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."

Comments

Kill X already

[ArchieBunker]

Three decades of legacy code need to go. Concentrate on making the interface fast for desktop users. If you want network connectivity then make it a module. Also what is the deal with the new X resolution test? It used to be a 1x1 pixel checkerboard of grey/black. Now its a solid black screen. Great way to check if things are readable! Might as well put my monitor in sleep mode for that test. Oh and you can't even ctrl-alt-backspace to kill the server when it does the solid black screen. You have to find which virtual console it is and ctrl-c there. Who the hell thought any of that was a good idea?