
Ubuntu is not a democracy and nor should it be - r11t
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/03/why-mark-shuttleworth-is-right-ubuntu.html
======
yason
Democracy is a damping utility: it pretty much guarantees that nobody too
horrible will damage the country or organization but it also pretty much
guarantees that nobody really good still can't make appropriate progress
easily. Democracy is kind of the safe, average choice of how to rule a group
of people.

A good dictator would be really effective and could do tremendous amount of
good. The downside is that generally in a dictatorship, the ruler could also
be an evil dictator and cause lots of damage.

In business, the owner is the dictator but luckily, he can only crash his own
company, and people are voluntarily employed by him. Dictating what the
company must do is often called the leader's vision.

If the vision is any good, the company will thrive. If it's bad, it will go
down under.

However, if it's about the damn close button, we can only watch how it goes
since Mr Shuttleworth has the final say and he will go up or down by his
decisions. I don't understand peoples' moaning either: the buttons in Metacity
are _configurable_ and even if they weren't, people are not so stupid that if
they want to use Ubuntu in the first place it would all break down _because
they can't close the damn windows_.

~~~
iskander
>A good dictator would be really effective and could do tremendous amount of
good. The downside is that generally in a dictatorship, the ruler could also
be an evil dictator and cause lots of damage.

I don't think this is quite right, since it assumes the possibility of a
sufficiently good dictator.

~~~
iuguy
I think they have happened over time, just not regularly and as with many
disciplines, the bad and mediocre tend to outweigh the good, but if you
consider Julius Caesar, Alfred the Great, Saladin, Suleyman the Magnificent
and Ataturk, then actually there are a few (perhaps more historically than now
due to the lower prevalence of current opportunities for would-be dictators).

~~~
jerf
We have historical evidence that there can exist a "good" dictator for an
iron-age society. I don't think such a thing can exist for a silicon-age
society; it's too complex to run, and inefficiencies you can ignore in the
iron age make you grotesquely uncompetitive in the silicon age.

That people in the 21st century still think centralizing everything is the
answer to any problem is a testament to the continuing power of the Utopian
Dream to override reason. (This is a parenthetical; I am not saying iuguy is
advocating it.)

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endtime
It's nothing to do with democracy. It's about unjustified stubbornness over a
poor design choice that will making upgrading implausible for a great deal of
users.

~~~
jrockway
A great deal of wankers, rather.

~~~
endtime
Are you serious? You have a problem with any sysadmin who runs Ubuntu for non-
savvy users?

~~~
jrockway
Look, nobody really cares that the window decorations are on the left. I have
used X programs on a mac, and I have never closed the window instead of
picking the "file" menu. This may happen once a year, about as often as a
Windows user hits Alt-F4 instead of Alt-F2.

~~~
suraj
> I have used X programs on a mac, and I have never closed the window instead
> of picking the "file" menu.

Probably because Mac menu bar is on desktop and not within the window.

~~~
jrockway
Not X programs.

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kilian
Buttons left or right, whatever.* What annoys me is that, so far, we have
heard _no reasoning_ as to why the close button is _the third from the left_
instead of the most outer one. It makes no sense other than covering their
asses for Apple repercussions.

*Except, you know, having the menu bar and window control options 5px apart isn't the smartest thing you can do.

~~~
naner
Hah, I didn't know that -- that would be pretty dumb.

I assumed the only reason they tried this was to copy Apple. For right-handed
mousers (most people) having controls and scrollbars on the right appears to
allow easier/faster access. I don't see any benefit in switching.

They never gave any justification for switching sides, AFAICT.

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motters
Are they still harping on about buttons on the left? I admit, from a usability
point of view it's clearly a fail, but the good thing about Linux is that if
you don't like it you can alter it and make a new release. Perhaps they could
call it "RightHandSideBuntu: Linux for human beings who don't want to re-learn
basic aspects of window behavor because of some designer's whim".

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petercooper
They're making a mountain out of a molehill. Someone can just build a package
or a distribution variant (a la Kubuntu or Xubuntu) that overrides what people
perceive to be a problem and, bam, problem solved.

People didn't like the brown theme either, but just _changed their theme once
Ubuntu was installed_. They can do the same with this.

~~~
tree_of_item
Defaults matter. Most people do not want to fuck around with their computer,
they just want it to work right and be sane from the start.

~~~
petercooper
_Most people do not want to fuck around with their computer_

Really? Back in the day (10 years ago) when I was crazy enough to do tech
support for ordinary folks running Windows, it was _rare_ I'd find someone who
hadn't changed all their cursors, their window coloring, and their wallpaper,
all to eye burning, heavily customized detail.

I'd guess the customization and theme changing is even more prevalent on
something like Linux, considering the slightly better informed userbase.

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blasdel
How did I know that this was going to be over the ridiculous button-shuffle on
the window decorators: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1186958>

Ubuntu is the only Linux distro in the position to be able to make bold design
decisions, but unfortunately the people they have making those decisions are
just as mediocre as the rest of the clowns, if not worse.

The few times they've exercised this have been fuckups, like the focus-
stealing cpu-churning auto-update popup, and now this childish theme nonsense.

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ErrantX
Ah meritocracy; nice in theory, in practice it generally falls apart pretty
quickly. (been there, tried it a couple of times)

Anyway; the problem is there is a claimed meritocracy around Ubuntu but it's a
bit of a facade. A friend who is a beta tester (and very active bug poster)
says it's a bit of an old boys crowd in reality. (not that it's necessarily
bad thing; but I hate these sham organisations everyone builds to make it look
prettier)

~~~
sharms
Hardy a good old boys club. I would suggest actual examples rather than a 'my
friend says' vague statement.

As someone with direct Ubuntu development experience, the majority of packages
(ie what they refer to as universe) are generally maintained by community
members with very few ties to each other other than IRC interaction.

It is likely one of the easiest projects to get involved with because not only
is it not a selective club, but they actively run training classes on how
people can get involved.

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jrockway
The free software community benefits from free software, not from people
nitpicking on the mailing list. As the T-shirt says, "Shut the fuck up and
write some code."

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barrkel
Thought experiment: what's the open-source analogue to market pressure that
would force Canonical to reverse course?

The market system isn't a democracy either, except in one sense - money votes.
But when the product is free, and the infrastructure for automatic updates and
upgrades from a single vendor is baked in, how do users express their
preferences?

~~~
mcav
The same way users express disapproval of paid programs: use another product.
(Debian, Fedora, etc.)

------
chanux
_I trust a qualified doctor to prescribe my medicine based on what he knows._

OK, if the author refers to Mr. Shuttleworth or the Ubuntu team, I should
remind him that the actual doctors behind the new changes are Mr. Steve Jobs
and his team. Copying from Apple and doing it right is difficult. We should
give credits to Ubuntu team for doing this right.

The idea of free software in my opinion is not just going with GPL and other
licenses. Free software communities used to have a free culture. That's what
Ubuntu lacks.

But since what Ubuntu actually does is building a business, what's going on is
totally ok. Maybe free culture is the barrier of building a good business with
free software. So if Ubuntu is taking that path...

"OK Ubuntu, Good Luck with that".

~~~
godDLL
The button layout is as far from the Mac layout, as it is from BeOS. It's a
new layout, with unprecedented degree of unfortunate in it. The placement of
the control group, the spacing, the visuals, and the proximity to other
critical controls makes it nearly unusable.

OS X controls are nothing like this.

