. I can't really trust Canonical - even though they've given us all so much - because of this issue. So long as they don't back down from this I'm going to look at everything they do with a critical and possibly cynical eye... it just clearly looks like they're selling out their users. It is really just sad to see them selling out to Amazon like this, and I wish it didn't have to be this way. I can't really fathom the amount of money Mark has spent on Ubuntu. I don't really know how he can make it work as a business. But the Amazon search in the lens just seems like a morally wrong and short-sighted way to go. The second issue which we all need to address is Mir. The technical arguments are completely over my head, but I feel like Canonical hasn't fully made the case for why they've decided to fragment the community and do their own thing. This could just be me not understanding what's going on, but pretty much everyone who's developing this stuff seems to be on Wayland's side... why is that (and is that)? It's worth considering, but I feel like Canonical should be engaging the community, although with all the flaming that goes on I can see why they don't. We all want the best free software we can get, but some serious thought needs to be devoted to the ramifications and rationale for having two display servers. So that's the end of this long rant - let me know what you think.

jcastro 13y ago
> It is really just sad to see them selling out to Amazon like this, and I wish it didn't have to be this way. I think many people confuse the smart scopes as "selling out to Amazon." The lenses integrate a bunch of online sources, some are commercial, some are not. You can try it by hitting the super key and doing something like `wiki:metallica` or `code:discourse` (which searches github for projects, etc.). There's something like 100 sources for information in the dash. Amazon is just one of them. It's closer to something like Watson for the Mac or the integrated search in Android. Unfortunately people just assume that Ubuntu has "amazon spyware". If you don't like the integrated online search it's one switch to turn it off and Unity will revert to offline-only searches in the Dash.

Create 13y ago

☑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(public_relations)#Techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(public_relations)#Techni...

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

I tend to think favorably of Canonical and very highly of Shuttleworth, but in this case I'm already pissed of after reading only the first part of the post. This is just highly manipulative PR speak. First there's the repeated suggestion that Canonical is "generous" in allowing all kinds of use of its trademark, where however that kind of use, like satire, is protected by law. It's like saying "look how generous I am to stop for pedestrians at a red light". Second there's the ludicrous analogy between the a bug in the code and the incident. A bug in code, no matter how bad, doesn't compare to an act of aggression aimed at a specific party. The internet did not overreact, it was Canonical that acted with disproportionate aggression. Shuttleworth fails to recognize that and still tries to cover it up by accusing his critics of being unreasonable. A better technical analogy would not be a bug, but deliberately installing malware. This is not an apology. It's a defense combined with an underhanded attack an Canonical's critics. I wasn't one of the "vocal non-technical critics". Now I am. This attitude stinks.

chc 13y ago
> First there's the repeated suggestion that Canonical is "generous" in allowing all kinds of use of its trademark, where however that kind of use, like satire, is protected by law. It's like saying "look how generous I am to stop for pedestrians at a red light". Satire is not categorically protected by law and the usage in question was not clearly satire by usual definitions. You should investigate matters more carefully before getting "pissed," because your information seems to be coming from questionable sources. > Second there's the ludicrous analogy between the a bug in the code and the incident. A bug in code, no matter how bad, doesn't compare to an act of aggression aimed at a specific party. The internet did not overreact, it was Canonical that acted with disproportionate aggression. All this was was words. To call a letter requesting that a site not infringe on Canonical's trademarks "an act of aggression" is a bit of an overstatement. Computer bugs have caused several orders of magnitudes greater harm.
- onli 13y ago
  I'd like to add that Canonical has for years protected the word ubuntu, and it did so coherently. Projects which were not official projects should not use the name in their url or their name. See getdeb/playbuntu as an example: http://blog.getdeb.net/2008/08/playbuntu-is-now-playdeb-beta-starts.html http://blog.getdeb.net/2008/08/playbuntu-is-now-playdeb-beta.... fixbuntu couldn't be easily confused with an official ubuntu project, but still. But projects like the (independent) local support forums sure were allowed to use the name, they got an official approval. See also the trademark license: http://www.canonical.com/intellectual-property-policy http://www.canonical.com/intellectual-property-policy (though I'm annoyed by their use of "intellectual property", I tend to support Stallmans position on this one) So his first paragraphs - how it is handled and that this is done in a good way normally - seem to be correct to me. Try to create a distribution of Windows (think reactOS), name it Windows something, and compare the reaction.

jarofgreen 13y ago

So, cheap pop at Debian in an apology? Ummm ...

jarofgreen 13y ago
Heh, quite fun watching the score on this go up and down, a controversial statement? I see @dlgeek has also commented on this.

outside1234 13y ago

Never Mark Shuttleworth's fault. Someone playing politics with an open source project or some unknown staffer who made a "mistake" - never the culture he built or his over the top response to said open source project not adopting the divine direction that he has taken. Nope, not Mark Shuttleworth's fault.

dlgeek 13y ago

What was with the crack at Debian?[0]. Given how reliant Ubuntu is on Debian's work and the amount historical animosity that there's been (a lot of which Mark directly caused with the early interactions between the projects), fanning the flames just seems incredibly stupid. [0] "Debian started arguing about whether it should remove all references to the distro-that-shall-not-be-named but then decided to argue about whether it should enforce its own trademarks which lead to an argument about… oh never mind."

nicholassmith 13y ago
Someone submitted patches for Debian that changed Ubuntu to 'the disto which shall not be name', and then it spiralled out from there.

eCa 13y ago

> Please accept my apologies if you [...] felt offended by the label. That's not an apology for using the label, that's a [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

Wow, I find it amazing how hard is for him to apologize for the "tea party" remark. It took him almost a month, then he uses another person's mistake as an example, and then in a small remark at the end, he apologizes. I guess it is "better late than never". But it speaks about how little social skills some geeks have(he was programmer before billionaire).

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago

The fact that Shuttleworth describes fixubuntu.com using the phrase "folks behind a “sucks” site" demonstrates his entirely dismissive attitude of a very important issue, here being raised by ONE person, not in a "sucks" style whatsoever.

NateDad 13y ago
That's not the point. He's saying the site is critical of Canonical and Ubuntu, and he's fine with that. "Sucks site" was just a shorthand.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  Come on - 'a "sucks" site' implies one that is wholly, disproportionately, and/or subjectively critical. fixubuntu.com is none of those things. Shuttleworth's wording was - I think, intentionally - used to disparage and discredit it as a source of useful information.

protomyth 13y ago

'Last week, the less-than-a-month-at-Canonical new guy sent out the toughest template letter to the folks behind a “sucks” site.' This is not an excuse and reflects poorly on all management when you throw the new guy under the bus. The only response to this[1] is "I" not "the new guy". You are the captain of the ship and don't get to hide behind the new guy. 1) If there is legal consequences and not PR, then you probably shouldn't state anything about what happened inside and should only speak the absolute truth or the parts your lawyer let's you.

rdsubhas 13y ago

Just stop reading this shit. | I made a mistake myself when I used the label “open source tea party” to refer to the vocal non-technical critics of work that Canonical does He's still sticking with labelling vocal technical critics as the open source tea party. Just read it carefully once again. | That was unnecessary and quite possibly equally offensive to members of the real Tea Party (hi there!) and the people with vocal non-technical criticism of work that Canonical does | Please accept my apologies if you have been a vocal non-technical critic of Canonical’s software and felt offended by the label Well this non-apology apology completely insults the intelligence of anyone reading it. Edit: Formatting