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Mark Shuttleworth Tries To Lure OpenSUSE Devs
polar_bear` writes "A lot of developers are angry at Novell for its deal with Microsoft, but is it fair game for other vendors to try to capitalize on dissatisfaction with Novell? Apparently, Mark Shuttleworth thinks so. Shuttleworth sent an invitation to the openSUSE developers list inviting developers 'concerned about the long term consequences' of Novell's deal to participate in Ubuntu Open Week and consider jumping ship to Ubuntu. OpenSUSE and Ubuntu developers are not amused."
The idea of inviting developers to jump ship is too... un-Linuxy. OSS in general is not about getting the most developers, nor is it about sucking projects dry when they make an alliance with the heart of all computing evil. OSS is about choice. If developers are really unhappy with the alliance, they will jump ship themselves.
Did you really think there wouldn't be any?
you had me at #!
I don't see an issue with this. Mark's note was well written, and simply mentions that there are alternatives. It was not malicious or derogatory. As for trying to poach developers, you don't think the like of Novell and RedHat aren't doing that all the time? At least Mark is doing it out in the open, instead of using agents, ie. recruiters, to do it.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
No big deal. I mean really, they're not trying to hire them. They're trying to convince these guys to work for them for free instead of the other guys. The "invitation" is an invitation to go to some classes so people can learn how to get accepted to work for free. I can't believe people do this.
Certainly, some developers are not at all pleased with the Microsoft-Novell agreement. Mark is just letting them know they're welcome :P
Anyway, I don't see why this is 'un-Linuxy'. Competition helps OSS thrive, and if you can convince developers to work on your project, why wouldn't you?
Mr. Cosmonaut clearly understands that Novell will get a tremendous money advantage over the next few years. It would be enough to lure all bright developers that remain in Debian/Ubuntu world to SUSE. Even RedHat should be aware... Ubuntu needs a big push to get its place under the sun. Currently RedHat and SUSE control the enterprise Linux market. That's why Ubuntu guys want to make it pretty, and even agreed to include binary modules - the goal is to win at all costs. After than they can get more generous and fair, and finally close their bug #1.
Would you really like to invite MS to sue the crap out of every ex MS developer claiming code taint?
:-)
No? Didn't think so either.
Insert
I don't think that Mark was saying "Hey, come to Ubuntu, we need more developers" or "You should leave Novell now!". It appears to be more of "Hey, if you're leaving, our distribution has got big fast and there is always an opening for someone we know is good at what they do". Well at least it appears that way to me - just a statement made with good intentions that may have been interpreted by others in a different way. Happens all the time...
:(){
On one hand this post is blown out of proportion, probably just because it was written by Mark Shuttleworth. Whether he actually intended in his post to lure devs from openSuse to Ubuntu is hard to tell... If he had only posted "Hello", the fact that it's the openSuse list and the poster is the Big Man of Ubuntu would still make people believe he had an evil agenda, or whatnot.
On the other hand, as you will find out if you follow all those links in TFA+TFS, it appears *someone* at Ubuntu decided to ship binary drivers by default (!) in the next version of the OS. Now that is just wrong, for so many reasons. In any case, it doesn't show Ubuntu a pure-FOSS supporting distro. Some claim the decision was made with little or no community input.
And while the Novell/Microsoft deal is little more than corporate FUD, the binary driver issue and the world's most popular desktop disto's handling of the matter, is crucial. We need to pressure the hardware companies to release drivers, and Ubuntu may soon brutally undermine those efforts.
Mark, leave openSuse alone and do something about the binary driver issue. Please.
Why does that whole thing remind me of the Gnome announcement posted on the KDE mailing list on Aug 15 1997... Now that Miguel works at Novell would be interesting to hear what he thinks about that post :-)
Peter.
I've spent a good weekend of my life trying to get the wireless working with Fedora Core 6, along with Ubuntu; you're really going to attract developers with the half assed, half baked crap that seems to being pushed out by the opensource developers? get the damn product working properly, then maybe those "Microsoft developers" will view Linux as a viable platform to develop on, rather than some operating system for those who wish to waste a whole weekend on trying to get the damn parts working properly.
As for Shuttleworth, its about bloody time he piped down from his grand standing and actually got his damn distribution working correctly out of the box rather than jumping on every Microsoft and competitior bashing bandwagon that goes past his doorway, and instead, actually correct the deficiencies in his distribution; like the lack of WPA configuration and setup - no wpa-gui sucks, its broken and doesn't work.
The day I can dump a ditribution on his oh-so-generic laptop (Toshiba A100) and everything works out of the box, without distorted sound, constant wireless network dropping - then Linux will have made a success on the desktop, until then, it'll be relegated to the server and the desktops of those with way too much time on their hands.
Yeah, I'll get marked down, and a jihad declared on my ass because I *dare* question the almighty penguin agenda, but for christ sake, part of being an adult is accepting praise as well as acknowledging deficiencies and correcting them as they arrise - something which the Linux/OpenSource community is no very good at.
... is EXACTLY what would benefit Microsoft the most. Sowing the seeds of paranoia and distrust WITHIN your enemy's community is a classic tactic.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
Microsoft cannot defeat FOSS through their traditional means.
Microsoft has to, somehow, put a cage around it. It can be a big cage. It can be a HUGE cage. But Microsoft needs to put a cage around it.
Microsoft is trying that with this "patent agreement". It (with Novell's support) splits FOSS into two groups: "Microsoft supported" and "lawyers may sue you".
That gives Microsoft another chance to move the people from the "lawyers may sue you" group into the "Microsoft supported" group. And once they're there, they're in the cage and Microsoft can alter the rules how ever they want, whenever they want.
Which is why I have a problem with Novell's "patent agreement" with Microsoft. Particularly with how Novell is marketing it in Europe where they are pushing the "patent protection" as an important "feature" of SuSE.
Mark said something a little brassy that needed to be said.
Each of us must decide if the Novell/Microsoft deal changed the way we fundamentally view Novell and Suse. That is even more true of anyone developing a platform that is a part of this deal.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Derivative works of copyrighted works are not allowed at all without permission of the copyright holder anyways... the fact that the copyright holder says that derivative works can be freely created without royalty as long as they are put under the same license is not denying anybody any rights they would have otherwise had. People who bitch about how viral the GPL is should take a long hard look at this fact.
Besides, since the GPL's strength comes from Copyright, and Copyright can't protect ideas, so there's nothing to stop you from learning something from a GPL'd work and then reimplementing the ideas yourself, free of any constraints of the GPL, as long as you don't actually copy any previously copyrighted content that was covered by the GPL (but that has more to do with copyright than the GPL).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
..of SuSE. SuSE looks good, mature, polished, professional, industrial, etc. It is not secret that SuSE always looked darn good. Unlike some other distros. Strongly IMO the GNOME themes that come with SuSE are very polished and not lacking in any department, an evidence of professional work.
Remember when Mr. Shuttleworth was calling for developers to improve the looks of Ubuntu? Well this is the same call. Let's get them when they are pissed. They got evident skills.
Well, I'm not suprised. He's clearly trying to keep a calm reasonable situation at the same time as the OpenSUSE people start madly over reacting and trying to cause trouble. The difference between a private blog and a public forum like slashdot is that he is responsible for the posts that he leaves up there. If he thinks that further debate of the patents will cause further problems then he probably should delete the comment.
If you're trying to communicate with him directly, then the right method is email. If you're trying to make a personal public message then the right forum is your own blog (or something like slashdot.)
Ugh where are my mod points?
Gnome will be winning the desktop wars when Linux starts winning the desktop wars, and there are no signs that we're even making any progress in this area. As much as Linux is growing, the fact that companies are writing more apps in GTK isn't a sign of Gnome's superiority or even progress in this area as it's still mostly servers and specialty machines.
KDE or Gnome it doesn't matter. They maybe the leper with the most fingers, but they still can't wipe their ass. Whether companies choose to ship Gnome as the default desktop or not it makes no difference, because none of them are succeeding on the merits of being a general purpose desktop OS.
This sig is alpha and shouldn't be viewed on production machines
It looks like that in one year your advice to some novice at slashdot.com will read: ''You should have known that mentioning Ubuntu, Novell, Xandross, Freespire, Linspire or Lindows as model distros in Slashdot is karma suicide!''
O, Tempora! O, Mores!
How was it off topic? It looked very on-topic to me.
Either way, Mark Shuttleworth wasn't being malicious. He wasn't trying to offend anyone. Moral rights are subjective things, and clearly this didn't offend his own morals, so he wasn't abusing anyone's trust.
Why would it not be? For that matter, why would it not be okay to post a single, polite message along the lines of "Hey, we're doing great things over here and have openings if anyone's interested" even if the deal hadn't been made?
Spamming the list with repeated messages would be wrong, as would making threats, lying, etc. I don't see how a single, polite invitation to switch groups would be wrong at almost any time, though.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
As Anonymous said, it's his blog. If you want to make a statement or post a leading question then post it on a public forum like Slashdot, or on your own blog. He has no obligation to post any comments from anyone on his own blog. I don't know if this is the acceptable etiquette for blogs or not, but it makes sense to me. I don't have a blog, but if I did I wouldn't want it to be completely "open" where anyone can post anything they wanted. I'd want to maintain editorial control of the content.