
Martin Gräßlin, KDE: "Good Bye, Ubuntu" - Tsiolkovsky
https://plus.google.com/115606635748721265446/posts/KAPGX3pHR2H
======
onli
Martin refers to
[http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295),
I think. He wrote about it in [http://blog.martin-
graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about...](http://blog.martin-
graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about-the-open-source-tea-party/). It is
about the Mir-Support of KWin/KDE (Martin is the current KWin developer) -
while KDE doesn't want to support Mir right now, and says it is about
technical reasons, Shuttleworth suggested it is a political thing, which
Martin didn't like at all. Seems like after his post there were some not so
nice reactions. Though the comments on his blog seem to be nice enough, at
first glance.

~~~
tinco
I think the short of it is that Mark Shuttleworth, leader of Ubuntu, wrote an
article in which he _ad hominem_ attacks criticizers of the Mir project.

The weirdest part of this attack is that he specifically mentions certain
toolkits as 'competitors' who do not support Mir but do support Windows.

When superficially reading this someone who has followed recent events might
think this is about Intel, who has recently refused a patch to their graphics
card drivers and are rather big in their opposition of Mir.

But when reading more carefully, it does not really make sense to call Intel a
competitor of Ubuntu in any sense. And the Intel linux graphics driver project
obviously does not really support Windows.

The only project that comes to mind that does fit these criteria is KWin. Why
would Mark single out KWin? I don't know, but obviously Martin is rather upset
about it.

I get the feeling that maybe Mark just sort of jumbled some characteristics of
Mir opponents together, and the jumble accidentally fit KWin perfectly.

Whether it was intentional or not, Mark should really apologize for causing
Martin to feel this way.

~~~
onli
I don't know. I am not sure what to think about that situation.

The attacks were not really that ad hominem. While I see Martins point with
the technical reasons and why that annoys him if political reasoning gets
accused, his technical reasons are more grounded on policy, and the step from
(technically founded) policy to politics is not that far, especially if you
are someone who is convinced that your new solutions for something is great
and want to see it adopted, which could be Shuttleworths position. And
reactions like Intels sabotage is probably not something that is easy to
accept with a smile.

And I don't think that you have to apologize for the effect of your actions,
but for your mistakes. So it's not necessarily about how Martin feels, but
about what Mark said - if that was indeed wrong, for every aspect of wrong. I
didn't like his language comment, that was harsh and targeted against foreign
speakers.

Also, there were always clashes between Ubuntu/Canonical and Kubuntu/KDE. I
don't see behind the curtains, I have no overview who behaves how when they
interact directly. But the language barrier and the cultural differences
(isn't KDE still a bit german influenced?), and the question who holds the
power, makes the situation probably prone to issues like these.

Finally, I don't think it is possible to judge about the technical aspect of
the whole discussion without being familiar with the code of those projects,
so it's hard to take sides based on that.

I should probably add: I was a team member ubuntuusers.de, the german ubuntu
support forum Martin mentions in his post, and remember him a bit from then.
This leads to a bit of sympathy, but that was years ago and details are gone,
and I parted on bad terms with that team (I hope that expression fits here).
So I am always not sure in which direction my history with the Ubuntu
community influences my judgement of such situations. Grain of Salt and stuff.

------
cs702
Regardless of what the people involved say or write publicly, this conflict
and others like it are really about _power_.

With several dozen million Ubuntu desktop users worldwide[1], Canonical has
become the gravitational center of the FLOSS desktop and a promising platform
for other form factors. No other FLOSS desktop comes even remotely close in
terms of mass adoption.

As a consequence, many other FLOSS projects that historically have perceived
themselves as more important "upstream projects" to the Ubuntu desktop have
now become, effectively, _contributing projects_ to Ubuntu. It is now _they_
who depend on Canonical to reach and interact with the vast majority of FLOSS
desktop users.

For the individuals who identify themselves with those other projects, this
tectonic shift in power has not been enjoyable. More and more of them are
gradually realizing that if they want to continue working with Canonical, it
will have to be on Canonical's terms.

\--

[1] There were over 25 million Ubuntu users at last count:
[http://blog.canonical.com/2013/10/01/ubuntu-pre-installed-
an...](http://blog.canonical.com/2013/10/01/ubuntu-pre-installed-and-in-
retail-worldwide/)

~~~
prg318
How does KDE depend on Ubuntu? It's not like KDE will cease to exist if KDE is
not included in Ubuntu. And besides, Canonical is more than welcome manage
their patches for KWin (or fork KWin) if they really want it to be included in
their distribution with their own unique Windowing stack (Mir).

I think the problem here is the attitude coming from Mark Shuttleworth which
is a terrible example for the rest of the Ubuntu community. Regardless of what
Shuttleworth believes, KDE is a own standalone open source project and does
not owe anything to Canonical/Ubuntu.

~~~
wmf
_It 's not like KDE will cease to exist if KDE is not included in Ubuntu._

I think a fewer users -> fewer contributors -> slower feature velocity ->
fewer users death spiral is possible.

~~~
avenger123
KDE has been around a lot longer than Ubuntu and will continue to exist for a
lot longer. You mention the word "spiral" but I would say KDE has a lot more
legs than you give it credit for.

------
jballanc
From the article:

> I cannot remember that I have ever been insulted in public, in fact I'm not
> used to getting insulted at all. And if people normally are able to say
> sorry. I and many others asked Mark to withdraw his comment and post an
> apology instead.

Ok, see here's the problem. The developer community, and especially the FOSS
portion of the developer community, love to tout the fact that the community
is a "meritocracy". But what does that mean? Certainly, insulting individuals
(as opposed to their work product) is not in the spirit of a meritocracy.

...but neither is asking for an apology.

Ubuntu/Canonical/Shuttleworth have made a technical decision. If the FOSS
community is a meritocracy, the fate of their products will be determined by
the merit of those decisions. That they also spilled so many vitriolic words
in the direction of the "competition" should matter not at all.

 _If_ the FOSS community is a meritocracy, then the appropriate reaction would
be to continue making the best decisions possible, producing the best products
possible, and ignoring anything anyone says that does not speak to the
_merits_ of those decisions or products.

... _if_ this is a meritocracy.

Perhaps it's high time we drop the charade of "meritocracy" and admit that
software projects, FOSS or otherwise, are run by humans with human emotions
and human reactions, and that for better or worse, the majority of the
developer community makes decisions based more on emotion than on a
dispassionate evaluation of a project's merits.

~~~
unfamiliar
There's no reason it can't be a meritocracy run by humans with human emotions.

~~~
jballanc
That would be true if the vast majority of people could have their emotional
reactions but still make decisions based on pure merit.

How many people do you know like that? Do you think this describes the
majority of the people in the FOSS world?

------
rburhum
What a lot of people (surprisingly) miss is that Open Source in general has
several distinct camps:

\- the ethically politically motivated: there are many sides of the spectrum
here. Copyleft GNU advocates are a good example. Writing GPLv3/v2 is an issue
of _freedom_ and the code the write _is a political statement_

\- the open source as a business model types: another category with different
sides of the spectrum. Companies that dual-license as a restriction mechanism
is another example. One license model allows anyone to use it with a GPLv3
license, while the author company really expects to make money of the
consuming companies that do not want (or cannot) use that license. The
consuming company has to buy another "commercial" license that does not
require them to GPL anything.

\- the I-just-want-to-build-cool-stuff camp: I found it on GitHub, so I just
fork and use it. Often, they don't really understand licensing restrictions
(or care). It is about hacking.

\- the I-want-this camp: They may be seriously fed up with a particular piece
of software. So much, that they are starting a new Open Source software and
putting a lot of intellectual (and emotional) effort to build something they
envision. Criticisms to the project are direct criticisms to the person. After
all, the motivation for creating the project was personal.

\- etc

The point of this, is that it is easy to forget that the motivation for using
and creating Open Source for all these camps is _drastically_ different. It is
easy to get political, be attacked by zealots, get personal, or emotionally
offensive.

------
spindritf
> I had to learn that it is no longer possible to criticize Ubuntu/Canonical
> for their technical decisions and to disagree with them. There are many
> users who seem to think that Ubuntu is a religion and Canonical without
> fail. If you criticize technical decision you are a heretic and the holy
> inquisition is coming after you to burn you. Ubuntu has lost it's meaning.
> There is no human kindness in this community any more.

People criticise Ubuntu and Canonical all the time. There are countless posts
and comments about the Amazon lens, and many on their decision to go with Mir
over Wayland.

This is ridiculously hyperbolic.

~~~
lambda
Of course it is possible to criticize Ubuntu or Canonical.

What he means is that it's impossible for a prominent developer to criticize
their technical decisions without facing a ton of hateful backlash from Ubuntu
fans and Mark Shuttleworth himself. Which he knows, from experience, because
he did just that, criticized the design of Mir and said that he wouldn't
support it, and he got exactly that backlash.

If Mark Shuttleworth actually followed the Ubuntu code of conduct
[http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-
ubuntu/conduct](http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct), we would
not have gotten here:

    
    
      Be respectful
    
      Disagreement is no excuse for poor manners. We work 
      together to resolve conflict, assume good intentions and 
      do our best to act in an empathic fashion. We don't allow 
      frustration to turn into a personal attack. A community 
      where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a 
      productive one.
    

Calling people "the Open Source Tea Party", "purely political", "outraged
individuals" who have "NIH'd just about every important piece of the stack" is
pretty much in pure opposition to the Ubuntu code of conduct; but since Mark
does this, other people feel like this kind of behavior is acceptable and pile
on the attack.

~~~
pachydermic
I thought that was so childish and crass of him. I _really_ dislike the term
"Open Source Tea Party". It's just so infuriating on so many levels.

First of all, it's a lazy insult - it's just applying a label (also known as
name calling) to put people down without any context. It implies that these
people are irrational, inflexible and idealistic, but with a bad connotation.
He could have argued that those things are true in a more diplomatic way, and
more importantly, by using evidence other than just claiming that mir is
"important" or "a huge leap forward for gaming performance...". Instead, he
just labels the people who happen to disagree with him as the tea party.
Great.

Secondly, I think it's fair to be concerned about what's going on with mir.
Maybe he's telling the truth that they just want the best solution... I think
everyone, whether you want Wayland or not, would like to move away from X. So
maybe mir is the right way to go. However, they failed to make the case for
this in a typical open source way. Why not improve Wayland instead of going
off and doing your own thing? If the direction of Wayland is awful or wrong,
why not point that out? And instead of just claiming that's the case, why not
try to use evidence to _prove_ that it's the case? I have been following this
closely, but have no idea what the advantages of the two proposed systems is
better... but it certainly seems that almost everyone other than Canonical is
rooting for and working on Wayland, which isn't really a good sign...

It's _very_ easy to be skeptical because of all the good will they sacrificed
by sticking Amazon adds in my god-damned desktop. Honestly, that seems like
such a shameless land-grab for clueless users' personal data which really
damages their privacy. It wouldn't even have been an issue if it was simply
opt in. So, because they made that poor decision, people are skeptical,
critical, maybe even a bit irrational. But that shouldn't be surprising. And
even if you're being personally attacked yourself, it doesn't make it right to
attack other people - many of whom aren't trying to make their contributions a
business and are doing their work with pure intentions - unlike Canonical and
Mark who clearly have a business angle in all this (which, in and of itself,
is totally fine).

Sorry for the rant, guys. I mean, do people really think "open source tea
party" is at all fair?

~~~
MrZongle2
"Sorry for the rant, guys. I mean, do people really think "open source tea
party" is at all fair?"

No. If nothing else, it is an insult to the _original_ (Boston) Tea Party. One
might remember that those individuals were protesting irrational decisions
made by a king who was far isolated from said subjects.

~~~
protomyth
The King had a very rational reason for wanting those taxes. It went quite a
bit deeper on the colonial side since they had no say in the matter and
expected all the rights of a British citizen.

The implementation of those taxes by using troops and "general warrants" was a
problem. Sadly, the formation of thought on that is once again back with us
and not imposed by a ruler across the ocean.

As to the modern Tea Party, I guess it depends who you talk to on if they
think its an insult.

------
davexunit
Canonical and the Ubuntu legion have alienated the rest of the FOSS community.
It's a shame to see the distro that introduced many of us to GNU/Linux fall so
far. Martin has made the right move for his personal sanity.

~~~
saosebastiao
Came to say this. As a poor Supply Chain student with a sluggish windows
desktop, I installed Ubuntu in my desperation to finish a paper I was writing.
It introduced me to the world of Linux, Free Software, and programming in
general (starting with R in my first job as a supply chain analyst).

I just installed Arch. It pains me to say it, but I can't put up with Ubuntu's
"My way or the highway" antics any more. It is a shame.

------
shmerl
Unfortunately Mark Shuttleworth didn't stick with a proper decision not to
create a rift:
[http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551)

 _> We considered and spoke with several proprietary options, on the basis
that they might be persuaded to open source their work for a new push, and we
evaluated the cost of building a new display manager, informed by the lessons
learned in Wayland. We came to the conclusion that any such effort would only
create a hard split in the world which wasn’t worth the cost of having done
it. There are issues with Wayland, but they seem to be solvable, we’d rather
be part of solving them than chasing a better alternative. So Wayland it is._

I still don't understand what made him change his mind completely and
disregard all the problems, which the rift created by Mir would cause.

Bothering others to support Mir would be a common occurrence now and a direct
consequence of this completely unnecessary "hard split". And it's unacceptable
to bug people constantly when they say they aren't interested in that support.

~~~
general_failure
And where have you seen proof of constant bugging? Can you point me to some
public discussion?

~~~
shmerl
You can ask the OP who complained about it in the first place.

------
mariuolo
I'm very sad to see this, but given the turn Ubuntu has taken, I'm not very
surprised.

Since Mr. Shuttleworth apparently decided he doesn't need the community,
perhaps they should part ways amicably while they can.

~~~
ta_koudeeu
what turn are you talking about ? Looking back it seems to me that ubuntu is
going in a straight line from the beginning.

~~~
mariuolo
Unity is not portable. Mir isn't either. Upstart perhaps, but it's different
from what the majority of other distros use.

Also Canonical devs were suggested to fork the code without caring too much
for a future remerging.

------
pessimizer
While I very much dislike the direction of Ubuntu, and am irritated by the
paranoid management style of Shuttleworth - this seems a very emotional
response to a very vague, very mild criticism.

Of course, nobody needs an excuse to stop working for Ubuntu for free, so if
it bothers him so much this is the best decision.

~~~
general_failure
What's paranoid about his management style?

------
korethr
I've not followed any of the goings on in the Ubuntu community for a while.
Reading this, I get the feeling that I missed something. Did Mark Shuttleworth
chew out someone in a way that makes Linus look gentle and nice, or something?

~~~
corbet
I believe he must be referring to this:
[http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295)

~~~
josteink
Nice move by Mark to accuse _others_ of full NIH (and "open source tea-
partying" no less), when they announced and started working on Mir long after
Wayland was already gaining traction.

Ubuntu does lots of things right (being overly decisive being one of them),
but this whole Mir-affair just strikes me as plain absurd.

------
denysonique
He once even accused me of 'attacking' him.

> If I as a developer feel personally attacked (and I did that) the chances
> that I with the maintainer hat on will revert my patch goes down and not up

My 'attacking' him comment:
[https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c17](https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c17)

His comment accusing me of attacking him:
[https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c20](https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c20)

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
Wow!

I had similar experience proposing patches and people feeling offended because
I criticized their "sacred" selected options. People identify with their work,
so if you criticize their work, they fell criticized.

"Trust me on this one, I am the one right because it is me and I have so much
experience than anybody else..."

It seems at the end of the day FOSS is not different than other organizations
in the power fights area.

------
mVChr
Am I the only one here who thinks Martin (and others) are being way too
sensitive?

Here is Mark's comment that (I believe) Martin is so upset about:

> Mir is really important work. When lots of competitors attack a project on
> purely political grounds, you have to wonder what THEIR agenda is. At least
> we know now who belongs to the Open Source Tea Party ;)

Really? This is what the uproar is about?

~~~
adrianlmm
No, he is being to dramatic, I think he wants attention.

------
angryasian
I've google wayland and mir but still does anyone with a little more insight
know was to why technically one is better than the other ?

~~~
dkuntz2
I don't know the specifics, but most of the backlash against Mir is political
(and rightly deserved). Canonical had originally stated they were going to
support wayland, like most other distros, but were suddenly overcome with a
huge case of NIH and decided to make their own. While in the early stages of
development Canonical released some "technical information" which basically
blatantly lied about wayland and it's capabilities.

Mostly Mir exists because Canonical had a huge case of NIH.

Sorry for not having any technical information.

~~~
takluyver
For completeness: Canonical still claims that they couldn't do what they
wanted, especially with mobile devices, using Wayland. Or at least, they would
have needed to write various non-standard extensions to the Wayland protocol
which would make it incompatible with vanilla Wayland. The best source for
this is this blog by someone working at Canonical:
[http://blog.cooperteam.net/search/label/mir](http://blog.cooperteam.net/search/label/mir)

I don't understand graphics systems enough to evaluate their claims, and I've
yet to hear an impartial analysis of them. Possibly no-one who can evaluate
them is impartial.

------
general_failure
This is how Open source politics looks like.

Mark may have said hurtful things but these Devs like martin take things way
too personally.

------
lulzmachine
What post by Mark is he referring to?

~~~
lambda
This one:
[http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295)

    
    
        Mir is really important work. When lots of competitors
        attack a project on purely political grounds, you have 
        to wonder what THEIR agenda is. At least we know now who 
        belongs to the Open Source Tea Party   And to put all 
        the hue and cry into context: Mir is relevant for 
        approximately 1% of all developers, just those who think 
        about shell development. Every app developer will 
        consume Mir through their toolkit. By contrast, those 
        same outraged individuals have NIH’d just about every 
        important piece of the stack they can get their hands 
        on… most notably SystemD, which is hugely invasive and 
        hardly justified. What closely to see how competitors to 
        Canonical torture the English language in their efforts 
        to justify how those toolkits should support Windows but 
        not Mir. But we’ll get it done, and it will be amazing.
    

In context, this was written shortly after Martin Gräßlin had said that he
would not support Mir in KWin. KWin is the KDE window manager/shell; he is one
of those "1% of all developers" for whom the display server really matters.
And unlike what Mark claims, KWin does not support Windows (other parts of the
Qt and KDE stack do, but not KWin).

So, he sees this as his time essentially being volunteered for him by Mark, to
support a display server with an architecture he doesn't agree with, after
he's already put the effort in to support the display server that pretty much
everyone else in the desktop Linux ecosystem have been targeting. And if you
don't agree with Mark, or the technical decisions made leading to Mir, you get
branded as "the Open Source Tea Party", "purely political", an "outraged
individual" who has "NIH'd just about every piece of the stack."

~~~
TallGuyShort
Maybe I'm being overly pedantic here, but if you're going to call out a
project like systemd that is headed in the direction of being the de facto
standard in all the other serious Linux distributions, you probably should
have looked at the project closely enough to have seen the big deal they make
of the correct spelling on their homepage (i.e. systemd vs SystemD). Actually,
I'm definitely being overly pedantic here, but his completely dismissive
attitude towards systemd makes this KWin post make a bit more sense. Certainly
sways me in the direction of agreeing.

~~~
puller
Lots of people don't like systemd and have complained about it...

~~~
TallGuyShort
No I get that, and I'm not it's biggest fan either, but it's a pretty core
component to take the decision lightly. Most of the arguments I see against
systemd are very well informed and well reasoned. That's why I categorized his
as "dismissive" \- and it seems consistent with the accusation that he isn't
reasonable, but just doesn't like people disagreeing with him.

------
Mikeb85
I think alot of people have unrealistic expectations of open-source in
general. Open source has nothing to do with community, merit, etc... Open
source has little to nothing to do with collaboration.

What open source IS, is a Darwinian paradigm for software. Software is made,
released into the wild. It succeeds, or it doesn't. If you don't like it, you
fork it, release back into the wild, and whichever version is better lives on.
Linus, Mark Shuttleworth, RMS, etc... - they don't owe shit to anyone.

People used to rag on SUSE for their deal with Microsoft, and now they rag on
Canonical. But guess what - SUSE survived and is still a billion dollar
business (it was sold to Attachmate recently for 2.2 billion), and Canonical
is making the most popular desktop distro, and the only desktop vendor with
the balls to take on the mobile space.

BTW, I fully support Martin's decision to abandon Ubuntu if he wants to.
Ubuntu is obviously going ahead with Mir and Unity, if it becomes difficult to
support, switch to SUSE, or Debian, or fork Ubuntu...

~~~
ewzimm
I would like to make a small connection. Novell bought SUSE in 2003 when they
were losing business. They continued lose business while SUSE grew, so they
tried to squeeze maximum profits out of SUSE by laying off a lot of their
staff and making a marketing/patent deal with Microsoft. They still ended up
having to sell out. SUSE is still going strong thanks to a great community.

~~~
Mikeb85
> SUSE is still going strong thanks to a great community.

And $225 million in yearly revenue doesn't hurt...

Personally, openSUSE has always been my favourite distro. A bit sentimental
perhaps, my first Linux was SUSE 6 back in the day, running 13.1 now. So fast
and so flexible...

~~~
ewzimm
SUSE has done a great job maintaining its projects, and I especially like how
they focus on building things that are useful to anyone rather than just
themselves. With the recent troubles between Ubuntu and KDE, I wonder if
Kubuntu will be able to maintain its status as the leading KDE distribution.

~~~
Mikeb85
Yup. SUSE Build Service is IMO the best app of it's kind, I love SUSE Studio,
and SUSE's Imagewriter is by far the best utility for writing bootable USB
sticks...

Honestly, if Kubuntu disappeared tomorrow I don't think it would be a bad
thing, KDE users still have SUSE, Archlinux, etc...

Edit - And of course SUSE is amongst the top contributors towards KDE, Gnome,
Libre Office, and many other open-source projects, certainly contributing more
than Canonical and often more than Red Hat...

~~~
ewzimm
I have used openSUSE on my desktop before, and I am running it in a VM again.
13.1 looks great. I love how they cater their GUI to power users and include
quick access to things like virtualization. They also include FreeType 2.5,
which I otherwise have to install manually. So far it isn't better enough than
my own customized desktop to switch, but if things get worse between KDE and
Canonical, I'll definitely switch my laptop OS.

------
mindcrime
That's a bummer. It sucks when someone is driven out of a community by the
behavior of others. :-(

Sadly, this isn't unheard of in the F/OSS world, and this isn't the first time
something like this has happened. Even more sadly, it probably won't be the
last.

~~~
general_failure
Well, this is by design of FOSS.

FOSS is about freedom. One can do whatever they want. I don't see what is sad
about this. The drama is what is nonsensical.

~~~
mindcrime
_Well, this is by design of FOSS._

I could not disagree more. Nothing about being part of the FOSS world mandates
acting like a dick.

 _FOSS is about freedom. One can do whatever they want._

Just because you are free to do something, doesn't mean that you _should_ do
it, or that you're not an asshole _for_ doing it. I'm not in any way
suggesting that Mark or anybody else should be denied their right to free
speech. But verbally abusing somebody else for having a different belief is
still being a dick, even so.

 _I don 't see what is sad about this._

OK, tell me this... who benefits from this outcome? As far as I can tell, the
answer is "nobody". OTOH, who suffers? Well, potentially everybody who's part
of the KDE on Ubuntu ecosystem. And the person who's being bullied and abused
into walking away from something that he would probably prefer to remain
involved in, IF it weren't for the asshole'ish behavior.

 _The drama is what is nonsensical_

I don't see it. If somebody is being a dick, calling them out for their
behavior is hardly "nonsensical drama". It's just being forthright and honest.

------
Yhippa
Learned something new today. SABDFL: Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for
life. That initialism actually goes to his Wikipedia page:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABDFL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABDFL).

------
kuchaguangjie
I want to say fuck fuck fuck Unity! just let gnome-classic back, it's so
perfect, so easy to use & do customization. Ubuntu should keep simple & easy
to use, that's why ubuntu is popular. You ubuntu people waste time to develop
unity for years, the result is that you fucked the users up, and now you
continue want to do that endlessly, ubuntu is come less & less popular.

You know what, I installed ubuntu12.04 while it come out, but I am very
disappointed, I wasted a whole day try to make it easy to use, but I give up
finally, and re-installed the ubuntu10.04 instead. When ubuntu 13.04 come out,
I did this again, and changed back to ubuntu 10.04 again. Now ubuntu 13.10
come out, I just want to say, fuck off, I will never install it. You know
what, you have been waste time for years to do negative work to make ubuntu
worse.

What's wrong with you people, I just don't get it ...

I still like ubuntu, but I am already start to try other linux distribution
out, like Mint, I want to say that, if ubuntu keep in this direction, I
probably will say good by to Ubuntu which I have used for 7 years, since
ubuntu 7.10 when I was still in collage.

Maybe you think I am a little impolite, I do loved ubuntu, I am just
expressing my disappointment about what you ubuntu people have done to this
lovely os for recent years!

~~~
ciupicri
I'm not an Ubuntu user, but I thought that it was possible to use other
desktop environments like KDE, XFCE, LXDE etc.

~~~
keithpeter
It is at present, and I expect it will be possible to use other desktops for
14.04, which is important as it is a Long Term Support release with support
for 5 years.

I'm a bit hazy about what happens when Mir replaces X. I gather that this
particular argument is about ensuring that the compositor for KDE will work
with Mir, or, more accurately, who does the work to ensure that KWin will work
on Mir.

------
bashcoder
This is a cautionary tale. It's unwise to burn bridges after a conflict,
because you never know what the future may hold. Justified or not, leaving a
stink bomb in your wake is a bad resume builder. It makes people more wary,
not more confident.

The pain from interpersonal conflicts is real and powerful. But how we handle
ourselves during conflict says more about us than any amount of code we'll
ever write.

------
Aardwolf
I do hope KDE will keep working on Ubuntu? I have to use Ubuntu on some
workstation, having KDE on it makes it reasonable (the default UI is an
immediate dismiss for me, I'm clearly not the target audience of that one).

To me Ubuntu is to other Linuxes, what Apple is to PC. The more closed,
independent, "simple but beautiful" (noting that "simple" is not my own style
and preference) variant.

~~~
dkuntz2
I don't think that's a fair comparison. OS X doesn't rely on Windows
developers to make it better, Ubuntu _needs_ other developers from across the
Linux community to get better.

You can't really do "closed" Linux, because you (the closer) need everyone
else. And, as seen with Intel's rejection of a mir patch, everyone else can
shut you out.

~~~
Aardwolf
It _needs_ them but then insults them? Ok, I got it now :)

------
Ologn
I use Ubuntu on my desktop and have sent a number of patches to them and their
upstreams when I encountered problems.

One thing about Ubuntu is that, if you put Android to one side (Android
basically uses the Linux kernel, but does not use things such as libc etc.),
Ubuntu is the largest Linux desktop by far. Wikipedia web logs show them
coming at 77 times the number of their nearest competitor, Fedora (
[http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOpera...](http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm)
).

Combine this massive user base, which often is not of the traditional Unix
user background, with its automated bug report tools like apport, and
traditional bug reporting trouble ticket web sites like Launchpad, and you
have a massive exposure of the traditional Linux/X/fdo/Gnome ecosystem to
users. Which means many of the "eyeballs for bugs" can, and sometimes does,
come from Ubuntu. I have mostly looked at the evince/poppler/cairo
applications and dependencies, and it seems to me that far more bugs are
discovered on Ubuntu than in any of the other distro bug trouble ticket
systems. If apport reports were more carefully maintained, that number would
increase by some multiple.

I have also noticed that Canonical is good for patching bugs reported anywhere
on Ubuntu. For example, if a patch or bug report is languishing in the Debian
trouble ticket system, Ubuntu will sometimes grab it and apply it to Ubuntu.
So reported unfixed bugs in Debian, with patches languishing in its trouble
ticket system, will be patched in Ubuntu. For example, this (
[http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=570904](http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=570904) ) bug report was never touched by any Debian
developer, but it was patched downstream on Ubuntu.

The thing about Ubuntu is it seems to have bad relations with so many of its
upstreams in the FLOSS community. Linux. X. Gnome. Debian. Banshee. And I
guess in this specific case KDE.

It is too bad that things are not working more smoothly, where the massive
user base exposing bugs is not flowing upstream more smoothly, and making
Linux, Debian, Gnome better products. However much Ubuntu forks things, it is
still very dependent on these upstreams, Gnome included. Yes, Gnome included -
take a close look, Unity changes some things, but there are still tons of
dependencies on Gnome.

And Ubuntu really is dependent on the FLOSS community. When Ubuntu finds a
massive fd.o or Gnome bug, it tends to get patched quickly. The entire
ecosystem of all distros is looking at it. I have seen a lot of Unity only
bugs languish. Basically, 99% of them have to be fixed by a Canonical
engineer. Usually this does not happen, even if it is a major bug you
sometimes have to wait a long time. Ubuntu has the user base but it does not
have the developer base.

~~~
joeyh
[http://bugs.debian.org/608996](http://bugs.debian.org/608996) is the
(duplicate) bug that was fixed by Debian developers.

(I'd say more, but I've long ago stopped commenting on Ubuntu for similar
reasons as Martin Gräßlin.)

~~~
Ologn
The bug was reported in February 2010 to the Debian bug tracker, where it was
forever ignored, although the fix was trivial (replace the vol_id comment with
blkid). In May 2010 Ubuntu downstream is syncing with Debian (
[https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-
target/67ubuntu...](https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-
target/67ubuntu1) ), sees the bug report and fixes it in Ubuntu. Then in
February 2011, a duplicate of the original bug is reported and gets fixed in
Debian.

I was impressed by the fact that Ubuntu fixed this within three months even
though the bug report was in the upstream ticket system, where it had not been
fixed. Debian fixed it nine months after Ubuntu.

I appreciate the fact that Canonical has done things which help Ubuntu which
sometimes, inadvertently or not, hurt Debian. For example, Canonical hiring so
many Debian developers helped make the sarge release late. As I said in my
post, Ubuntu is not that good about sending patches upstream. For a while, I
was of the mind that Ubuntu was a mixed bag that in some ways helped and in
some ways hurt the FLOSS community. Although over the past year or two, it
seems the trend has been more toward the latter way.

------
ZeroGravitas
Not related to the content of the post but:

Does anyone know why clicking the link to this page in Firefox/Ubuntu makes
the active light on my webcam come on for a second just as the page finishes
loading?

~~~
scott_karana
I'm guessing that it's related to Google Hangouts, which is integrated in
every Google+ page.

If you have the Google Talk plugin (or whatever it's called now) you can do
video chat right in the browser.

Some bug with the drivers, I presume? (I have all the add-ons in Firefox 24.0,
but no light for me)

------
Aldo_MX
> All of that without ever asking whether we are interested at all. In case of
> the telco I was not even asked whether I would want to participate and
> whether I have time for that. I experienced this as a constant pressure and
> a disrespect to our own decisions.

This is one of the reasons that demotivated me from developing FLOSS, the
constant pressure and lack of respect towards the taken decisions.

~~~
general_failure
That conclusion is absurd and totally wrong on so many levels. It's the same
as saying:

"This is one of the reasons that demotivated me from developing commercial
software, the constant pressure and lack of respect towards the taken
decisions."

~~~
Aldo_MX
I can presume that you didn't even understand the context before jumping into
your conclusion. My conclusion is not towards FLOSS, but towards the hostility
of people behind FLOSS...

------
drill_sarge
Since Ubuntu is just "let's sync repos from debian testing every 6 months and
add our own crap" just use debian testing. You even get rolling release.

Btw, I know nobody who uses standard Ubuntu. Everyone uses some variant like
Xubuntu, Kubuntu etc. which are really well put together distros for the
average user.

------
bovermyer
Well dang. Now I have to find another go-to Linux distro.

~~~
general_failure
Trust me, you will be back to ubuntu. They are actually good and competent.

~~~
subsection1h
Your incessant whoring for Canonical in this discussion is the precise
behavior that many in the Linux community hate about vocal proponents of
Ubuntu. The fact that you just implied that the developers of other distros
(which includes Debian!) are not good and competent is disgusting.

It's people like you to whom Martin was referring when he wrote, "There are
many users who seem to think that Ubuntu is a religion and Canonical without
fail. If you criticize technical decision you are a heretic and the holy
inquisition is coming after you to burn you."

~~~
general_failure
Hyper-sensitive people like you are exactly the problem we have. I said
something good about Ubuntu and you guys are off assuming that I said that the
rest is not good and competent. Why do people assume that?

X is good doesn't mean Y is bad. If I say, trust me, you will get back to
using X does not mean Y is bad. It means X is that good.

~~~
djur
In idiomatic English, "actually" in the context you used it suggests a
contrast to something else. "I'm considering asking Bob to do this job." "You
should ask Sally, she actually knows what she's doing."

------
adrianlmm
Wait a minute, doesn't this guy works for BlueSystems on the NetRunner distro?
why does he says good bye to Ubuntu? he doesn't even use it?

~~~
chris_wot
Try reading the article again. He states that Canonical put pressure on him to
make Mir specific changes to KWin. And, bizarrely, got him to do a walk
through of the KWin codebase, without telling him!!!

------
_of
According to Wikipedia [1] an ecosystem is

"a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction
with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and
mineral soil), interacting as a system."

I wish bloggers can find a better term for referring to something specific to
software development. An ecosystem is a specific term in ecology.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem)

~~~
dkuntz2
Remove the living organisms component, and it's almost exactly what people are
talking about when they refer to a software ecosystem.

I don't see your problem.

