
Mark Shuttleworth says some free software folk are 'deeply anti-social' - rbanffy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/10/mark_shuttleworth_says_some_free_software_contributors_are_deeply_anti_social/
======
jordskott
The problem with Mir, Unity and all the convergence ideas was that they were
poorly communicated.

They didn't really engage with the community and kept all the discussions and
development behind closed doors, releasing dumps of code once in a while once
they reached a milestone that they were satisfied with.

That's what Google does with Android, for example, and that would be okay...
but only if they were able to take on such ambitious plans.

You can't expect the community to welcome you when you blindly follow your
ideas and you can't even produce anything in quality. And when I mean in
quality, I mean something that justifies going your own way, not just another
"GNOME clone" without any added features.

I'm pretty sure they had amazing ideias in mind and that they had reasons on
why they avoided going to Wayland but... is anyone able to point out any
public mailing list, or public blog discussions, where they discuss all of
this? I really tried to follow all Ubuntu/Mir/Unity/Phone/Convergence project
but all the information I found was poor and outdated. Even working Ubuntu
Phone images for the Nexus 5 was hard to find.

~~~
Udo
_> You can't expect the community to welcome you when you blindly follow your
ideas and you can't even produce anything in quality._

So you'd rather destroy a promising program just because you weren't _asked
about your opinion_? Doesn't this effectively mean that we stopped caring
about open source, the only thing that actually matters now is the perception
of broad community support? It doesn't seem to be about users anymore either,
it's all about the approval of gatekeepers now.

It used to be anyone, a guy in a garage, or even a huge company, could make
something, share the source code, and we'd be happy for their contribution.
Now that's apparently shifted to "don't start anything new, just fall in line
with the existing stuff". What company or individual would want to publish
anything new in this kind of environment?

~~~
igk
Nobody is destroying anything. But people can refuse to adopt or support your
project/program

~~~
Udo
_> Nobody is destroying anything. But people can refuse to adopt or support
your project/program_

There is a difference between ignoring a piece of software you don't like and
actively campaigning against it.

~~~
simlevesque
It's not like Mir wasn't campaigning actively against Wayland.

No project exist in a vacuum. I like it that way.

------
boris
Mark & the gang thought they could build something better and so they went for
it. Their ideas may be wrong, but they took a stab. Most of those criticizing
Mir never go beyond mere talk. That's the main difference to me.

~~~
bkor
That's a nice change of history. Canonical was behind Wayland. They secretly
(for 6-9 months) started working on Mir. This while they said they'd do
various amount of work on Wayland. Up to that point they publicly said Wayland
is the next thing.

After 6-9 they revealed what they worked upon and made loads of incorrect
statements about Wayland. Obviously this resulted in pretty harsh response.

Wayland is quite usable in Fedora as well as various other distributions, so
your "never go beyond talk": eh? This while Canonical delayed Wayland by not
announcing they wouldn't help out with Wayland anymore.

~~~
petecox
The Qt-based phone OSes (Sailfish, LuneOS, Tizen, Plasma Mobile) all seem to
have adopted Wayland. So the claim that Wayland was unsuitable for mobile
seems hollow 4 years on.

------
reitanqild
_And when Canonical went mainstream, it became the focus of irrational hatred
too._

Never hated them. I do however think they made themselves a huge disfavour by
abandoning a proven recipe that people loved. I mean even I used Ubuntu
because of its almost perfect Gnome, and I was traditionally a KDE person.

Summarized: they built a userbase of people who loved their flavour of Gnome,
then suddenly swapped that for something completely unproven that _might_ be
better but was very different - and expected us to continue to be fans just
because they were Canonical.

Suddenly it turned out we weren't so much Canonical fans as fans of a polished
free desktop that worked well.

------
Udo
Among all the desktop distros, Ubuntu/Unity came closest to making me switch
away from macOS. While I'm a programmer, my interests in the desktop are that
of a simple user: I want stuff to work without me having to spend time
actively keeping it alive, and I want some amount of polish and UX.

I also firmly believe in order to accomplish something, you sometimes have to
be a pioneer and charge ahead in a direction the majority doesn't deem
worthwhile, even if that means making mistakes and incurring aggressive
dissent. Not everything can advance by committee or mass consensus.

Ubuntu de facto cancelling their desktop program to focus on the cloud sounds
to me like the premature death of something that worked pretty well, at least
for my use cases. I really hope that decision was not entirely based on petty
open source community squabbling. I love Brian Lunduke (he has a pretty good
open source podcast by the way), but I really find it hard to get behind his
long-standing criticisms of Mir and Unity.

Among the arguments against Mir and Unity, I find the one based on
_duplication of effort_ the hardest to swallow. Innovation is an exploratory
process. Sometimes that means many people coming up with many solutions. In
other areas of open source development this doesn't seem to be perceived as a
problem. In fact, it's celebrated as a marker of freedom for giving the user a
lot of choices.

But somehow, Ubuntu lost all of its public support, for no reason I can (as an
outsider) readily identify. If this is symptomatic of the future of open
source, it's a bad precedent.

~~~
Freak_NL
> But somehow, Ubuntu lost all of its public support […]

That seems hyperbolic. Ubuntu is popular and pretty mainstream for a Linux
distribution. That will always attract hate and virulent nay-saying, as well
as valid and constructive criticism.

~~~
Udo
_> That seems hyperbolic._

I disagree. While it's probably impossible to come to an objective consensus
about any matter of public discussion, at least the _vocal_ people all fall
over themselves celebrating the death of Mir and Unity. It also seems to me
the hatred toward these software packages prompted Ubuntu to abandon them in
the first place, and mind you these were integral pieces that set the Ubuntu
desktop apart from every other distro.

So, no, I don't think it's hyperbolic at all to come to this conclusion since
we're talking about losing public support to the point of Canonical outright
canceling two of their most distinguished programs.

~~~
reitanqild
_at least the vocal people all fall over themselves celebrating the death of
Mir and Unity_

I'm close to celebrating the death of Unity but won't because:

1\. the damage is done. Ubuntu and Linux already lost a whole lot of momentum.
We had a really nice desktop. We were selling it everywhere, looking forward
to be able to justify paid support agreements.

2\. Some people actually seems to like Unity and while I really cannot see
myself using it I think it would be offensive toward those if I celebrated
loudly

------
hcal
I assume Canonical wants to have some influence with Gnome and Wayland going
forward. The nature of open source, and just working with groups of people for
that matter, is that you have to build consensus before trying to push
changes, especially big and visible changes.

Why would a volunteer coordinator (or paid contributor at a different company)
even look at a contribution from another team that just called him anti-social
if the code isn't perfectly in line with his goals.

Even if Mark is 100% right, his 'anti-social' shots are not a good way to
build in-roads with the projects Canonical will be relying on.

------
msimpson
Some of the critical points raised against Canonical regarding Mir can be seen
here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(software)#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_\(software\)#Controversy)

This isn't a hate parade, it's the community speaking out against something
they didn't want. Mostly related to licensing.

~~~
JdeBP
_Here is all of the stuff, filtered through Wikipedia 's editorial process
that is intended to eliminate unfounded personal opinion, stuff from
unidentifiable sources, nonsense, and bias. Look, it isn't a hate parade;
therefore there is no hate parade as M. Shuttleworth claimed._ is a rather
flawed argument, note.

~~~
msimpson
> Here is all of the stuff, filtered through Wikipedia's editorial process
> that is intended to eliminate unfounded personal opinion, stuff from
> unidentifiable sources, nonsense, and bias. Look, it isn't a hate parade;
> therefore there is no hate parade as M. Shuttleworth claimed.

Actually, that Wikipedia link is not meant as evidence against Shutterworth's
comments or in defense of my own. It's provided merely as context to those who
are just now hearing about this situation.

No, my comment regarding the lack of a hate parade is supported only by common
sense. A position easily taken once one digs a bit deeper into this subject.
You should click through some of the actual references mentioned in (and
outside of) that Wikipedia article:

Matthew Garrett's comments,
[http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html](http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html)

Bradley Kuhn's comments, [http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/07/07/harmony-
harmful.html](http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/07/07/harmony-harmful.html)

Jonathan Riddell's comments, [https://blogs.kde.org/2013/06/26/kubuntu-wont-
be-switching-m...](https://blogs.kde.org/2013/06/26/kubuntu-wont-be-switching-
mir-or-xmir)

Aaron Seigo's comments,
[https://plus.google.com/+AaronSeigo/posts/76Nd9RSTZWp](https://plus.google.com/+AaronSeigo/posts/76Nd9RSTZWp)

Then, tell me if these opinions or the community comments they generated
actually seem hateful.

In fact, the only substantial hate generated by this debacle was really in
response to Canonical's unfounded swipe at Wayland, which was later retracted,
and Shutterworth branding of opponents as "The Open Source Tea Party". And
even that level of grandstanding only generated a modicum of hate from the
community in comparison to things like systemd or SELinux.

------
ioquatix
The "grab some popcorn" mentality is offensive. It's actually a symptom of
this problem - people aren't taking critical discussion seriously. Everyone
suffers because of this.

~~~
golemotron
Privately finding a public spat amusing does not hurt anyone. It's a very
human response. The problem is thinking that you are above it and looking down
on people who are more in touch with their emotional responses. People who are
not in touch with the unsavory parts of themselves set themselves up for
depression and worse.

~~~
ioquatix
Sure, but this isn't private.

~~~
golemotron
Being unable to even talk about it without someone calling it out drives it
underground with the same bad effects.

------
digitalshankar
When canonical announced Mir, i was excited and thought let's try how this
display server differs to X window system, in case if it didn't work to my
taste, you can always switch back or try other ubuntu derivatives. Why need to
hate it? It's free, you can try it or leave it.

When it comes to Open Source Software, hate is not the option, you use it or
take the Source Code to change according to your needs, but if you are a
common user just change the distro or change your opinion.

This is why you should Love Linux or any Open Source/Free Software :
[https://goo.gl/eP6sy](https://goo.gl/eP6sy)

~~~
cryptarch
Could someone post the unshortened link?

~~~
talideon
Always good to remember for things like this:

    
    
        curl -s --head https://goo.gl/eP6sy | grep '^Location:'

~~~
cryptarch
Thanks, that's a pretty cool trick!

------
jhbadger
He's talking about people complaining that Canonical are developing their own
display server Mir, rather than using standards like Wayland. But people have
a reason to be suspicious when a company doesn't want to play ball with
others. Yes, they might have a great idea that nobody else has thought of, but
rather more likely they have some plan for vendor lock-in.

~~~
mugsie
At the time Mir was started, Wayland was not the standard (and lets be honest,
still isn't - X is still the standard).

"Use the standard" doesn't ring true when there is none - and having multiple
projects do the same thing is not a bad thing - they can learn from each other
and try different approaches.

~~~
bkor
A few years before Mir started Canonical said Wayland would be the next thing.
That was agreed upon across desktop environments, distributions, etc.

------
orschiro
Open source does not depend on financial rewards but emotional ones. Thus, I
can somewhat relate why people become very emotional about software.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Ubuntu has sizable market share in the Linux community. You can look no
further than the Linux games available on Steam/GOG to see that many of them
are offered _specifically_ for Ubuntu, not Linux.

The fact that Canonical was switching to Mir was of great concern,
particularly to gamers, who were worried that AMD or NVIDIA would start
pushing Mir-only graphical/driver patches at the expense of Xorg/Wayland
patches, resulting in gamers being "locked in" to Ubuntu.

------
willtim
Hate is a strong word. People can be very critical at times, myself included,
but this isn't the same thing. People often vent frustrations and justify
their own personal choices by criticising. It might often be a tad anti-social
but I don't believe it is generally "hate". Personally I am sad to see less
competition for the GNOME technology stack.

~~~
wolfgke
Couldn't it also be a very cultural thing:

For example I (German) have to deal with east European mathematicians in my
job (they are actually really nice people). The kind of strictness that they
treat people who present mathematical bullshit (they are typically right in
their mathematical reasoning) is sometimes on the borderline of what is
considered as impolite in Germany (and in the US probably even more).

I also went climbing with former Russians. I just say: What in their culture
is considered as normal language is in Germany already considered as sexist
(and US citizens would be deeply horrified :-) ).

TLDR: What is perfectly acceptable behavior can be deeply different in
cultures.

~~~
pipio21
Agreed, I have to remember myself that the hugging and kissing and close
personal contact that is normal in Spain is considered offensive, sexual
approach in north Europe or USA normally after some awkward situation.

This culture disagreements combines with only text communications in which
people can't see the body language and tone of voice of others.

You add to it that people don't care about what they say on Internet like they
care on reality. Specially after "text only" communication would require
orders of magnitude more effort to express yourself without misunderstandings
and most people only have limited time for it.

As a result you get an ugly thing.

~~~
wolfgke
> You add to it that people don't care about what they say on Internet like
> they care on reality.

My impression about this is different.

My personal hypothesis (which might also be wrong) rather is that the internet
is a mouthpiece for people who have strong opinions about some topic (which
does not imply that they are wrong here) that few people in the "real world"
care about. Since few people in the real world will be interested in this
topic, these people often appear as nice people in the "real world", since
hardly any discussions about the "heated" topic will accidentally happen
there. The same happens if these people discuss about different topics in the
internet. The main difference is in the internet there _are_ enough people
that care about this exotic topic deeply enough to give contra (whether they
have good points or not - at least they have a similar level of
opionatedness). This leads to the impression that these people are toxic, etc.

TLDR: I believe the difference is not about how you say things in internet vs.
real life, but about how you talk about your "opinionated topic" vs. something
different _both in internet and real life_.

------
throw2016
The hatred for Ubuntu, Mir, Unity is increasingly irrational and difficult to
understand.

Unity seems to be one of the more polished Linux desktops and there are many
options, even if one doesn't like Unity or Mir there is zero compulsion to use
them. Surely people investing their own time, effort and money to build free
software and attract users is good thing?

But what then explains the hoarde of angry 'self appointed community
spokespeople' singling out Ubuntu in every online discussion for NIH and
duplication of effort.

By the same logic these community spokespeople should be accusing Flatpak of
duplication of effort and NIH and haranguing Flatpak developers to join hands
with the Snap project which precedes Flatpak. But all quiet on that end. This
is a bit too hypocritical and seems to be more about some Redhat supporters
seeking control than anything sincere.

How many Redhat, Gnome or Freedesktop projects are being targeted for NIH and
duplication of effort the way Ubuntu's projects are.

------
rbanffy
If there is one thing for which Canonical deserves some criticism is its
insularity.

Many things Ubuntu end up being Ubuntu-only, sometimes for historical reasons,
sometimes because a solution solves the problems Canonical has better and
sometimes because things are done and few people know about them. Sometimes
it's because Canonical is seen as an aggressive competitor. Launchpad is
wonderful, but Github won. Bzr is not bad, but Git won. Unity is great for
small screens, but Gnome 3 is an incredibly polished desktop environment and
is clearly the future. Ubuntu phone is interesting, but Android clearly is
unstoppable (and that has been clear for some time now).

It's really hard to compete with a whole industry by yourself.

Their software is good. They do awesome things but far too often they do it by
themselves, without any help.

------
mirimir
Ubuntu was my first distro, and it was a great way to learn. I'm still enough
of a n00b that I mostly use Debian stable. But when I need the latest versions
of packages, I generally go for Ubuntu over Debian testing. However, I use
Ubuntu server, and add my own desktop environment. Unity is just too much of a
resource hog. I really can't afford to give more than 1GB RAM to a VM, because
I use so many VMs.

------
qarioz
They did not want to work with community and community decided not to work
with them. It is simple. Now what Mark do is name calling and anti social.

------
a-smith
I guess Shuttleworth deliberately wants to piss-off the Free Open Source
project developers and users. Seems like a rather twisted, bipolar Trump like
goal which if succeeds would server to Ghost Ubuntu. Perhaps mark Shuttleworth
is having one of those Donald J. Trump 'bad hair' days. That doesn't however
excuse such crass demonetization of a major Ubuntu userbase.

------
db48x
Some non-free software folk are as well. In fact, I've heard that some non-
software people are too!

------
slitaz
There are so many of those that love to hate, can't think which he is
referring to.

~~~
codr4life
Exactly, this has nothing to do with free software. Most people are so messed
up mentally and emotionally these days that they react like injured animals to
any kind of outside stimuli. In the end I'm pretty sure they hate themselves
more than anything. Expressing anger over the obvious injustice in this shit
world is one thing, flaming any one who threatens to rock your boat another.

~~~
jacquesm
There is this joke that there are two kinds of people, those that divide the
world into two kinds and those that don't. Is this some kind of elaborate riff
on that theme?

------
andrewclunn
I blame (in part) the linux popularization approach that turned to drama to
create a more compelling narrative. The now defunked linux action show for
example. Having an opinion is cheap. People who have never contributed a line
of code or donated a cent to a project think that by being super opinionated
about systemd vs upstart or Mir vs wayland, that they can virtue signal how
"l33t" they are. Then they justify their strong opinions with arguments about
"fracturing and redundancy" but never anything technical because they actually
know nothing. Telling those people to GTFO is both cathartic and better for
the FOSS community. Right on Mark!

------
heynowletsgo
That's funny, because Canonical's business model is based on anti-social
behavior.

------
jbmorgado
And Mark is not even a dev in the `systemd` project...

EDIT: Noticed how I'm wasting karma point to be proven right by the ones that
this article is all about: people that 'love to hate'.

~~~
Vinnl
Yeah, I can't imagine that to be a fun job either...

~~~
JdeBP
I believe that jbmorgado is making a more specific comparison than that,
Lennart Poettering having in the past expressed similar sentiments to Mark
Shuttleworth's here.

------
JohnStrange
He's probably just angry that so many people went from Ubuntu to Linux Mint
and his daydreams about becoming a kind of open source Bill Gates didn't
really turn out as planned, even though Ubuntu is doing fine as distro.

He needs to chill out and listen more to the people who do the real work.

~~~
Vinnl
Or he's angry that people were all celebratory for him to _stop_ an investment
that he'd done in good faith to improve things.

