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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."
inviting people over is an act of courtesy though. It not like he threatened them or made false statements about Novell's future.
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. "
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?
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.And a choice is exactly what he offered.
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.
Um, what? Who made you the authority on what OSS is "about"?
Also you contradict yourself. You say "OSS is about choice". News flash: Jumping ship is about choice. Mark Shuttleworth is reminding the openSUSE devs of one of the choices available to them.
Also, OSS is very much about attracting developers. Projects without developers don't go anywhere. Projects that have developers do, almost without regard to technical merit (cf. PHP)
http://outcampaign.org/
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!
"So, let me get this straight. The openSUSE developers are smart enough to work on openSUSE, smart enough to be welcome to other distros, but too stupid to realize they can work on another distro if they want to?"
Not stupid, just ignorant of other options. As long as he wasn't an asshole about it, I see it as fair.
It seems to me that many of the complaints here are due to fear. You are afraid people will actually take him up on the offer.
"With Ubuntu's questionable inclusion of non-GPL, "binary blob" and closed source drivers, maybe Shuttleworth should worry more about his own distro, and let the openSUSE developers worry about theirs."
What you don't realize is that this is the only way a linux distribution has a chance at competing with Windows. Shuttleworth is a (smart) businessman and knows this as well.
And the post to the opensuse dev list was just uncalled for
Don't have an open mailing list for OpenSUSE if you don't want to deal with sometimes unwanted comments.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
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'
Posting it on another project's developer mailing list is trolling.
Oh, like when Linus posted about Linux on the Minix list?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
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
yeah like infighting hasn't been happening in the linux community /slap
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!