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Open Source Is Not a Democracy

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-duh-people dept.

itwbennett writes "A recent kerfuffle within the Ubuntu community serves as a reminder of an inconvenient truth: open source is not a democracy, writes blogger Brian Proffitt. 'The discussion started innocuously enough, within Bug #532633 in light-themes (Ubuntu) on Launchpad, where the order of the window controls within the Light theme were requested to be re-arranged to be on the upper right side of any given window. Light, it seemed, now placed the buttons on the left side, similar to the Mac OS X interface.' The discussion turned into an argument and culminated in this exchange in which Mark Shuttleworth lays down the law: 'It's fair comment that this was a big change, and landed without warning. There aren't any good reasons for that, but it's also true that no amount of warning would produce consensus about a decision like this... No. This is not a democracy. Good feedback, good data, are welcome. But we are not voting on design decisions.'"

3 of 641 comments (clear)

  1. Get Canonicall OUT of Debian environment by scenestar · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Ubuntu has becoming more and more interwoven with Debian

    It's time to cut all ties, before it becomes a corporate ball and chain.

    --
    perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
  2. Other than health care... by stakovahflow · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I've been a fan of Communism/Socialism for years. How is this much different?

    --Stak

    --
    Holy happy hippy crap!
  3. Re:-1 Troll by mpfife · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    We just got much closer to a Communist Democracy today in fact.

    Hope you're all out there shopping for your now GOVERNMENT MANDATED health insurance - that or you can pay 2% of your annual income as a penalty.

    Land of the Free indeed - land of the free lunch