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Canonical Founder Criticizes Free Software Developers Who 'Hate On Whatever's Mainstream' (google.com)
Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth said Saturday that "I came to be disgusted with the hate" on Canonical's display server Mir, saying it "changed my opinion of the free software community." After announcing his company was abandoning Unity for GNOME, Shuttleworth posted a gracious thank-you note to the Unity community Friday on Google Plus. But on Saturday, he added a sharper comment:
"I used to think that it was a privilege to serve people who also loved the idea of service, but now I think many members of the free software community are just deeply anti-social types who love to hate on whatever is mainstream. When Windows was mainstream they hated on it. Rationally, Windows does many things well and deserves respect for those. And when Canonical went mainstream, it became the focus of irrational hatred too. The very same muppets would write about how terrible it was that IOS/Android had no competition and then how terrible it was that Canonical was investing in (free software!) compositing and convergence. Fuck that shit."
The comment begins by saying "The whole Mir hate-fest boggled my mind - it's free software that does something invisible really well. It became a political topic as irrational as climate change or gun control, where being on one side or the other was a sign of tribal allegiance. We have a problem in the community when people choose to hate free software instead of loving that someone cares enough to take their life's work and make it freely available."
The comment begins by saying "The whole Mir hate-fest boggled my mind - it's free software that does something invisible really well. It became a political topic as irrational as climate change or gun control, where being on one side or the other was a sign of tribal allegiance. We have a problem in the community when people choose to hate free software instead of loving that someone cares enough to take their life's work and make it freely available."
Interesting it took him this long to figure out that its common human nature to find a scapegoat and kick it endlessly.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That's not why they hated Mir. Canonical had committed to helping flesh out Wayland, and then suddenly abandoned that effort and developed Mir instead, despite Wayland being much further ahead and doing everything Mir wanted to do, better. Wayland is essentially finished and ready for the masses now, but it could have been at this point *years* ago if Canonical hadn't backpedaled and switch to a worthless piece of trash instead. Also calling it open source when they surround it with licence agreements is rather farcical. They wanted to monetize it hard if Ubuntu phone kicked off, this abandoning of it only happened because they realized they had completely failed that effort.
I don't think he recognizes the issue people had - when Canonical became successful they began acting like they were the 800-lb gorilla in the room and that they could do whatever they wanted and everyone else would fall into line. Classic not invented here syndrome, then expecting others to write & maintain support for Canonical's custom software.
Sending user searches to Amazon doesn't help either - the Linux community is much more privacy minded then the general community using public.
Which one do you mean?
* Pulse Audio?
* Systemd?
* Unity/Gnome 3/KDE 4?
* Windows 8/10?
It's not that people hate something that's mainstream. The problem is that mainstream is often a polished turd which companies or alternatively gifted individuals try to sell you as something which is better and novel, while being in an order of magnitude less usable and having tons of bugs.
What seems to not be able to enter his thick.. opinions, is that Ubuntu diverged sufficiently from what people loved.
The UI seems to be promoted by whoever couldn't get a job with apple.
The controversial systemD was pushed in although Ubuntu isn't red hat nor uses it the same way.
Mir was the 'yeah devs want to refactor to Wayland, but WE can do it better".
On a on a on.
In retrospect, I have no clue how Mr shuttleworth acquired his wealth (nor can be arsed to Google it), but with Ubuntu, some things from that character are reflected in the failed direction: delusion, inability to scope, inability to judge the market userbase, insensitive to the development culture.
Etc etc.
Of course he isn't seeing this as a failure on his end, but instead : entire *communities* are wrong.
Typical psychopath.
I liked ubuntu. I didn't like unity, but only because it was terrible as opposed to any specific political reason.
Mir on the other hand... Mir is not mainstream, it's not even out yet, so you can't lump the hate for Mir in with the hate for Windows. It's different.
The big problem is fragmentation and duplication of work. We all pretty much want the same thing, a free and open desktop operating system we can use day to day. We have this ancient X windowing system that should have been replaced a decade ago that has been standard on pretty much every Linux desktop ever, and instead of everyone working on a solution together, we have, again, different camps creating different solutions.
The problem is this task is so monumental it's taking years to develop, and on top of that it's fragmenting the developer base which not only causes it to take even longer, but support for any of the solutions to be slower.
Why isn't linux on the desktop? Fragmentation. Mir only adds to that problem.
while you were fretting over muh ideology, the joos took over this country. just now they have brought us very close to ww3
fuck you cuck
This is why I'm not a Republican anymore.
"I used to think that it was a privilege to serve people who also loved the idea of service, but now I think many members of the free software community are just deeply anti-social types who love to hate on whatever is mainstream."
Mr. Shuttleworth has exactly identified why it will NEVER be the "Year of the Linux Desktop".
RH has had its detractors for years, way back to the 90s, so no, it's not just Canonical/Unbuntu or Gnome 3 and systemd. The Gnome project itself is also no stranger to criticism. Distro choice has always been a divisive subject for a variety of reasons, mostly boiling down to technology decisions and the commercial/political aspirations of the vendor.
The "you're just a hater" excuse is a fallacy that shuts down discussion. It's used by those who don't want to address the criticisms made.
Summarizing today's news story, wealthy and somewhat benevolent Mark Shuttlesworth doesn't appreciate some of the criticism his projects have received, notwithstanding his mixed generosity. I say mixed because part of the plan was to make money, too (though I think he's donated way more money than he's earned on this Ubuntu thing). His real unhappiness is probably that he feels his generosity is insufficiently appreciated.
I actually agree with Mr Shuttlesworth that much of the criticism was unjustified, but I have two responses: (1) Some of the criticism was merited and (2) What else could they contribute?
Response (1) is about the biggest problem with the big donor model of charity (even if Ubuntu has some non-charitable aspects). Sometimes the big donor makes a mistake. In general the big donors don't just throw in the big money and go away. You can say it's a matter of trust or accountability or whatever, but they stay involved. In the specific case of Ubuntu, the development priorities have sometimes gone a bit astray. Obviously the shell kerfuffles are examples, but the low priority on Japanese language support has actually been the main recommendation barrier in my case. I'd like to encourage people to adopt Ubuntu, but (after using the OS for many years (probably since Dapper Drake in 2006)) I still can't.
Response (2) is really about frustration. At least I don't see what other alternative most of the potential users of Ubuntu have. Some of the top programmers presumably have Mr Shuttlesworth's ear and can influence things, but most of us are on the outside. Way on the outside. I actually think that many of the problems with Ubuntu are ultimately due to programmer-driven decisions. Good programmers want to do fancy things. They want to push the envelope and develop fancy features for fancy hardware. Or maybe it's just my problem that I have other things to do with my time or that I'm too cheap to buy new computers fast enough?
I need to disclaim that I feel some frustration and disappointment with Ubuntu, too. I had hopes that it would become a dominant desktop OS, but it never did. It's not like there weren't major opportunities. For example that Vista fiasco. It's just that Ubuntu never filled any of the big vacuums. However, I mostly didn't care that much, so I never even investigated the details. I just observed the results.
(By the way, I do think there is at least one possible solution. Are you brave enough to ask me about the Charity Share Brokerage for small donors? Hint: Kickstarter and Indiegogo aren't there yet, but maybe that idea could be fixed...)
Anyway, things sometimes turn out for the better, at least when the term is long enough. Turns out the desktop OS doesn't matter that much anymore. Maybe Linux won out after all, but via the backdoor leading to Android smartphones? Still a bit of the big donor problem, but at least the google seems more competent than evil. For now. I recommend Dogfight on the smartphone war, but maybe you have a good book to recommend? (Yeah, I'm sure there are some interesting blogs and webpages, too, but mostly I find them as half-baked as this selfsame noddie.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
It's a double edged sword. Windows is so popular because there is only one current version of Windows and everyone knows it and all Windows applications work on it. If you want to develop for Windows there's no guesswork, and the design decisions you make aren't going to split your potential userbase.
If you want to run a Linux application you have to make sure it'll work on your distro, then hope your distro has a package for it or else shit gets fucked up, then make sure it works with your desktop environment, etc. As a developer you have to make design decisions that will split your userbase. Do you support systemd? What distributions do you target? Do you use GTK? QT? Plasma? GNOME? And which version? All of these will split your potential userbase, and now Canonical wants to add Mir to the mix?
This is why Linux on the Desktop will never reach critical mass. It's about the car interior and we're all busy reinventing hundreds of sets of wheels.
Why does Canonical hate the main stream, and tend to roll their own instead? Wayland, Unity, Upstart ...
That's absolute bullshit.
Windows is where it is because of pure inertia. Only one current version? Please, people are still using XP, and I bet there are still people still on Windows 98 out there. And everyone knows it? Please. jumping from one version of Windows to another is as jarring as jumping from one version of Linux to another; maybe worse. Just behold the absolute dogs dinner they made of the control panel, going from XP to Vista.
Also, pitting GTK against QT is a false choice. BOTH are guaranteed to be packaged for any relevant distro out there. GNOME vs Plasma is only really a choice if you particularly want to marry yourself to a certain desktop environment, which would be unwise.
Please stop with the bullshit, you're not fooling anyone other than yourself.
That is 100% correct. "systemd sucks" is just an alias phrase for "I have no understanding of, or experience with systemd, but I like to pretend I do on Slashdot"
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun