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Shuttleworth On Ubuntu Community Drama
In the wake of the Ubuntu Developer Summit, a number of contributors from its community have been speaking out, saying they're uncertain about their role and their future working on Ubuntu. They're concerned about how Canonical is making decisions, and also how (and when) those decisions are being communicated. Now, Mark Shuttleworth has addressed the issue in a blog post. He said,
"The sky is not falling in. Really. Ubuntu is a group of people who get together with common purpose. How we achieve that purpose is up to us, and everyone has a say in what they can and will contribute. Canonical's contribution is massive. It's simply nonsense to say that Canonical gets 'what it wants' more than anybody else. Hell, half the time *I* don't get exactly what I want. It just doesn't work that way: lots of people work hard to the best of their abilities, the result is Ubuntu. The combination of Canonical and community is what makes that amazing. There are lots of pure community distro's. And wow, they are full of politics, spite, frustration, venality and disappointment. Why? Because people are people, and work is hard, and collaboration is even harder. That's nothing to do with Canonical, and everything to do with life. In fact, in most of the pure-community projects I've watched and participated in, the biggest meme is 'if only we had someone that could do the heavy lifting.' Ubuntu has that in Canonical – and the combination of our joint efforts has become the most popular platform for Linux fans. If you've done what you want for Ubuntu, then move on. That's normal – there's no need to poison the well behind you just because you want to try something else. It's also the case that we've shifted gear to leadership rather than integration."
He also had an interesting comment about Ubuntu's target userbase: "I simply have zero interest in the crowd who wants to be different. Leet. 'Linux is supposed to be hard so it's exclusive' is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say."
"I simply have zero interest in the crowd who wants to be different. Leet. 'Linux is supposed to be hard so it's exclusive' is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say."
They should all run plan-9 or Haiku
I can leave my girlfriend at a Gnome 2 machine forever and not get any questions about how anything is supposed to work, because it's functionally very similar to Windows.
Put her in front of a machine running Unity and she's continually asking 'why is this doing this?', 'how do I do this?', 'where did that window go and how can I get it back?', and 'what is this crap anyway?'
So I would say that Canonical has gone out of its way to make Linux hard to use.
This was the core of his rant:
He's side-stepping the issue in that the point is that Canonical wields more power than the average contributor, and thus is in more of an authoritarian relationship.
However, he's hit on a bigger point, which is that in any collaborative software project, someone needs to be the silverback who forces everyone else to focus, or people do only what they want to do and blow off the unfun stuff.
Unfortunately, unfun stuff includes refinements to code to make sure it works well, drivers, documentation, gnarly bug fixes, and the like.
Futurist Traditionalism
It is a false choice to say that pandering to mercantile interests will always go against the FOSS/Server interests. They often can align. Plus, Linux has succeeded despite its desktop and difficulty to install, not because of it. Shuttleworth isn't advocating putting trusted computing in the hands of MS, he just is saying things should be easier on the desktop. And why the hell not?
Z
To an extent, I like the distro, but I've had similar complaints about how they have changed user level features in the past without offering any kind of migration path. Now it looks like the same mentality behind Canonical's management and release style has finally reached developers as well.
Well, it isn't the end of the world. There are plenty of other distros. I wouldn't be surprised to see most of the devs just go back to Debian.
Well it's a good thing that IBM, Red Hat, and Microsoft (you know, the people who write so much of the kernel thee days) have no mercantilist interests, then.
Shut up Hairyfeet, we know it is you hiding behind that bad English.
+1
The unfun stuff is the killer every time. Either you pay somebody to do that work, or it doesn't generally get done. I have used Ubuntu for several years now, and I have never seen the reason for the wrath some people have toward Unity. That said, there are a few glitches and odd functionalities that, were I a programmer, I would contribute fixes for. But I'm not. And the work required to correct these problems is certainly going to be time-consuming and tedious. Therefore, it probably won't get done.
In total, though, I'd still rather work on Ubuntu than Windows or Mac any day. Windows because it seems to be able to slow down the fastest machine in no time flat, and Mac because despite its reliability I don't like it and I can't change the things I don't like. With Ubuntu I (generally) can.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
There is also a golden rule in life -- The one with the most gold makes the rules.
Seriously though, Canonical has more "skin in the game" than any other Ubuntu contributor and they are funding the lion's share of the expenses. You'd think this would be justification enough for them to "wield more power than the average contributor". Unlike other "authoritarian" regimes, you are free to leave and start your own fork without fear of being hunted down and shot. You can always go help Mint. I agree with Shuttleworth, if you don't like the conditions at Ubuntu then go somewhere else and try to be grown up and not poison the well when you leave.
I agree. I think Shuttleworth is just voicing his frustration with the very vocal few who dust up drama whenever they feel slighted like the recent announcement that Ubuntu Developer Summits will be held online and happen more frequently.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Because Unity's license forces contributors to give their copyright over to Canonical, which is the only reason it exists.
Here's a fun exercise: Go to the Ubuntu website and try to find the word Linux anywhere on the front page. It's as if they're trying to hide the fact that they're a distribution of Linux all of a sudden, as if they want to sell themselves as Ubuntu the -platform- (for tablets and phones) rather than Ubuntu the distribution. And there's no room for freedom on a tablet or a phone.
He also had an interesting comment about Ubuntu's target userbase: "I simply have zero interest in the crowd who wants to be different. Leet. 'Linux is supposed to be hard so it's exclusive' is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say."
Too bad that's the opinion of way too many people on too many Linux forums. In fact, that attitude launched Linux. It wasn't about total computer cost or features. It was about "I'm better than you" and they shut out all the other problems Linux had to pretend it's an ideal OS instead of addressing them to make it more user-friendly.
At some point someone has to say that "I can't run this ship by consensus". Now that everyone and their dog have access to the internet it is very visible that whenever something changes, there are people who voice their disagreement with the new thing; and if there's no change, then people will vote with their feet and say that they will choose the most innovative product/company/project.
What is regrettable with all this is that whenever there's news from Ubuntu, there's no shortage of people saying that they moved away to Mint or whatever. If that is the case, why comment Ubuntu stories at all?
There seems to a common denominator in "unfun" stuff as regards coding. It's the bits which rely on libraries, protocols, formats or hardware which haven't been standardized yet. If we all had two image/sound/video formats (lossy and non-lossy), one time format, one type of graphics card and CPU, one file format or data transmission format, one (spoken) language (which we'll all move to eventually given enough centuries), or (horror) one OS or programming language, software would be much more exciting to write, knowing it will stand the test of time.
The tedium is found in writing code multiple times for uncommon formats, CPUs and OSs, increasing code complexity (bugs), and knowing that it will probably be dead one day. Yes, competition and multiple standards is probably a good thing initially, and hardware is certainly changing and improving for a while, but when things finally settle down in a century or two (?), the real productive work will have just started.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
It's not about difficult vs easy when it comes to distributions. Both Fedora and OpenSUSE installs with relative ease these days. But Canonicals insistance of doing everything alone, fragmenting with new upstream projects. There's no rhyme nor reason for Mir, and all it does is cause headaches everywhere. And that's what they've gotten most shit for these past days. Not their ease of use.
-- Linux user #369862
At the end of the day it's his company and if he wants to take Ubuntu in his/their own direction that's up to them.
I used Ubuntu for many years and was really happy with it. I moved on since then and use another distro.
Ubuntu has done a lot of great work for the Linux community and also got a few things wrong (in my humble opinion).
There is no reason to hate them for it. People make the opinions known and it's up to Conanical to take these opinions on board or not.
There is so much choice out there for Linux and if you don't agree with Ubuntu's direction use something else. Ubunutu is open-source so you can roll your own version or use a derivative.
But really all the hate for Ubuntu and Shuttleworth is childish.
Freedom as in speech not beer.
'Linux is supposed to be hard so it's exclusive' is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say.
He's right, you know,
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Because Unity's license forces contributors to give their copyright over to Canonical, which is the only reason it exists.
That's an outright lie, plain and simple. Look up the Canonical Contributor License Agreement and then promptly eat your hat.
What you're saying is a prime example of poisoning the well, or, at least, an irresponsible level of applied ignorance.
I get dreamy thinking about this. It would simply everything. However, I have one thought of caution.
Standardization creates a single point of failure.
Allowing solutions to exist simultaneously, and develop independently, allows there to be no single point of failure and for multiple solutions to be tried at once.
I think there's a reason nature (insert name of deity or deities if you'd prefer; I'm agnosticism agnostic!) chose to go with natural selection. While less efficient on the surface, it works in every situation and eventually, produces a time-tested quality result.
Just food for thought, not a contrarian argument.
Futurist Traditionalism
I definitively agree. Canonical is taking a leadership role and there's nothing wrong with that. It often easy for a few developers to say "hey, let's implement a FOSS version of c#, Java, Windows, SMB, etc." Sure people want these but at the same time, where is our new desktop paradigm, our more efficient file sharing protocol? MIR is an example of getting out of this pattern where we simply FOSS things but actually show some innovation. Obviously there is innovation in the FOSS arena but it need to be more up front.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
He said he wants nothing to do with the crowd who wants to be diffrent
upstart, now unity, now mir.
Ubuntu is at the forefront of non-standard projects that fracture the GNU/Linux community, with software that generally sucks btw.
Mir has yet to be seen but going by upstart and unity, I don't have much hope.
No, I don't want linux to be exlcusive for experts only, I want it to be easy to use, and I want it to use compatible software as everyone else, so what runs on ubuntu runs on red hat, runs on arch, so we have a shared knowledge base.
This was a reality since glibc became ABI stable.
'Linux is supposed to be hard so it's exclusive' is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say.
He's right, you know,
Yes, he is. Only he's NOT, because the whole argument is a straw man. I haven't *ever* heard or read someone in the community say anything remotely similar. Except as an straw man, you know.
> I have used Ubuntu for several years now, and I have never seen the reason for the
> wrath some people have toward Unity.
It's funny - I went from Windows to Ubuntu and was happy until Unity came out (didn't work, everything was different and unintuitive, it wasn't anywhere near configurable enough - it was as if the developers didn't want me to configure it so there was One Experience for everyone). I moved to Mint (apparently I wasn't alone) and tried gnome 2,3, kde, lxfe and some other variations on those letters but found that I still have problems with basic functionality like 'setting the background and expecting it to appear after a reboot' and 'when I move files somewhere where there's not enough space, don't continue to attempt to move then, deleting as you go because then I'll lose all my files` and `why can't I see the mp3 tags in the file explorer like I can in windows` (no, I don't want to have to use another app to do this, pasting in the path as I move between folders because it's inefficient, and no, I don't want to use the command line to move 12 out of 88 files from a to b.
I take issue with Shuttleworths' "keep up with Android etc" statement because Ubuntu - Unity or other - is nowhere like as intuitive as Android. Perhaps it's just not possible for a desktop OS to be compared in such a way, as I don't develop on my phone, though.
And that's why he keeps breaking long-established UI convention and keeps reinventing the wheel in any shape but round?
"Wanting to be different" is what is destroying Ubuntu.
He try to frame things in a binary fashion. Either you want to have easy stuff on the desktop and then you should not criticize him, or if you are against him, then are against having stuff for everybody. That's just a rhetorical tactic.
In practice, the issue is not that Ubuntu make things easy, because that's a good things to do, it is that Canonical is not respecting the community and do not discuss, because they think time to market ( or cadence, as they explain ) is more important. That's ok to believe that, but you have to be clear. removal of UDS 3 months before without discussing first, lack of respect for those that have bought plan ticket, and took care of accomodation. Not caring about community rules ( ie pushing changes after freeze ), that's the same, not caring about respecting rules for community. Using the Ubuntu name becuase they own the trademark. Not respecting the rules that community should follow.
Of course, Mark never say he is treating people unequally. Or never even try to defend that, he prefer to attack stawman, like the minority of people who think "ubuntu should be kept for elite". I never seen people like this, at most, I have seen people that complain we removed what they used, which is not exactly the same. So yeah, infuriating opponents by using lame tactics is the way he react to that. He did like this for the Amazon issue, he did that for Unity, etc.
The only thing I can say is that he is being too emotional about the project, thus making everybody realize this is *his* pet project, not the one of everybody.
He's side-stepping the issue in that the point is that Canonical wields more power than the average contributor, and thus is in more of an authoritarian relationship.
Well duh, are you also going to complain that Red Hat calls most the shots for Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Unless things have changed radically while I wasn't paying attention, Ubuntu is still very much Canonical's product. Working with the community and being run by the community are two entirely different things and Canonical clearly isn't planning to let someone else tell them what to do. This is more of a wagon train, if you want to join up with Canonical because you're going in the same direction you can, but they still set the destination and if you don't like it, well maybe you shouldn't be in it instead of complaining that this not where you'd like to go. There's not really a shortage of other distros to work with if their goals are more similar to your own, is it?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
'Linux is supposed to be hard so it's exclusive' is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say.
He's right, you know,
Yes, he is. Only he's NOT, because the whole argument is a straw man. I haven't *ever* heard or read someone in the community say anything remotely similar. Except as an straw man, you know.
No, of course nobody says it. They DO, however, imply it heavily, and that's what's being heard. Every time a user interface improvement gets shot down in discussion because it's "not important" or "not worth our time testing", every time documentation gets put off because it's boring, every time a new user is treated condescendingly because they couldn't decipher poorly-written incomplete documentation (or are told to read source code), every Debian user (it's always the Debian users) grumbling over someone writing a GUI to something the for which the neckbeards have only had a CLI for years... THAT'S when it's being said. Not out loud or verbatim, mind you, but it's definitely being said.
I was reading that as a shot to everyone who hates Unity.
You know, Everyone.
My Grandmother's hard drive died a few years ago and ... I got a cheap 1TB drive to replace it (nothing cheaper available really at the time) and of course the XP restore disk decided she was a filthy pirate and that was that.
After installing Debian and KDE for her, my support requests have become nil, except when any of my younger cousins visit and why does this flash game not work... because Adobe hates your freedom children, that's why. But my Grandmother just readers her email and plays KPatience and it Just Works (tm).
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
It's more than a rhetorical tactic. It's an intellectual fail that was inherited from the GNOME project. The fail goes like this: "We must have a good default UI. Instead of giving advanced users the ability to tweak that interface via an 'Advanced' button, let us just take away their ability to tweak. Because noobs are so noobish they will click on Advanced, screw things up, and then complain to us."
False and Wrong, idiots. And a big fail. There is plenty of software (especially a lot of Apple software, which I hear is quite popular), with preference dialogs that have "Advanced..." buttons, and guess what, noone on the forums is complaining of stuff that was misconfigured. (They are complaining of actual Apple fails, but that is another story).
That one epic fail---that one decision that you can't have both a simple UI, and a button somewhere in the preferences that caters to your advanced users, is the root of all the backlash against GNOME and Ubuntu. Your hubris is costing you dearly.
Put an effing advanced button on all your preferences. And no, gconf-editor or dconf-editor or any of that garbage doesn't cut it. It needs to be COMPREHENSIBLE to be useful.
I'm sad to agree with you.
Mark calls anybody who disagrees with his vision (which was never entirely presented to the public, but is instead rolled out in "surprises" like Ubuntu phone and then tablet) a "whiner." Anyone who criticizes a decision is being "selfish" and "childish." (These are all words he uses in interviews, blogs and bug comments on Launchpad.) But you are very right that he is setting up a straw man. Sure, there are a few childish whiners, but a large group of people criticizing the directions of Ubuntu are people heavily invested in free software, and they have an interest in seeing Ubuntu succeed. These critiques are not "selfish," they are all about trying to make Ubuntu succeed.
But Mark avoids any kind of discussion by pretending that he's dealing with "dumb" people.
Mark, it's not a black-and-white world.
Linux was always a system that required system-level tweaking in order to get and keep a system up and running. Defaults weren't particularly sensible for most use cases, drivers and components were unstable and needed to be replaced/reconfigured/updated/patched in order to achieve a stable, functioning work environment, and so on, and some things weren't "done yet"—drivers still under development years after hardware releases, and so on, with users waiting for them and needing to install/make use of them as soon as they were released.
That's just the nature of the beast when you're talking about a community-driven system with myriad code inputs that bases bunches of code on reverse-engineering.
But so long as Linux was reasonably transparent, anyone that valued free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech software could make the cost-benefit calculation that the amount of extra work and patience required to get and keep a system up and running was justified by the benefits involved.
Already by 2009, however, I felt as though the costs were growing while the benefits were the same as they had always been. An accelerating decrease in the transparency and modularity of desktop Linux distributions led the kinds of tweaking necessary to get and keep a linux system up and running to take longer and longer for me, and the continuous rush of new code and new subsystems that significantly different from the UNIX classics meant a corresponding increase in the need to continue to study and learn how these worked.
But my job wasn't and has never been Linux development, so this extra learning and work didn't contribute to my bottom line. It was just an increasing quantity of valuable time and energy being siphoned away from it, in fact.
There is still a market for a stable, easy-to-use, transparent Linux system with a smooth learning curve from easy-to-use/easy-to-learn through master-tasks/hard-to-learn, one that can open all of the documents, media, and network streams that mass market users need to be able to open and that is also free and open in all senses.
The problem isn't that Canonical is leading, it's the content of the leadership—both in terms of social/political issues, and in terms of the technical result, that aren't encouraging. Maybe one day someone will take up the mantle and finally deliver an easy-to-use, modular, transparent and powerful Linux system that's stable, has sensible defaults, and is both free and open. But to date nobody's come near the target, which is kind of a shame, because everyone's been able to see it for a decade, and it's often seemed as though "just a little bit of leadership" would get Linux there.
But I don't think Canonical is it; they're out to fulfill other goals/purposes, leaving that opportunity to continue to be open.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
http://xkcd.com/1172/
They used to say it, but the last time I heard it was about 10 - 15 years ago. I think everyone is on the same page now in wanting everyone to use it and stop giving money to microsoft.
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