First GNOME Census Results

supersloshy writes "The GNOME Census, a project to see who contributes to GNOME and how, has released its first set of results. The results group people by their reasons to contribute code, what they contributed code to, and what percentage of the total contributions they have. For example, 23.45% of code contributions were volunteer, 16.3% of code contributions came from Red Hat, 1% of contributions came from Canonical (which has caused a lot of controversy), and 0.24% came from Mozilla Corporation. The census results are also represented in diagrams (release activity, why contributions were made, and what was contributed to and by who). The report is also available here and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license."

Comments

doesn't seem that scandalous

[Trepidity]

If the linked post is an accurate overview, at least, it looks like Red Hat is doing a lot more contributing to GNOME's core, while Canonical is doing a lot more building of apps, widgets, and other miscellaneous desktop stuff on top of GNOME. Both seem like reasonable things for an open-source company to contribute. Linux desktop environments need more hacking on the core, and need more interesting things built on top of that core too.

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[buchner.johannes]

If you look at the maintainance map, you can see that Redhat is relavant in several areas, but most of it is volunteer. Canonical is not so relevant here (except for the default theme and the calculator -- lol).

Imagine your company was structured like that. Or that you'd have to sell this plan to your stakeholders. :) But it works!

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[psavo]

I still remember time when all of fedora & RedHat said a big FUCK YOU to any user wanting reasonably working 3D on desktop. That's user friendly for sure.

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[Anonymous Coward]

You do? When?

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to elaborate?

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[buchner.johannes]

Yeah? Link?

Maybe that coincided with the time when there were no free 3D drivers, and Red Hat forwarded the "Fuck You" from hardware vendors since they (a) hadn't the drivers developed yet and (b) had a principle problem with including proprietary drivers.

Then (in my opinion) Ubuntu et al not-so-strict distros included proprietory drivers, Linux became more present on the desktop, Hardware vendors noticed Linux. Open-source driver developers had more time and resources to continue and eventually brought forth free drivers.

What's your version?

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[maxwell demon]

You misunderstood. "FUCK YOU" was the name of their latest 3D driver. :-)

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[crush]

Fedora and Red Hat provide Free Software in their repositories. It's trivial to install the non-Free drivers (and their associated hidden bugs) supplied by NVIDIA.

In addition to that Debian, Red Hat and Novell and Intel and other honest players have spent huge amounts of time coding up Free drivers with the Nouveau project (free NVIDIA drivers), Intel drivers, and ATI/AMD drivers

Sounds like the only one saying a big FUCK YOU is your self.

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[thetoadwarrior]

That's complete BS. Like the link pointed out, they may be trying to submit stuff and it's not accepted. But even if that isn't the case the one thing that Ubuntu does much much better than anyone else is provide a huge collection of useful easy to read documentation that can be applied to most any Linux distro.

They may not be doing much coding work but they are making people more aware of Linux and rather than fighting each other and making the community look like a bunch of dicks we should appreciate what they have done because quite frankly they didn't have to do anything and the competition is good. Fedora wasn't that great for working straight out of the box, from my experience a few years ago but Ubuntu was. That means users had a good option to try (better for everyone) and Redhat needed to improve which, I think they have.

If writing good code was all it took to be a popular OS then Linux should be a lot more popular than it is now. It's not and that's because it needs people doing other things some of which Canonical are doing.

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[Will.Woodhull]

Parent post, and the articles that are raising this "controversy", are comparing apples to oranges.

Red Hat and Canonical are both commercial entities. But Red Hat has been profitable for several years; Canonical has yet to generate a profit-- it is still in its start-up phase. One cannot expect a business that is still completely dependent on an angel's generosity for financing (thank you, Mark) to be as active in the community as a business that has a positive cash flow. Red Hat has the resources to pay some of its personnel to shepherd its developments through the upstream process. Canonical has chosen to put its limited resources to other tasks.

Also note that all the Ubuntu's distros are supported by Canonical. But Red Hat split off Fedora sometime before Ubuntu became a player. Red Hat now has no free-as-in-beer offerings that compare with the Ubuntu distros.

And in any case, Ubuntu's primary contribution is in meeting the needs of newcomers to Linux and FOSS, and it does that exceedingly well. Better than any other distro has done before. Proselytizing-- raising the public's awareness about Linux and FOSS-- is generally recognized as a valid mode of contributing to FOSS. One that is especially appropriate for individuals and businesses who are not in a position to contribute code. Ubuntu has done more in this area than Red Hat has ever done.

The spokesman from Red Hat who apparently set up this "controversy" should be ashamed of his words. A significant portion of Red Hat's new clients are from businesses whose managers tested the Linux waters with Ubuntu on their personal machines, and then went to Red Hat for its expertise in supporting enterprise systems. Ubuntu does not compete with Red Hat and is not riding Red Hat's coattails; Ubuntu's existence drives business to Red Hat.

Nota Bene: In 2008, Mark Shuttleworth guessed that Canonical might become "cash flow positive" in 3 to 5 years. The recession has probably pushed that forward somewhat.

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[motang]

Excellent point.

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[Risen888]

But even if that isn't the case the one thing that Ubuntu does much much better than anyone else is provide a huge collection of useful easy to read documentation that can be applied to most any Linux distro... ...it needs people doing other things some of which Canonical are doing.

Except that Canonical's not doing that. The Ubuntu community is, and that's a totally different group of people. You're right that it's great work, and work that all of the free software community benefits from. But it's not work that Canonical's footing the bill for.

Which is doubly bad. First, Canonical tends to wrap themselves in that flag whenever they're faced with criticism, which is disingenuous in the extreme. Second, it steals the well-earned credit from the great people who really are putting in the hours to do that work.

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[the_womble]

1) Red Hat fans quote unfair (because they do not take stuff that is not accepted upstream, but may still be used by other distros into account, do not adjust for the fact that Red Hat has been around longer, only look at code contributions, not marketing or UI research etc.) numbers to try and prove that Ubuntu does not make a fair contribution to Linux development.

2) Mark Shuttleworth responds with a blog post in which he spins like a politician, fails to answer the questions directly, and accuses the critics of "tribalism".

It does not make anyone look good.

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[complacence]

Commercially Canonical is proving that "Linux on the Desktop" is a failure.

It can't prove any such thing, as it isn't trying to be, yet. All it proves is that if you put enough marketing behind Linux and give your product away for free (to increase its adoption instead of your account balance), adoption does increase and your account balance doesn't.

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[thetoadwarrior]

I'm not trying to say Ubuntu is super awesome or anything but I think people underestimate what they have done for Linux purely because they haven't contributed the most code.

As far as I am aware Canonical pays to host their forums and wiki which are one of the most helpful resources for Linux especially if you use a similar distro.

If they get people using Linux then it will be much easier to get people using other distros and every person they bring to Linux, even if they stick with Ubuntu, is potentially one more developer who will contribute code that everyone can use.

Ubuntu probably should contribute more code. If they want to be the consumer distro then imo they should put more effort in making Linux even better on laptops which is where it is probably it is at its weakest. Instead they did let that awful hard drive killing issue linger forever (still not sure if it's fixed) and that would have, in my eyes at least, made them look better and any distro with similar issues could have taken advantage of their code. But still I appreciate what they have done and I believe that is introducing more people to Linux.

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[gregrah]

I agree with just about everything above.

I am a relative newcomer to the world of Linux on the desktop. As a Java developer it is entirely possible to run a Windows windows and get by with only a very shallow understanding of Linux - but I decided six months ago to switch my workstations (at work and home) over to Linux because it was interesting and I figured it would be helpful for my career. I was able to back up some files, blast away my Windows install, and be back up and running in Ubuntu with everything that I need to do my job (efficiently) in a single weekend. I do not think that it would have been possible to make such a seamless transition with most of the other distros out there (including RHEL).

Now that I am beginning to learn my way around the Linux universe, I am beginning to experiment with other distros and even other Unices such as FreeBSD. In another 6 months time I figure that I'll probably have moved on to a different distro because, from what I can tell, there are more-stable distros out there with better user communities than Ubuntu for experienced Linux users. But for a complete newb? Yeah, I would definitely recommend Ubuntu.

So I agree with just about everything posted above. I disagree in that I don't see anything wrong in taking the piss out of Canonical for not playing nicer with the broader Linux community. They've got more desktop users than any other distro out there. At the very least they should be taking all of the user feedback (read: complaints) that they receive on their forums, distilling it into useful bug reports, and passing that information up to the core developers to be fixed at the level where it can do the most good. If they want to hire a few coders to fix some of those issues themselves, that would be even better.

In short: Ubuntu is awesome, but there is no harm in criticizing Canonical in areas where they could improve. When Linux improves, EVERYONE (including Canonical) stands to benefit.

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[Will.Woodhull]

At the very least they should be taking all of the user feedback (read: complaints) that they receive on their forums, distilling it into useful bug reports, and passing that information up to the core developers to be fixed at the level where it can do the most good.

That doesn't make sense.

Canonical is quite likely not contributing code because the cost of doing so is too much during this start-up phase when they are working at a net loss. Doing the first hard and costly 80% of the debugging work on each current issue and passing that upstream for someone else to get the credit for the patches is very likely not in their best interest, either.

The hard part of bug squashing is sorting through all the reports to find the durn things. Actually coding the fixes is trivial by comparison. And that's true when a formal bug reporting form is in use. Trying to work from complaints posted in a forum would be awful. There are reasons why bug report forms came about.

But it does look to me like the Ubuntu forums are easily available for anyone who wants to extract and distill useful bug reports from them. So have at it!

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[gregrah]

Doing the first hard and costly 80% of the debugging work on each current issue

They already have this. This is the sort of thing that goes on every single day on the Ubuntu forums. It's why the forums exist.

and passing that upstream

Here's where it sounds like they are dropping the ball. Bugs, fixes, and workarounds are discovered, but they are not being communicated upstream. Take that extra step and get that information to where it can really make a difference.

for someone else to get the credit for the patches is very likely not in their best interest, either.

Canonical does not want to be perceived as being a freeloader, or non-free-as-in-speech. Having that sort of reputation would alienate a large number of the volunteers that they rely on. It is in their best interest to do whatever they can to maintain a healthy image in the developer community.

But it does look to me like the Ubuntu forums are easily available for anyone who wants to extract and distill useful bug reports from them. So have at it!

You mean get involved in the Linux community? That sounds like a good idea. I think I will!

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[drinkypoo]

I still remember time when all of fedora & RedHat said a big FUCK YOU to any user wanting reasonably working 3D on desktop. That's user friendly for sure.

I still remember the time when RedHat gave a big FUCK YOU to everyone who used RedHat, when they replaced it with Fedora, the alpha/beta testing ground for RHEL. At the same time, you cannot discount their massive contributions to the Linux environment, even if they are bad at portability. (Software packages developed specifically for redhat tend to be heavy on redhatisms and need substantial bashing before they will work in another environment.)

Re:doesn't seem that scandalous

[bmullan]

For those wanting to gripe on Canonical I went and looked at relative sizes of the companies and found these numbers
Red Hat - 3,300 employees ~ $1 Bil in revenue
Canonical - 320 employees ~$35 Mil in revenue
So with 10 times the employees its reasonable to think that Red Hat should probably have at least a 10x greater contribution to gnome development.

Half the story

[ThoughtMonster]

The census is correct in implying that Canonical has not as many modules in upstream GNOME repositories, however that is only half the story. The census counts all commits since the beginning of the project, so Red Hat has a 6-year head start. Not to mention that Red Hat is a much bigger company than Canonical.

Canonical provides a lot of things of value to GNOME and the free software community in general. The (recently established) Canonical Design Team produces research on software usability, the value of which is not easily quantifiable. Many pieces of GNOME software live on Launchpad and are not strictly part of GNOME upstream (Simple Scan, for instance). This might change if (or when) these modules are accepted in GNOME proper.

To claim that Canonical is freeloading on other companies' contributions is a bit of myopic, in my opinion. How many upstream bug reports came from Ubuntu users?

Re:Half the story

[buchner.johannes]

To claim that Canonical is freeloading on other companies' contributions is a bit of myopic, in my opinion. How many upstream bug reports came from Ubuntu users?

Too many, we marked them as dup. But your point is invalid since Canonical != Ubuntu users and Canonical != Ubuntu maintainers. Latter are all in the volunteer camp. Red Hat users & maintainers are probably largely there too.

The way I see it Ubuntu is mainly a packager (distribution) and behaves like one. They mainly configure, build and distribute the existing software. Of course they provide patches for bugs they encounter, and they send it upstream to reduce their own work.

But Canonical doesn't have the means and will to truly commit developer resources to Linux (like Red Hat does). They want to achieve something with what is there*, and they are very good at communicating, community-building, reacting to users, connecting users and developers. That is Ubuntu's value.
Red Hat has some of this too, but for them it is business to engineer a Linux that works, because that is what they sell.

*Greg Kroah Hartman complained Ubuntu doesn't give patches upstream.

Re:Half the story

[ThoughtMonster]

... But your point is invalid since Canonical != Ubuntu users and Canonical != Ubuntu maintainers. Latter are all in the volunteer camp. ...

I disagree. In principle, you are correct, Canonical, as a company, has nothing to do with me, as a user, filing a bug report on some piece of software. However, how many of these bug reports would exist in the first place if not for Ubuntu, for which Canonical is largely (if not wholly) responsible? Something about eyeballs and shallow bugs.

For me, Canonical succeeded where most other companies did not, in marketing Linux and GNOME as user-friendly solutions, which in turn, I believe, will draw developers to produce more software for Linux.

Whilst this is, in part, due to the relative maturity of both products, for which Red Hat is largely responsible, I believe that GNOME benefits greatly from Canonical's approach towards user-friendliness as much as Canonical benefits from the infrastructure on which they base their products. Canonical has produced great software (like Upstart) which may not be obvious.

Re:Half the story

[houghi]

Greg Kroah Hartman complained Ubuntu doesn't give patches upstream.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3385088017824733336#
Keynote address by Greg K-H given during the inaugural Linux Plumbers Conference Sept 17, 2008 in Portland, OR.

Re:Half the story

[crush]

Many pieces of GNOME software live on Launchpad and are not strictly part of GNOME upstream (Simple Scan, for instance).

That's the problem: Canonical is not doing the hard work to get what little they do write upstream. Stuff that is not upstream is just balkanized, fractured, non-maintainable code. It doesn't provide any benefit to the rest of the GNU/Linux community, i.e. the people that write all the rest of the code and upstream it so that Canonical can exist in the first place. Usability research is useful, but when I click your link I see one study (on Empathy) and further clicking around on the Canonical Design team site reveals that, as so much of Canonical appears to be, it's all about marketing. Seriously: ONE study and then three guides devoted to "guidelines to support the brand documentation and help create consistent brand usage."?

Re:Half the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Red Hat has had a 6 year lead on Canonical maybe. But look at some of these much, much smaller companies that didn't have a 6-year lead over Canonical who are on the list and beating them: Collabora, Lanedo, Openismus, Codethink. How long was Eazel even around, like maybe two years? litl is brand new and isn't even a GNOME based company and they're outranking Canonical.

Lanedo, Openismus, and Codethink are tiny companies with only a handful of people who work there. They haven't been around as long as Canonical, they're not as well-funded as Canonical, and they're rocking the contributor list.

At least they're beating The Family International, whoever that is.

Re:Half the story

[Elektroschock]

Canonical did the mistake to base Ubuntu on Gnome, a very fragmented infrastructure, instead of KDE.

Re:Half the story

[Risen888]

Canonical provides a lot of things of value to GNOME and the free software community in general. The (recently established) Canonical Design Team produces research [canonical.com] on software usability, the value of which is not easily quantifiable. Many pieces of GNOME software live on Launchpad and are not strictly part of GNOME upstream (Simple Scan, for instance). This might change if (or when) these modules are accepted in GNOME proper.

The point flew right by you there and you completely missed it. Why is all this stuff living on Launchpad? Why does Canonical put walls around their garden? Why have they effectively forked the Gnome design process rather than working with the people who are actually a part of the community?

Re:Half the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Grammar alert! Myopic is an adjective!

Re:Half the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, upstart is the cause of a whole lot of boot issues and instability.

Re:Half the story

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stuff that is not upstream is just balkanized, fractured, non-maintainable code. It doesn't provide any benefit to the rest of the GNU/Linux community..."

What nonsense. Maybe Stallman can address this in GPLv4?

Apples and Oranges

[WarJolt]

Redhat is publicly traded, has over 9 times as many employees as canonical and actually makes a lot more money then Canonical.
Quit picking on the small fry. Ubuntu contributes enough.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[JonJ]

The Ubuntu fanboys enjoy ripping on Red Hat for not contributing to the desktop, and for being a boring company focusing only on the serverside of things. Seems like that position is bullshit. People are also claiming that Red Hat doesn't care about the desktop, which this proves is also pure crap. For the people positioning Ubuntu as the desktop champion of GNU/Linux they're not contributing anywhere. Not the kernel, not GNOME, no where are they contributing a significant amount of patches. And all the apologists are busy trying to justify that the most downloaded distribution on distrowatch is not giving back anything significant. Even the fluendo guys are contributing more than Ubuntu.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[musmax]

This. And why with all that head start is Ubuntu more popular today than Fedora ? [1]. I'm all for tribalism, it keeps us honest, and focussed on the things that matter to us, given of course that you know what your core values are. RH the big red gorilla is out-shined by a 1/10 company started by some dude from Africa with a thing for Kalahari brown. And haters run to defend the behemoth - where have I seen this before ? Maybe I would be less bitter if I didn't have to fight with CenTOS5.4 all day long... [1] http://www.google.com/trends?q=fedora,ubuntu&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

then look at the gnome-constribution comparison between Ubuntu and (kde distro) Mandriva...

Re:Apples and Oranges

[JonJ]

And why with all that head start is Ubuntu more popular today than Fedora?

It might be because Ubuntu isn't based in the US and thus can integrate tools to get patented software codecs easier installed. They've also made it easier to install proprietary drivers, which is always a mess in Fedora. So, the difference is Red Hat actually does open source and is rather fundamental about it, while Ubuntus morals are more flexible.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[brejc8]

They've also made it easier to install proprietary drivers, which is always a mess in Fedora.

[citation required]
And not just a post by an Ubuntu user who heard it off a friend. I hear this every day and never met anyone who has supporting evidence. Along with "Fedora is just for servers", "Fedora uses bleeding edge so nothing works" and "there be dragons in them hills".

I install Ubuntu, Suse and Fedora on university machines on a daily basis. There is no massive discerning difference between these distributions that makes one much easier for 3d drivers than the other. All three have package repos for proprietary drivers and are as easy to set up.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[keeboo]

I think that Canonical has been in better situation than Mandriva... for years.
Also, there's the fact that Mandriva was always KDE-oriented, not Gnome.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

so, Canonical, with a clear gnome foucs, is doing ok because they are larger than mandriva, which doesn't have a clear gnome focus, and contribute less to gnome upstream than mandriva(and other even smaller entities)? ok..

Re:Apples and Oranges

[phoenixwade]

I install Ubuntu, Suse and Fedora on university machines on a daily basis. There is no massive discerning difference between these distributions that makes one much easier for 3d drivers than the other. All three have package repos for proprietary drivers and are as easy to set up.

I find it difficult to believe that you install three different distros on a single entities machines on a daily basis. Why would anyone do that? Why create such an IT headache by intentionally deploying three separate distros on apparently a huge number of machines, or why continually re-install three differnt distros on the same machines when it's obviously not working (if it were, you wouldn't have to re-install so often).

Re:Apples and Oranges

[arose]

Is this over the lifetime of Gnome or that of Canonical. If it's the former, then your argument doesn't hold water. Yay for statistics without methodology!

Re:Apples and Oranges

[brejc8]

I install whichever OS they ask for. I also install Windows XP and getting the accelerated drivers for that is actually a pain. Why all three? Because there are Suse fans who feel most comfortable using Suse. Because there are multiprocessor simulators which are distributed only in .deb packages. Because, and I really must strongly emphasise this, there really isn't much of a difference between the distributions and there are no dragons!. They are all collections of the same software. If I solve a bug on one, it is the same solution on the others. This is why I feel strongly that distros should upstream their efforts. But perhaps most importantly, I do this because I want people to be comfortable using their computers. The reinstall cycle is about once every 2 years. I would appreciate you not insinuating people being mentally deficient on the ground that I put in more effort that is strictly necessary, after all the open source community is driven by people who put in more effort than the minimum necessary to get the job done, in order to make others' lives better

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss that it's a university? Logic need not apply, especially in turf wars where CS, Physics, and 3 different engineering departments all disagree on what OSes are acceptable, and IT has no authority to settle it because they're staff, not faculty. If you can get by on 2-3 Windows versions, Mac OS X, and 3 Linux distros, you're doing pretty well.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, fuck you too buddy! Ever think that it takes us noobs a little while to catch up to the gurus? I am currently eyeball deep into MIT opencourseware trying to learn some CS skills so I can contribute. Not only that but since I started installing Ubuntu on my friends boxes some of them have started installing it on their friends. More eyeballs means more customers, more customers means maybe your favorite company might actually give a crap about releasing some drivers for your favorite widget. So be careful next time you go calling people fanboys, we should all be on the same side here.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

I don't have the exact quote handy nor do I remember who exactly it was who said it, but someone from Red Hat did indeed say they weren't interested in the desktop several years ago. That was when I started using Mandrake. Nowadays it's OpenSUSE. KDE (at least until v4) was superior to GNOME IMO anyway.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the article? These statistics are for GNOME 2.30 commits only.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[MSG]

I suspect that non-Ubuntu users will stop "picking on" Canonical for contributing so little when Canonical and Ubuntu users stop crowing about how much Canonical and Ubuntu contribute.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[JonJ]

I don't have the exact quote handy nor do I remember who exactly it was who said it, but someone from Red Hat did indeed say they weren't interested in the desktop several years ago.

This bullshit needs to stop, that's twisting his words.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[JonJ]

[citation required]

I don't need a citation, because I was stating an opinion. I have an IdeaPad with a broadcom wireless chipset in it, that never installs right. Also, after they've included nouveau in the standard distribution, installing the binary driver is a headache. And sometimes it just continues to load, even if you blacklist it and remove it from the kernel line in the grub config. You might think the nouveau driver is great, but for actual use it's not. In fact, it wasn't even able to set up a simple dual screen config on my machine. If proprietary drivers in Fedora are easy for you, that's just great for you. Oh, and before you ask: Lenovo has been so kind as to make a whitelist of supported wireless chipset and fails to boot if you replace it with a non-approved card. I've tried various patches to get around it, but no luck. So until I can buy a new one with actual Linux-support, I'm stuck with doing the best I can with my machine.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[drinkypoo]

Because, and I really must strongly emphasise this, there really isn't much of a difference between the distributions and there are no dragons!.

Distributions create their own bugs all the time. Fedora shipped some wacky patch once that killed DVD-ROM drives, there are certainly dragons. The problem is that the dragons are invisible until you trip over them.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[ebuck]

Is this over the lifetime of Gnome or that of Canonical. If it's the former, then your argument doesn't hold water. Yay for statistics without methodology!

The ripping RedHat / Fedora / everything else because Unbuntu is "so much better" probably started after Canonical was formed. At our LUG, I just ask, "So what other distros have you used?" and that shuts them up. I'd wager that 90% of all Unbuntu users haven't used anything else, but are certain that it's the best distro in the world because they are implicitly comparing it to Windows.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[arose]

Modules of 2.30. Module maintenance is over the last two years. The time frame for the commit table isn't explicitly listed. Looking at the modules in 2.30 might mean the full history of the modules involved just as well as 2.28 to 2.30. The later is susceptible to fluctuations, Ubuntu had an upcoming LTS release that would have gobbled up resources for example.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[arose]

The ripping RedHat / Fedora / everything else because Unbuntu is "so much better" probably started after Canonical was formed.

It could hardly have started before, considering that Ubuntu didn't exist before Canonical.

I'd wager that 90% of all Unbuntu users haven't used anything else, but are certain that it's the best distro in the world because they are implicitly comparing it to Windows.

I've used Slackware, Mandrake, Debian and FreeBSD. Slackware and FreeBSD have convinced me that a proper packaging system is a good idea. Mandrake and FreeBSD have convinced me that proper packaging is a good idea (I wasn't experienced enough back when I started on Slackware to tell if the packaging was done properly). If it wasn't for Ubuntu I'd probably still be on Debian, cursing broken unstable (their release frequency picked up considerably after Ubuntu started setting the pace, I think Debian users have benefited quite a bit from Ubuntu's existence).

So while I haven't used every distro under the sun, I do have some ground to prefer Debian derivatives, Ubuntu in particular, to others.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Bill_the_Engineer]

The Ubuntu fanboys enjoy ripping on Red Hat for not contributing to the desktop, and for being a boring company focusing only on the serverside of things.

I thought it was because Canonical offered both a desktop and server edition of their distribution for free with long term support (LTS) editions of both. Red Hat, on the other hand, chose to only offer their enterprise level distribution on a subscription basis, and continues to offer a free linux distribution secondhand through Fedora which up to recently were considered too bleeding edge whose support were short lived after the next edition came out.

People are also claiming that Red Hat doesn't care about the desktop, which this proves is also pure crap.

Really? I thought it was because RedHat didn't care about Linux at home.

Some loyal RedHat users felt betrayed when RedHat went to a subscription model after RedHat 9. I know I did. Suddenly home users were second class citizens and was left with a "bleeding edge" distribution called Fedora. Because of the lack of broadband and the desire to support the cause, I purchased all of my RedHat CDs straight from RedHat. When RedHat decided to concentrate on enterprise computing, I felt that they didn't need my money anymore and went to another distribution.

Not the kernel, not GNOME, no where are they contributing a significant amount of patches. And all the apologists are busy trying to justify that the most downloaded distribution on distrowatch is not giving back anything significant. Even the fluendo guys are contributing more than Ubuntu.

So? Redhat knew what they were getting into when they based their business on a GPL licensed OS.

What about targeting home users? Advocacy? Documentation? Making all their editions available for download with no subscription required for automatic updates? Welcoming people who may not be fluent in computer science. Nope not RedHat - it was Canonical.

This costs money and Canonical spent it. This is what they contributed to Linux, and is why they have a larger share of the home market.

Languages

[maxwell demon]

One interesting observation about the contributions on language bindings: Obviously volunteers are mostly into scripting languages (Python, Perl), while each compiled language is dominated by a single company (C++ by Openismus, Java by Operation dynamics, and C# by Novell).

Freeloaders = good

[Alwin Henseler]

To claim that Canonical is freeloading on other companies' contributions is a bit of myopic, in my opinion.

'Freeloading' often has a negative meaning, but in open source land the opposite is true IMHO. Any additional user helps to improve the software just by using it:

• Increased user base means increased market share, bringing open source software closer to the point where companies take Linux support more serious for their products, governments may take a 2nd look at their open source use & support for open standards, websites are checked more often in alternative (read: non-IE) browsers, etc, etc.
• More users = more testers, more bug reports etc. This ultimately helps the software quality, if more bugs are found (& hopefully, fixed).
• More users = (over time) more experienced users, that can help newcomers get started.

So regardless of who deserves credits, that's many networks effects that benefit all users of such software, Gnome included. Freeriding on that is about as harmful as watching new years' fireworks without lighting any of your own - you still contribute to the party, just by being there. And in that sense, Canonical has done a lot to support Linux - by attracting & supporting many new users.

Re:Freeloaders = good

[Anonymous Coward]

"Canonical has done a lot to support Linux - by attracting & supporting many new users." - that is disputed http://www.happyassassin.net/2010/07/29/the-success-of-ubuntu/

Re:Freeloaders = good

[noidentity]

This isn't even freeloading, because it doesn't put any load on a project to use a copy of its source code. This isn't something physical where it's limited.

Re:Freeloaders = good

[crush]

Sure it is. Community and users are a resource. They can an asset to either a succesful company (Red Hat) which has a consistent, strong track record of contributing vast amounts of Free Software to every part of the stack (from kernel on up to network and sound management, to the desktop and free fonts) OR they can be expended by a (so far) commercially unsuccesful hobby company (Canonical) which is devoted to recouping Mark Shuttleworth's lost millions and has so far failed to contribute anything of note.

Re:Freeloaders = good

[X0563511]

Your later two points depend entirely on the users actively helping. Most users will not file bug reports (merely complain, and usually somewhere where it doesn't matter) and will not help others.

Re:Freeloaders = good

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I'd better uninstall Firefox et al, because apparently there is some new clause in F/OSS that says if you use it, you MUST submit code to it

Re:Freeloaders = good

[noidentity]

Where is the load that is being put on something? I'm not clear on that.

Re:Freeloaders = good

[Group XVII]

Your argument made me feel nostalgic for the days when using Linux meant testing software and filing bug reports. Now I use Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu) and that world is forever lost to me. I am hooked on freeloading. Everything just works and I just let it.

Re:Freeloaders = good

[Buttink]

Thank you for being level headed for the rest of us. :)

Canonical's code contribution

[eddy_crim]

Canonical's code contribution is irrelevant. What open source has always needed is some polish and some marketing. Thats what canonical provide, they polished and marketed (to an extent) a decent distro. OSS has never been short of decent code and quality software engineering. Canonical are providing a great link in the value chain of linux and as long as the basic prinicipals are upheld im all for it!

Re:Canonical's code contribution

[Anonymous Coward]

take a look at various start pages of linux distributions. guess where you won't find the word "linux" even mentioned...

Re:Canonical's code contribution

[icebraining]

Debian GNU/Linux is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. It is maintained and updated through the work of many users who (...)

Re:Canonical's code contribution

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is exactly why it works. Do you see Google marketing Android as Linux based? Certainly not anywhere outside of it's dev community.

Linux, believe it or not, has a bit of a scary co-notation with the general public. Sure, it has come a long way from being called "for hackers only", but it's not there yet. Calling it Ubuntu and dropping the Linux reference is a GREAT idea. I would recommend it to anyone starting a new distro.

Cocoa-based-candy may sound great to you, but I'll just have my Chocolate thank you.

Re:Canonical's code contribution

[tomhudson]

http://www.ubuntu.com/ - no mention of linux

http://www.opensuse.com/ : redirects to http://en.opensuse.org/Main_Page : 1st sentence "Project: The openSUSE project is a worldwide effort that promotes the use of Linux everywhere

http://www.redat.com/ iGATE Powers Its Mission-Critical ManageMe Application on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (close call on that one ...)

http://www.mandriva.com/ 1st para : More than 3 million people in the world enjoy our Mandriva Linux platform on their computer.

http://http//fedoraproject.org/: Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software.

http:/// linuxmint.com/ : it's in their url, title, ect: Linux Mint 9 KDE Linux Mint 9 KDE is out!

http://www.debian.org/: Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux.

pclinuxos, puppy linux, etc ...

It's funny how Canonical wants to be seen as the "canonical linux distro", but it's all just marketing fluff and FUGLY color schemes.

Re:Canonical's code contribution

[Beelzebud]

Well if you really want to get anal, why no mention of GNU? Without GNU there would be no Linux.

I just really don't get what the complaining is about. Isn't the whole point of the free software movement to get a nice stable OS built? So what's the problem with Ubuntu? Is it now Freedom with Caveats? If Ubuntu were somehow violating the GPL, that would be one thing, but the complaint seems to be that they're taking advantage of what the GPL was set up to enable... The "debate" sounds more like petty jealousy to me.

Re:Canonical's code contribution

[Anonymous Coward]

...and as long as the basic prinicipals are upheld...

But they aren't and that's the problem: Canonical is pushing proprietary software.

Re:Canonical's code contribution

[tomhudson]

If it weren't gnu, it would be something else. Some ideas are just inevitable.

I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that as this report shows, Ubuntu has basically done jack shit to improve Linux usability.

This report doesn't show that. There are lots of code. Combining all that code to a package that is somewhat nice, well configured and works out of the box is damn important. Even more important is the massive amount of documentatiton that the Ubuntu community has created about pretty much everything. It would take an idiot not to recognize the value of those things. But let's take an example.

I have an extra computer in my house (but no extra monitors, etc.) and I decided to install it as a debian server. There was a slight complication, though: It is a bit noisy so I don't want to keep it in my bedroom and I also don't want to run cables all over the floors so I went to a shop to buy a wireless adapter. They are traditionally PITA on linux side so I went out to google for linux compatible devices first. I found an awesome list created by ubuntu community (didn't find anything comparable from anywhere else) and bought a device that worked out of the box on Ubuntu. I got home and tried to install it on Debian... Which I didn't succeed at. I found a guide, it had a number of broken driver links. Then I found more guides with more links. After an hour or so I was able to aquire the package... But I couldn't get past 'make'. Another hour trying to get past the problem for no avail. (for the record, I'm a sophomore year software engineering student going for bachelor's degree. And at some point I asked my roommate, sophomore going for CS degree in another university, for help). Then I gave up trying to do it that way, decided "Meh. I'll have to at least use stuff from Ubuntu repos anyway...", formatted debian, installed ubuntu and it all worked out of the box. As it always does with Ubuntu.

I haven't had much experience with red hat lately but the work that Canonical is doing is obviously valuable.

Essentially, Ubuntu is claiming that they've brought Linux to the desktop. Except they haven't. Red Hat has done more - 16 times as much, in fact - towards getting Linux on the desktop, but Canonical is taking all the credit for Red Hat's effort.

You may say that "As Red Hat has been around longer and contributed constantly the whole time and done a lot of marketing, etc... Their overall contribution to Linux exceeds Canonical's by a wide margin" and I would completely agree with that. But if you say "Red hat has contributed 16 times as much code == red had has contributes 16 times as much to bringing linux to desktop", you are very, very wrong.

Re:I call bullshit

[icebraining]

My guess: you used stable Debian.

Drivers usually come with the kernel, and Debian trades new drivers and other features for a stable environment. Ubuntu simply ships a more recent kernel, at the expense of less testing.

Another option is simply using Debian Stable with a backported kernel. It's as easy to install as normal Debian, but comes with a more recent & less tested kernel.

Re:I call bullshit

[crush]

1. You're conflating Ubuntu and Canonical.

2. Canonical is a large, private company which has been around since 2004. If we compare the contributions only since 2004 then Red Hat has still contributed more code than Canonical: to EVERY part of the Linux stack. More egregiously if we compare the large, well-funded Canonical to small start ups like Litl, Collabora and Fluendo even then Canonical fails to contribute as much.

We've come a long way since our launch in 2004. We now have over 350 staff in more than 30 countries, and offices in London, Boston, Taipei, Montreal and the Isle of Man.

Everyone puts these Canonical freeloaders to shame.

You would indeed be wrong if you merely said "Red Hat contributes 16 times as much code". That's ONLY what they contribute to GNOME specifically. They develop the kernel, most of the toolchain for compilation, vast parts of the network stack, fonts, ... basically bloody everything AND they do that by adhering to Free Software and SHARING EVERYTHING UPSTREAM where it's easy for any distro to benefit from their work.

Re:I call bullshit

[at_slashdot]

Freeloaders? I think you don't know what free software is all about...

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Drivers does not come with the kernel, they comes in the OS.
Linux kernel is the operating system, calling it just a kernel is totally wrong. Only under 1% of Linux is actual kernel functions. Most are device drivers but big part are other OS parts than kernel functions. Maybe about 10 000-20 000 lines of code are for kernel functions. Example Minix, it has a microkernel what is under 4000 lines of code. There are even smaller versions what can have only few hundred lines. But microkernel is not whole OS like original OS architecture, monolithic kernel.

Re:I call bullshit

[jgrahn]

My guess: you used stable Debian.

Drivers usually come with the kernel, and Debian trades new drivers and other features for a stable environment. Ubuntu simply ships a more recent kernel, at the expense of less testing.

Or, Ubuntu shipped non-free drivers and documented the hardware as supported without mentioning that clearly enough. I *think* Ubuntu does such things. Debian sure doesn't.

Re:I call bullshit

[Pollardito]

he should clarify whether he means freeasinbeerloaders or freeasinfreedomloaders

Re:I call bullshit

[TheLink]

At the end of the day, one _seems_ to work and one completely doesn't.

I wouldn't recommend Debian to "normal" people. Or even Ubuntu.

Ubuntu and the rest have made a lot of progress on "Desktop Linux" but they still have a long way to go. I used to prefer KDE to Gnome, but KDE seem to have lost their way or something, judging from their recent stuff.

Microsoft has lost their way too (the Win 9x/Win2K UI actually is not that badly thought out, then it got worse and worse from XP to Win 7), but they have the advantage of mass preinstallations.

Re:I call bullshit

[siride]

Kernel isn't defined that way. A specific type of kernel, like microkernel, might say that only the most core functions need to be in the actual kernel, but that is only one type of implementation. The Linux kernel is still a kernel, even if it includes more functionality than Minix's kernel.

Re:I call bullshit

[icebraining]

Try installing XP on one of the newer Toshiba Satellites. It doesn't have drivers either. Does it mean it's a bad OS?

I wouldn't recommend to normal people that they install and setup Debian, but I wouldn't recommend them to install Windows either - both can be a pain in the ass. Getting a pre-installed machine is the way to go, imo.

Re:I call bullshit

[Urza9814]

I found an awesome list created by ubuntu community (didn't find anything comparable from anywhere else)

Not sure why you couldn't find it, but Mandriva has had a database of supported hardware since before I started using Linux (which was Mandrake 9.2, in 2003). Having a list of supported hardware certainly isn't a new idea.
http://www.mandriva.com/hardware/

installed ubuntu and it all worked out of the box. As it always does with Ubuntu.

Glad you've had good luck with it. Last couple times I've tried I couldn't even get the installer to boot. And when my brother tried it took 4 days to get his wifi card to work (a card which works out of the box with Mandriva.) Stuck with Mandriva for many years because of that, though I've recently switched to Arch. And while it takes a couple hours to get the system setup initially on Arch, I couldn't be happier. Haven't had a single problem since installing it.

Re:I call bullshit

[Thinboy00]

I think he's ignoring kernel modules and such.

Re:I call bullshit

[Thinboy00]

TFBlogPost says a lot of Canonical contributed apps were rejected by GNOME; i.e. a significant portion of that 16x gap is GNOME rejecting Canonical's stuff. Since IIRC GNOME is GNU software... maybe they don't like Canonical's attitude towards closed-source software or something?

Re:I call bullshit

[TheLink]

Did you even read my last line?

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure I do: it's a magic land where everyone gets free code and no one writes anything.

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

it takes a couple hours

You and I, we have very different definitions of "a couple".

Re:I call bullshit

[Raenex]

Or, Ubuntu shipped non-free drivers and documented the hardware as supported without mentioning that clearly enough. I *think* Ubuntu does such things. Debian sure doesn't.

Actually they do. They only recently stopped including binary firmware blobs from the testing distribution. Now you might be tempted to call one a "driver", and the other "firmware", but they are both binaries loaded at runtime to make the hardware run. Debian has recognized this as a problem for a long time but had decided to distribute the blobs as a matter of practicality.

Re:I call bullshit

[siride]

Kernel modules don't matter. They are just a way of breaking up the loading process. Once a module is loaded, the code it contains is practically indistinguishable from compiled in code. That's why modules can be built-in instead of compiled as modules.

Re:I call bullshit

[MSG]

the work that Canonical is doing is obviously valuable.

What makes that obvious?

I think that one of the foremost points to take away from the census is that there are things which are widely accepted to be true (aka: "obvious") which are not necessarily so.

If you repeat a statement often enough, people will begin to believe it. Their believe doesn't make it true.

Re:I call bullshit

[toadlife]

My guess: you used stable Debian.

He probably did, but in the context of the discussion, it doesn't matter. What matters is that the latest stable Debian release didn't work and the latest stable Ubuntu release did. I had a similar experience recently with Debian. I have an engineering lab which runs Debian. When it came time to replace the computers, Lenny didn't support the network or video drivers on the new Intel Chipset. I was able to get the network driver compiled and working, but the video driver was a different story. The VESA driver would have been fine, but though it worked with several other monitors I tried, with the particular monitor being used in the lab, the screen would not display properly at the native resolution. After wrestling it with it for a couple of days I said fuck it and installed Ubuntu and everything just worked.

I could have eventually figured it out, but that little lab is one of dozens and labs are but a portion of my job responsibilities, so I didn't have the time.

Another option is simply using Debian Stable with a backported kernel [kmuto.jp].

That might have been helpful had I run across that in my searches. I found countless posts by people with the same issue as me but never a mention of that site.

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't recommend Debian to "normal" people.

Depends on what you mean by 'normal'. I'm a 16 year old Aspie who's been using different Linux distros for two years, but the box I'm writing this on is running Debian Squeeze just fine. ;)

Re:I call bullshit

[icebraining]

That might have been helpful had I run across that in my searches. I found countless posts by people with the same issue as me but never a mention of that site.

You should try #debian at Freenode or OFTC (both work). Plenty of users willing to help, including some veterans.

Re:I call bullshit

[ebuck]

Large? According to Canonical's own website, they NOW have 350 staff, and that's spread out over 30 countries. A smallish to medium sized company is more like it, the average amusement park hires more personnel. For comparison, RedHat employs 3200 people.

Don't confuse your love of a product with love of the company.

Re:I call bullshit

[bmullan]

1. You're conflating Ubuntu and Canonical.

2. Canonical is a large, private company which has been around since 2004. If we compare the contributions only since 2004 then Red Hat has still contributed more code than Canonical: to EVERY part of the Linux stack. More egregiously if we compare the large, well-funded Canonical to small start ups like Litl, Collabora and Fluendo even then Canonical fails to contribute as much.

We've come a long way since our launch in 2004. We now have over 350 staff in more than 30 countries, and offices in London, Boston, Taipei, Montreal and the Isle of Man.

Everyone puts these Canonical freeloaders to shame.

You would indeed be wrong if you merely said "Red Hat contributes 16 times as much code". That's ONLY what they contribute to GNOME specifically. They develop the kernel, most of the toolchain for compilation, vast parts of the network stack, fonts, ... basically bloody everything AND they do that by adhering to Free Software and SHARING EVERYTHING UPSTREAM where it's easy for any distro to benefit from their work.

canonical ~330-350 employees, ~$35 Mil revenue
red hat ~ 3,300 employees, ~$1 Bil in revenue
people complaining about the ratio's of gnome contributions need to take a look at relative sizes of the company's they are complaining about. if you have 10-15 times the engineers its probably a good bet you are contributing that much more than someone much smaller.

Lines of code isn't the only thing that counts

[mattbee]

When it comes to bugs and usability problems, Ubuntu run a much sharper bug tracker - it usually has coverage of almost any minor GNOME issue. Between Canonical and their users, It might have taken many man-hours to track down, discuss and identify a small usability bug, which might only result in a fix of a few lines of code. It's not about turning the screw, it's knowing which screw to turn. So counting lines of code as the only contribution is completely unfair to Canonical.

This doesn't just go for GNOME; the best discussion of kernel and firefox bugs usually ends up being hosted on Ubuntu, just because they have fostered the largest community of enthusiastic Linux desktop users.

Re:Lines of code isn't the only thing that counts

[X0563511]

#ubuntu on freenode is just as bad. Though, that's mostly because there are worse than 10 people with problems to every one with an answer. You still get your share of trolls etc just like anywhere else, but the ops usually remove them quickly.

Re:Lines of code isn't the only thing that counts

[Spewns]

None of them would ever consider investigating bugs, talking to people upstream, downloading the code, submitting patches.

They're users. Most simply don't have the know-how to do these things, and it's unreasonable to expect them to, especially in the "downloading code and submitting patches" department. You make it sound like a trivial thing for even hobbyist programmers to do, especially with the bloated, ad hoc codebases they'd probably be dealing with. And if you're hearing from them, they are talking to upstream. Upstream to Ubuntu users is the Ubuntu forums or Canonical.

Re:Lines of code isn't the only thing that counts

[TheLink]

> This is not contributing back to the community.

I think a lot are pointing out which dishes suck. They may not be able to tell you exactly why and how, but if your target is the general public, that's useful info if you know how to sort it out properly.

> All this noise distracts from the real contributors who actually do the work, quietly, productively and without much of a fanfare.

If the bug reports are distracting the workers then it's the fault of the organization.

The bug reports do not have to go straight to the developers. They can go to someone else first whose job is to figure out which are the top problems to be fixed - there are always bugs so you have to prioritize. Maybe someone could also figure out whether the problem is a bug that's best fixed in a module or one that's best fixed by changing the architecture in the future - too often if people are too busy fixing stuff at the tree level, they don't fix stuff at the forest level.

Re:Lines of code isn't the only thing that counts

[brejc8]

The issue is that there are no developers there. There are just users talking authoritatively at other users. You get no inflow of information and the same rumours, bad advice, scaremongering stories are stated again and again.

For example: One person blogs about KMS now working on Intel cards and how plymouth will use this, next person says that nvidia and ati wont be supported by plymouth, the next person blames his system crash on plymouth as that was the thing that was on the screen during the boot, the next person worries how it is impossible to remove plymouth now, the next cries out a conspiracy theory of how the systems are locked-down and freedom is suppressed, the next complains that time is wasted doing this work rather than fixing feature X which he told to a friend once in the pub, yet no one has come running to fix.

None of these things are true and at no point does a developer step in to say "I understand the system and here are the facts". Primarily because there are no developers, just packagers. And though the entire process of spreading fallacies, everyone feels great about themselves thinking they have contributed something. They haven't.

Re:Lines of code isn't the only thing that counts

[bsDaemon]

Really? Because all I've ever seen while browsing Ubuntu forums is someone posting a problem, followed by 12 pages of people going "me too!" and a few "so, does anyone know how to fix this yet?" It's the AOL of linux distributions. And its not like I haven't tried Ubuntu before. The problems that I've run into with it generally require me to step outside of the approved Ubuntu point-and-click way of doing things and edit config files by hand. Nothing is where it should be, and often my manual changes get over-written by GUI config bullshit. It's exasperating to say the least.

The majority of Ubuntu users that I've met in person fall into two camps: people who never should have been using Linux or Unix in the first place, and Rubyists. I don't have particularly charitable feelings towards Ubuntu or Canonical. The fact is, they aren't really contributing much of anything of value to the wider world, and their marketing is a detriment to society. I once had the misfortune of taking an over-flow support call while working at a web hosting company where the customer couldn't figure out how to use FTP to upload his website. Of course, I assumed he was using Windows. In the most heinous fucking southern, hvac-guy accent, he was like, "I don't use windows, I use that linux ubuntu." There used to be minimum standards of competency which were de-facto enforced. Back in the golden days. Before Twitter.

RedHat has been around for a long time, contributed a lot to various projects, and deserves credit. I don't typically have good things to say about any for-profit company, however I'm willing to trust RedHat fairly well. I've used their products in a production environment in the past and used to buy all the box releases they used to sell in stores for my Linux machine I ran along side a FreeBSD machine.

Re:Lines of code isn't the only thing that counts

[Risen888]

This doesn't just go for GNOME; the best discussion of kernel and firefox bugs usually ends up being hosted on Ubuntu, just because they have fostered the largest community of enthusiastic Linux desktop users.

And that's a huge problem, because it tends to stay there. It's awfully hard to make the argument that it's helpful to upstream to explicitly tell your users "Use our bugtracker," and then fail to kick that upstream. Launchpad's an echo chamber.

If you want to get paid..

[onion2k]

If you want to get paid for what you do then charge for it. I don't mean money necessarily. There are lots of ways of getting paid. But charge something.

In this case the reciprocal amount of work people are demanding from Canonical is a form of payment. If you want to claim it's not "fair" that one company is doing more for a project than another you've got to set up the system to stop them, otherwise you have no grounds for your complaint. You can't set up a stall with a big sign saying "Free, please take what you want, no need to give anything back in return" and then moan when someone takes you up on your offer.

Re:If you want to get paid..

[blackest_k]

I wasn't going to post but maybe this is the reason for the tribal comments.
There is no value in measuring contributions by various sections of the linux community commercial or others.

Red hat makes valuable contributions so does Cannonical, so do many other companies other than SCO i think we can agree on that. I have a bias towards ubuntu it works on my systems and i am familiar with it. However i don't think the sun shines out of cannonicals arse , that now belongs to oracle.

but seriously measuring contributions made by other people is divisive and unnecessary. I've contributed in a few area's and just helping newbies is a contribution that most can make. The size of the contribution doesn't matter. Redhat is commercially successful and turns a profit mark shuttleworth pumps money into Linux via ubuntu and the parent seems to say that isn't good enough do more.

really size of contribution is up to the contributer and assigning value to each contribution is just divisive
linux is being used more by more people and there are more people contributing thats all we need to know.

getting partisan and making digs only makes for trouble.

all contributions have some value

Re:If you want to get paid..

[crush]

but seriously measuring contributions made by other people is divisive and unnecessary. I've contributed in a few area's and just helping newbies is a contribution that most can make. The size of the contribution doesn't matter. Redhat is commercially successful and turns a profit mark shuttleworth pumps money into Linux via ubuntu and the parent seems to say that isn't good enough do more.

Measuring contributions is a useful way to see what is an efficient way of generating Free Software vis a vis different business models. It's fairly obvious that Canonical's model is a bust both with regards to generating profit for its owner and producing Free Software that the rest of us can use. When criticized for their lack of useful kernel code in the past Canonical's marketing spin was that they added value back to the wider GNU/Linux community by doing desktop work.

Now we have actual statistics on Canonical's desktop contributions and they're less than impressive.

When Canonical fails all that they will leave behind is a lot of marketing hot air which will provide fodder for Apple and Microsoft and Oracle to claim: Linux Failed On the Desktop.

Check which modules get rejected

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why RedHat's piece of GNOME commits is so big is because they have been rejecting modules developed by competing companies. Novell made a push to get their start menu included in GNOME, it was rejected by the RedHat majority. Same thing with Compiz, a compositing window manager developed by David Reeveman of Novell, also rejected despite it being an almost complete drop in replacement for Metacity which is ancient RedHat technology. He also worked on bringing OpenGL into xorg and had a working prototype for how to do it. Also rejected because RedHat favored a different approach by writing AIGLX. The reason why Novell doesn't have a large stake in GNOME's codebase is certainly not for a lack of trying. There are dozen more modules that have been rejected over the years. What they all have in common is that RedHat employers aren't working on them.

Then check what modules have had no problem getting included: PulseAudio, Clutter, DeviceKit, Cheese, gnome-user-share... All created by RedHat employers. Basically, when it comes to the core of GNOME's infrastructure, RedHat has been very effective in keeping outsiders out.

Re:Check which modules get rejected

[Anonymous Coward]

It looked to me that there was a reason why xgl was removed.

Re:Check which modules get rejected

[PixelSlut]

Clutter was not created by Red Hat employees, it was created by what are now Intel employees. They were previously a small company called OpenedHand and they were bought by Intel.

Re:Check which modules get rejected

[Bazer]

Let's recap what both companies contributed:

• Novell: Compiz, XGL (unmaintaned X server with OpenGL)
• Red Hat: PulseAudio, Clutter, DeviceKit, Cheese, gnome-user-share

Notice something about the scopes of each of those projects?

Same thing with Compiz, a compositing window manager developed by David Reeveman of Novell, also rejected despite it being an almost complete drop in replacement for Metacity which is ancient RedHat technology.

Metacity ancient? What do you make of the whole X server then? Should we replace it too? Don't get me wrong. I don't dismiss Compiz as eye-candy because it's far more than that. It came way to early. It was unusable without proprietary drivers and unstable with. To this day Compiz has problems with stability on anything but maybe Intel boards. The necessary groundwork just isn't there yet.

Re:Check which modules get rejected

[Anonymous Coward]

Compiz unstable? Ubuntu ships Compiz by default and it's just fine.

Re:Check which modules get rejected

[Anonymous Coward]

He also worked on bringing OpenGL into xorg and had a working prototype for how to do it. Also rejected because RedHat favored a different approach by writing AIGLX.

The really sad thing about that is that the overlap between the two is tiny - they rejected all of Xgl just because they could get a very small amount of its functionality some other way.

Re:Check which modules get rejected

[Anonymous Coward]

Novells menu for GNOME is crap! I just used it again on my mothers Netbook and you actually can not use it at all. When ever you want to launch a not-so-often-used application program. It is faster to launch gnome-terminal and start it from there than go "all programs" -list.
The "favorites" is such that you have difficulties to get it ordered as you want. Or to get all wanted favorites there but still keep the most used list big enough, even with 1920x1200 resolution. KickOff is much better what Novell did but they could not manage get it done for GNOME.

And what comes to Compiz-Fusion, it is crap! It is already dying (what some contributors are saying) and it is too complex code to maintain. And I think you did not know that Compiz as wrote behind the doors so no one could contribute and make it better. No, they wanted to have in done closed way.

PulseAudio has got just too bad reputition, mainly because Ubuntu users because Canonical did not configure it propely. I have used PulseAudio almost since it was published in main distributions and it has worker perfectly. Only thing what I can whine is that it has only GTK+ configuration frontends and not Qt for KDE SC.

Clutter is owned by Intel, not by RedHat. And it was developed by other company before Intel bought it. DeviceKit is neither RedHats work, it was just taken in use first by Fedora, then some other distros and after that the Ubuntu. So do not whine about it either.
Cheese is done by one guy (Daniel G.Siegel) and purely for GNOME upstream. So you miss again. Seems you just want to blame RedHat for that Canonical just has not wanted to contribute to the upstream.

And if you have not understanded, RedHat does not control GNOME. GNOME is part of GNU. Unless you want to say that GNU (and so on GNOME) does not control itself, but is controlled by RedHat, then you would be correct.

But please, just stop building wild theories how RedHat is the evil, just like Canonical is calling RedHat as propietary company while it itself is such!

Re:Check which modules get rejected

[drinkypoo]

Notice something about the scopes of each of those projects?

I notice that Clutter is an intel project. I notice that Cheese is crashy and slow. I notice that Xgl died in favor of a solution which still isn't here, and that more of the system was composited when we had it. In fact, I notice that Compiz window effects (since you bring it up) worked probably three times faster/smoother under Xgl than they do under the modern AIGLX desktop.

Metacity ancient? What do you make of the whole X server then? Should we replace it too?

Large parts of it have been replaced already. Xgl provided DRAMATIC performance improvements, I know, because I've actually run it. I was pretty upset when they killed it since I STILL can't get performance that good.

To this day Compiz has problems with stability on anything but maybe Intel boards.

Uh, what? I've recently (say, in the last year) had metacity die just about as much as emerald, which is less stable than the default gtk-window-decorator that looks just like metacity.

I think you're a troll utilizing selective memory to try to support a point.

Re:Check which modules get rejected

[drinkypoo]

PulseAudio has got just too bad reputition, mainly because Ubuntu users because Canonical did not configure it propely.

Pulseaudio adds substantial latency and as such you can't use it with many applications, like for example using your computer as a bluetooth headset/speakerphone. It's a good idea, poorly implemented. Mostly it's too complicated. And in any case it's unnecessary since ALSA has dmix, which has the same latency problem without all the other problems.

I like the idea of network audio, but AFAIK you can access that kind of device over a network share now. So you could get network audio using a much simpler system with the latest Linux kernels. I wish I could remember exactly what I was talking about but I'm too lazy to do the research. Something about permitting character-based access to network files?

Re:Check which modules get rejected

[obi]

As someone who actually used Bluetooth headsets (A2DP, HFP, HSP) both with and without Pulseaudio (through alsa, or through gstreamer plugins, whatever) I can honestly say Pulseaudio provides a superior solution.

As for latency: with BT there's some inherent latency, independent of the software stack. If you mean sync issues, BT (even on A2DP) has no way of reporting back latency. So Bluetooth sucks, not PA.

Re:Check which modules get rejected

[drinkypoo]

As someone who actually used Bluetooth headsets (A2DP, HFP, HSP) both with and without Pulseaudio (through alsa, or through gstreamer plugins, whatever) I can honestly say Pulseaudio provides a superior solution.

Okay, now try passing your reading comprehension test by commenting on what it's like when your computer is the headset for your phone. Using a bluetooth headset as a headset works fine but it's not what I'm talking about, and I made that clear to anyone who paid attention to what I was saying. I guess tripping over a straw man only makes you a schmuck and not an asshole, though.

16 times? Strange metric...

[mangu]

Red Hat has done more - 16 times as much, in fact - towards getting Linux on the desktop

That's assuming each line of code has the same value.

For me the important point is with which system can I get a computer working quicker and with less effort for installation and maintenance. Ubuntu wins.

OK, you may say that this only reflects the superiority of APT over RPM. Comparing Ubuntu with Debian, Ubuntu wins again.
 

Re:16 times? Strange metric...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's assuming each line of code has the same value.

Oh so true... but perhaps not the support you were looking for. Much of Red Hat's work has focused on the critical infrastructure for the desktop -whether that's GTK/PANGO/GLIB, DBUS and the myriad other vital but unsexy stuff they do... compared to what... a few fucking limited apps from Ubuntu contributors and a theme.

Ubuntu is basically a marketing parasite at this point.

Re:16 times? Strange metric...

[MSG]

For me the important point is with which system can I get a computer working quicker and with less effort for installation and maintenance. Ubuntu wins.

Ubuntu wins for you. I suspect this is primarily related to your greater experience with Ubuntu. I, on the other hand, can set up a RHEL system much faster and with less effort for installation and maintenance than I can with Ubuntu. RHEL wins for me. Having done both, I can state objectively that there are fewer steps to get a working RHEL web server (for instance) than there are for Ubuntu.

you may say that this only reflects the superiority of APT over RPM

Well, compare apt to yum since those are more similar tools. Apt is faster, I'll grant you. Yum, on the other hand can install a local package and resolve dependencies from the repositories and it can install a package given the path of a file it provides. Apt cannot do those things, so I believe yum to be the superior tool.

Re:16 times? Strange metric...

[hdparm]

Oh, FFS.

Superiority of APT over RPM? Get a clue. You can compare APT and YUM and how well they manage whatever packages your distro of choice have.

Fedora 13 installs everything I need for the laptop out of the box - wireless driver, mobile modem driver, even bloody compiz works on ATI mobility card without any additional requirements. YUM is rock solid for ages now. The only extra thing needed is rpmfusion repos to get proprietary codecs going.

Why can't people just leave Canonical alone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Canonical have done what was really needed in open source. They have introduced some slick marketing, imposed some order whether the users like it or not, and opened the doors to other technologies which the Linux zealots would have banned. More importantly they have found a way to blend 'free' with 'paid for' software and services with Ubuntu One and the Ubuntu Shop (I mean Ubuntu Software Centre). Now if they could just find a way around the pesky GPL altogether and sign an agreement with Microsoft to port a closed source Microsoft Office, Shuttleworth would be even richer, and we could all go home.

All you Linux fanboys can get stuffed. If you are drawing lines in the sand and refusing to embrace the new ethos you need to get out of the way. You are too stuck in your ways. Now is the time to re-evaluate the whole notion of freedom and ask yourselves, "What has freedom ever done for me". Get out of the rut guys. Come and joint us in paradise.

Re:Why can't people just leave Canonical alone.

[keeboo]

"What has freedom ever done for me"

Uh... Prevented me being locked out, differently from situations like when Commodore died and took Amiga with it, or when IBM decided to drop OS/2?
If you ever invested time to learn and to program for a now-dead OS/API/whatever, you would know how it feels to face a closed door when it dies.

Re:Why can't people just leave Canonical alone.

[gregrah]

Obligatory Chris Crocker reference.

Open source

[nxsty]

Greg DeKoenigsberg, an ex-Red Hat employee wrote a blog post slamming Canonical for the "absolutely egregious" statistic and suggesting that Canonical has been "riding on Red Hat's coattails for years." Tough shit. This is open source, if you don't like others using your work you should develop proprietary software instead.

Re:Open source

[arose]

Not to mention that Red Hat has been riding on volunteer coattails for all of their existence by this logic. Hell, look at Fedora, it's volunteer packaging and testing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

If you want to pick on Canonical for something, pick on something that isn't an integral part of GNU/Linux distros.

Re:Open source

[noidentity]

But all that copying of the same bits, that puts a huge stress on them (especially the 1s). The bits that make up this open-source software could fail at any time, due to everyone using them. Think of the bits!

Re:Open source

[Anonymous Coward]

No you do not understand what Greg is saying. Ex-RH is not angry someone using the code. It is just angry because Canonical is pretending and giving false information to the world that it is the leading desktop developer and it doing all that for its users.

Note, other distributors are not calling that they are the innovators or would give such misunderstanding to live. They just be quiet and that is big difference.

Re:Open source

[MSG]

No one is complaining that Canonical uses Red Hat's work in their product. One developer is merely troubled that Canonical gets more recognition than they deserve, given their meager contributions to the GNU/Linux software ecosystem.

bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, given canonical wanted retarded crap like unmanaged client windows doing their own border widgets (despite the huge advantage pluggable window managers have been to X11 desktops historically), I'm glad they're not contributing too much.

Cathedral versus Bazaar and evince

[Dennis Sheil]

The way this census was done, more weight seems to be given to a more cathedral way of looking at things (What company officially maintains a module? What commits come from e-mail addresses from that company?) then a bazaar way of doing things (Which company is getting good, automated bug reports from users? Which company has a decentralized, web 2.0 way of dealing with those bugs? What company's OS gets patches written for those bugs, often from its own users, or developers using their OS?)

I don't think Ubuntu got a fair shake compared to Red Hat. I usually use Red Hat in my work environments and Ubuntu and/or Debian at home. One of the packages in the bubble I am familiar with is evince. I look at the bug reports for evince for every distribution - Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, whatever. Most of the reports, and most of the good reports, come from Ubuntu. Honestly I think the census is really skewed - to me launchpad is one of the best places to see where regular users are having problems with the Gnome environment. It is where bugs caused by normal (and sometimes abnormal) operations by regular users comes to light the most when using the Gnome operating system, as far as I'm concerned. I always go to Ubuntu's launchpad first, and then check the other distribution's bug pages.

The module in the GNOME diagram I am most familiar with evince. Evince is the default GNOME PDF viewer. Now one problem with faulting the Ubuntu side for not contributing enough code to evince is that evince is fairly lightweight in terms of just itself. Most of the time when evince crashes, or fails to display a page correctly, or has some other error, it is almost never due to evince code, but in the code of libraries evince depends on. Primarily evince depends on the poppler library (a PDF rendering library), and poppler depends on the cairo library (a graphics library). Poppler is used by both GNOME and KDE. If an Ubuntu user complains evince is crashing for them, and a Canonical developer sees this is a poppler problem and sends a patch to poppler, Canonical would not be credited in the census. The way the census was done, this wouldn't count, although it is what Ubuntu does best in improving GNOME. Non-Canonical Ubuntu developers who use Launchpad improve GNOME as well, but this is not counted either in the census.

commits aren't sufficiently granular for comparing

[Artifex]

You can commit on simple edits (like a ui typo change), or on adding a whole new chunk of code.
And, if you're busy, you might make both an edit and the addition in the same commit.

Is someone who makes five typo change commits doing five times the work of someone adding one with a new function?
I seriously doubt it.

Modders attention please!

[openfrog]

I don't have mod points today, unfortunately. After reading every comment on this story, I would certainly mod the parent up! The last paragraph in particular succinctly sums it all.

no kidding.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I'm trying to fix a general linux problem, I will often put Ubuntu in the google search terms list just because it is MUCH more likely that I will find the solution on an Ubuntu forum somewhere, even it the solution needs to be tweaked a bit for my specific case.

RH == OSS Development, Canonical == OSS Marketing

[Dr.Syshalt]

Yes, Canonical contributes much less lines of code. But any time you see someone asking for "the best Linux distro for starters" on any forum, you know what 80% of people suggest. Canonical brings newcomers to Linux, they helped a lot by bringing new users => new potential customers for RH and many others - those who make money from desktop Linux. Even if they do nothing but create media buzz and attract new converts, they already do a lot to the Linux ecosystem. Marketing means a lot - regardless of what beard-necks think about that. But still marketing isn't the only thing Canonical does - as others already mentioned.

Year of the Linux Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we there yet?

Novell at more than 10%? Why?

[blind biker]

Suse Linux's default dextop is (a very nice) KDE. Why the heck to they spend so many resources on Gnome?

CentOS

[cjb658]

One of the articles talks about Red Hat's claim that Ubuntu "has been riding their coattails for years."

I wonder how they feel about CentOS...

What matters is end user convenience

[shutdown -p now]

As a user, I don't care in the slightest who committed more patches, or lines of code.

What I do care about is how easy and convenient it is to use a particular distro. And there Ubuntu offers a lot. Try to play an MP3 file? Fail on Fedora out of the box; with Ubuntu, you get a dialog asking you if it's okay to download the codec - a single click, a brief wait, and it Just Works.

Or take drivers. As soon as it boots, Ubuntu prompts me to let it install proprietary NVidia drivers. A single click, and I have a 3D enabled system which actually works and has performance decent enough for gaming. Fedora? Either join the bug hunt with noveau, or search for a 3rd-party repository providing what you want.

Yeah, yeah, I know, Free Software is supposed to good for your karma, and friends don't let friends use proprietary crap. And Red Hat are your friends, right?..

... does anyone actually care?

Well, I guess some people do, and those people stick to Fedora. Judging by the amount of users it has compared to Ubuntu (and other distros who don't shove "FOSS only" into their users' throats), it's not as popular as some people would like it to be.

The linked blog post by an ex-RedHatter is dripping with venom over how Ubuntu "beats everyone at marketing", but totally misses the point. Ubuntu beats everyone at convenience and "just working" first and foremost; marketing is just icing on that cake. You want to make a principled stand over FOSS? Fine, but then don't complain when users flock elsewhere!

Re:What matters is end user convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

What I do care about is how easy and convenient it is to use a particular distro. And there Ubuntu offers a lot. Try to play an MP3 file? Fail on Fedora out of the box; with Ubuntu, you get a dialog asking you if it's okay to download the codec - a single click, a brief wait, and it Just Works.

The irony is that the code that does that was written by Red Hat, but Ubuntu managed to release their new version a few months ahead of Fedora, so everyone credits them for it.

Re:What matters is end user convenience

[shutdown -p now]

Again you miss the point. Everyone credits Ubuntu for it, because Ubuntu actually uses that code for things that most people need - such as e.g. downloading MP3 codec - which Fedora doesn't even have in its repositories. What good is the code if it's not ever used for the benefit of the user?

More numbers

[OneAhead]

Here's the original presentation of the gnome census. Most of the numbers discussed here come from slide 16 and 18.
http://www.slideshare.net/nearyd/gnome-census

I also don't agree with the claim that only 23.45% of contributions come from volunteers. There is also the 16.94% "unknown". Now, if you're working on Gnome for a company, you usually would want to list your affiliation. If you don't, maybe you're contributing to Gnome on company time without your bosses knowing, but such a situation should (arguably) be counted as "volunteer" work. But I speculate most of these unknowns are simply actual volunteers, who just skipped the question "which company do you work for", and didn't notice there was an option "none" (people usually are in a hurry when they fill in surveys). That would set an upper limit of 23.45%+16.94%=40.39% on the fraction of volunteers, and I feel the actual number is likely to be closer to this upper limit than to the lower limit (23.45%).

Nor does it seem that bad.

[dov_0]

With Canonicals habit of hacking pretty much everything to suit what they are doing with Ubuntu at any one moment, it is probably safer for everyone that most of the development is left in more stable hands. I am not saying that Canonical would necessarily produce buggy code, but much of their code would be Ubuntu specific and not suitable for upstream development.

Commits per employee and per year ?

[Gouyoku]

Red Hat - 70790 commits [1]
Canonical - 4487 commits [1]

Red Hat - 3200 emplyees [2]
Canonical - 350 employees [3]

Red Hat - 1993 (we take GNOME - 1999) [2]
Canonical - 2004 [3]

Red Hat - 2.01 (commits / employee / year)
Canonical - 2.13 (commits / employee / year)

So you tell me - who is giving more to GNOME ?
The correct answer is: we don't know. If we take only one variable (commits), Red Hat is obviously in the lead. If we take two more variables (number of employees and years of contribution), Canonical takes the lead. Is it humanely possible to take into consideration every single variable out there ? I don't think so. So what are we quarrelling about ? Let's commit some code to GNOME instead.

[1] http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2010/07/28/gnome-census/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hat
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME

Summary is wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the chart linked in the summary...

http://www.neary-consulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/gnome_participation.png

70.2% contribute in their spare time and
19.9% contribute in both their spare time and professionally

The summary said only 23% volunteers, it is actually over 90%. If they were referring to the raw volume of code, isn't that number likely a little skewed considering that 20% of the developers both volunteer and get paid meaning their contributions belong in the volunteer category since they'd be (and are still) contributing anyway?

Re:RH == OSS Development, Canonical == OSS Marketi

[Shados]

Exactly.

The success of companies like Microsoft, or more recently, Apple, come from multiple things. Sure, you need the code, but you also need the design, the art work, and the marketing. For the longest time the open source "world" only had the code. In the last few years it got the design and art work (You don't have to go too far back for the days where Linux didn't support any kind of good font engine, and all the themes/icons were rubbish).

And with Ubuntu, they got the marketing (enterprise marketing existed long before with IBM, Redhat, and the others, but they didn't do mass market too good).

And in the world we live, marketing has a LOT more to do with success than actual quality. Obviously we want the quality first and foremost, but without exposure, even contributors will dry out sooner or later.

Me vs. Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

I see many comments about how Canonical has encouraged more users, facilitated better bug reporting, and has subsequently generated more bug reports. However, as a very disappointed user of 10.04, I question the quality of Canonical's efforts.

In my short time using 10.04 I have encountered many issues on both my desktop and laptop that are not present in Windows. For example, sometimes when booting up Ubuntu it cannot enable my USB ports, giving me a "debounce" error message. Many others have reported this on their bugtracker website (or whatever it's called) but moderators always seem to shut down the relevant bug reports for one reason or another.

I've also had problems with the keyboard sometimes not working. This too has been reported, with the reports subsequently been closed without resolution.

Furthermore, sometimes my desktop is ridiculously slow upon boot up, forcing me to do a hard reset. Once again this has been reported on the bug website, and moderators have subsequently closed the bug reports for one reason or another.

Finally, while I can connect to an unsecure wireless network without problems, Ubuntu behaves unpredictably with my secure network, and when I do manage to connect, I'm often kicked off within a minute or two. This too has received reports that have been subsequently culled.

All four of the above bugs are still issues for myself and others.

It seems with all these users Ubuntu has the chance to fix up Linux and make it a viable desktop, but all I see is a squandered opportunity.

All I can say is I really hope Ubuntu is not the best Linux has to offer for the desktop. At the very least I like my keyboard to work.

Ironic ...

[kbahey]

I find it ironic that Redhat are the ones complaining about Ubuntu, while it was Redhat who exited the desktop market years ago, focusing on the server side of things. This void that was created was filled by Ubuntu, and it has become successful. Fedora is not quite the same, since it is bleeding edge, with not stable releases.

Ubuntu's success is well deserved. They fill a much needed part in the Linux arena.

Counting patches from before Canonical existed is inaccurate and biased. And patches are not the only measure. There is packages, polish, community building and marketing.

Re:Ironic ...

[Arimus]

WTF?

RHEL has a workstation and server variant amongst the mirad of options, Redhat still provide alot of support to Fedora's efforts.

Re:Ironic ...

[dag]

Red Hat did not exit the desktop market, it always offered an Enterprise desktop Linux product and heavily invested in desktop development (which is what this article is about as well) and Fedora.

Red Hat also never said there was no future in Linux desktops, it basically said there is no money to be made in a consumer desktop offering at that moment, regardless of the investments they do.

Canonical is the living proof that you cannot survive on a consumer desktop Linux offering, that's why they are trying to leverage Ubuntu's installation base to get into the Enterprise server market, and are looking at different possibilities to sell you services on top of Ubuntu (think cloud).

So the Gnome census report shouldn't come as a surprise, regardless of how outspoken Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu's userbase is. Red Hat is the biggest contributor to Open Source and Linux, and they also have the most to gain from it too.

I am confident Canonical would like to trade places with Red Hat anytime, and until that happens they prefer to pretend they are leading Linux, rather than leading Linux development.

Re:Ironic ...

[gregrah]

Does anyone use RHEL on the desktop? Serious question... not trying to be a jerk here. I tried out an install of CentOS 5 (should be the same thing, if I'm not mistaken) earlier this year and it seemed to be *years* behind Ubuntu in terms of the packages that it supported.

Re:Ironic ...

[gregrah]

Canonical is the living proof that you cannot survive on a consumer desktop Linux offering, that's why they are trying to leverage Ubuntu's installation base to get into the Enterprise server market, and are looking at different possibilities to sell you services on top of Ubuntu (think cloud).

Shouldn't this be "dying proof"? :)

The fact that they are still living seems to contradict your statement. Also - I don't agree that their attempts to build in value-added "cloud" services to Ubuntu signal a move out of the consumer Linux market. Just the opposite, really.

The "Ubuntu One" cloud storage and music download services actually seemed pretty ingenious to me. Unfortunately, they seem to have dropped the ball on the implementation, as there are other companies out there that offer similar services, but with more features/better prices (i.e. Amazon for mp3 downloads and Jungle Disk/Dropbox for cloud storage).

Re:Ironic ...

[Arimus]

We do... but thats more down to customer pressure than personal choice (probably would use Debian by choice with custom kernel).

Re:Ironic ...

[Anonymous Coward]

But I cannot afford to buy RHEL for support.

Fedora distrib has always been unstable for me.

Basically, Red Hat stabbed in the back the desktop people.

Ubuntu picked up the desktop users.

Now, Red Hat is complaining that Ubuntu has their desktop users.

Red Hat does not add anything to GNOME that they did not create themselves. This makes them have an elitist not-invented-here syndrome.

Re:Ironic ...

[Arimus]

As I said, personally I'll use Debian on desktops, UNR on netbooks, Debian on servers. Unless the bloke paying wants something different then if I can't make them see the light I'll take their choice ;)

GNOME census

[drew30319]

Interesting - I thought they only lived in gardens and TV commercials.

Re:RH == OSS Development, Canonical == OSS Marketi

[Fri13]

Problem is not who contributes and who markets. Problem is that Canonical (and ubuntu fans) is saying it is the #1 who listens the users and developes "linux" to new users. Taking care that desktop is developed for enduser, not for computer engineer.

Other ways, Ubuntus fame is build over lie and midbelieve.

Ubuntu is usually a steppinboard for new users. The come in by testing Ubuntu but later switch to other distributions when they notice how the Ubuntu community works and what is the whole picture, not just the ubuntu community.

An integrated distribution is a contribution

[FoolishOwl]

There are almost thirty thousand packages available from Canonical's repositories. Assembling a coherent, working Linux distribution from a selection of available packages is, in itself, a massive work of engineering. Given that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution for desktops, there's a strong case that they've designed the best available distribution for that niche.

If Canonical had contributed no software at all to GNOME, they would still be making a significant contribution to the free software ecosystem.

Re:An integrated distribution is a contribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Assembling a coherent, working Linux distribution from a selection of available packages is, in itself, a massive work of engineering.

Yes, it is. In Canonical's case, one that was done by Debian for them.

Ubuntu is Debian Unstable with a brown user interface. That's it. They've essentially added nothing, other than some Ubuntu branding.

Re:What matters is end user convenience (offtopic)

[jyx]

As a user, I don't care in the slightest who committed more patches, or lines of code.

... does anyone actually care?

Actually, you should care. Just as you should care where and how your cheap shoes were made and what ingredients went into that chicken nugget you ate.

Your only power as a consumer is that of choice, and by being uninformed you cant make a more meaningful choice than 'this one looks pretty and is the cheapest'.

By being even slightly informed consumers *might* stop buying drm enabled music, they *might* by more ecologically sustainable products and *might* start to realise that the reason why they cant get component video from their HDMI sources is purely by the whim of the MPAA and start looking for alternatives.

Caring doesn't mean entirely hanging your way of life to be the perfect zero carbon imprint, 100% sustainable , super politicly correct guiding social light mega person. Caring just means that you having an interest *why* things are instead of blindly taking the path of least resistance.

Slightly on topic, you are correct about Ubuntu's user friendliness, and a lot of software developers (closed AND free) should try and make the end users experience as painless as possible. But remember, it could be argued that Ubuntu could only do this because of all the amazing work that went into Gnome in the first place.

You win

[zogger]

Best post of the thread, best use of stats

Re:What matters is end user convenience (offtopic)

[shutdown -p now]

I am perfectly well informed about what FOSS and its philosophy is, what the implications are, etc. As a programmer, I see some relevance in it, but even then I also see that its applicability is rather narrow. As a user, it really concerns me very little in practice. It's not the only solution to DRM, for example, and even then I do not find all DRM to be worth fighting (over a hundred games in my Steam account and still buying more, for example...).

Childish stuff like this does not help at all, by the way.

This is silly

[jopet]

Even if Canonical would contribute no code at all, they contribute something that has been traditionally painfully missing from Linux: marketing and PR. The number of GNOME *users* contributed by Canonical by far outweighs the lack of missing code lines.

It would be nice if people would think a bit less about ego and a bit more about the overall success of Linux, whatever flavor of Linux it may be.

Ubuntu is just great to get people interested and hooked on Linux.

Not so clear cut

[Sits]

I don't think all your examples are good and I believe there is some mis-attribution in there as well. Let's start with the ones that might support your argument. PulseAudio (Lennart Poettering), DeviceKit (David Zeuthen) and gnome-user-share (Alexander Larsson and Bastien Nocera) were all created by Red Hat employees. I would argue that neither Xorg/X, DeviceKit or PulseAudio are part of GNOME even though it runs on top of them. They are really Linux desktop infrastructure and someone's got to develop that...

Compiz was not developed inside GNOME but parachuted in from outside and sadly stalled. It is close to metacity but it wound up coming with its own set of quirks that exposed new problems in applications.

If you actually look back at the XGL/AIGLX history you will find that it wasn't just Red Hat devs (such as Adam Jackson) who didn't want to adopt it - NVIDIA believed it was the wrong direction as it prevented the hardware exposing certain features. Strangely enough, Ubuntu was probably the first major distro to ship XGL and compiz in a release, much to the chagrin of some in the SUSE community. It is worth noting that KDE didn't adopt compiz as their default window manager either.

Clutter was created by employees of a company called Open Handed which was later bought by Intel. I assume you mentioned this as the GNOME 3 gnome-shell window manager will use this library for compositing purposes.

GNOME Cheese was developed by Daniel G. Siegel when he was a student as part of Google's Summer of Code 2007 project and his mentor was Raphaël Slinckx (who currently appears to work for a company called Whatever SA).

The problem with the parent post is that it pointed to a couple of areas where GNOME has accepted "Red Hat outsiders" in, which weakens its argument. Could the situation be less extreme than it painted if such confusion can occur?

RH Engineers, Canonical Packages

[EXTomar]

It shows that Red Hat is more engineering while Canonical is more packaging and arrangement. Red Hat is working on "lower parts" of the software where they are bound to hit bugs created by themselves or others while Canonical is far more likely to find content and packaging mistakes. People shouldn't imply "value" in lines of contribution either.

I don't think the finding is "shocking" and I don't think users of either distro should be enraged. Canonical can't contribute at this level as readily as Red Hat can which isn't a big deal.

Linux needs thinking, strategy, and users

[h00manist]

Not infighting. Beetter to work. Why don't people want Linux? Why do factory-preinstalled boxes get formatted with pirate windows? What to do about Microsft allowing piracy and profiting from it? What compelling reason could there be to run linux? What can Linux do, and Windows cannot? Aside from the usual price, legality, and viruses, as those aren't cutting it? Rhetoric doesn't really help influence millions of users either.

Linux 1% -- Windows 99%

[h00manist]

Linux has about 1% of os market. Divided among distros. And that 1% argues among themselves over everything.

So what

[nateate]

I don't care as long as it works

Oblig. Trailer Park Boys reference.

[ebbomega]

Wha, you countin' my gnome-sanes? You takin' a gnome-census?