

Next thing for Ubuntu to learn - siddhant
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/543617/comments/20

======
hyperbovine
This sort of thinking strikes me as shortsighted. Ubuntu seems to be getting
flack for not having competency in kernel development. And yet, Ubuntu has got
to be responsible for driving 10x as much Linux adoption as ext4 or whatever
other technical feature you like. There are a lot of people who can write
drivers. To date, there is only one company that has even come close to
pushing Linux into the mainstream. The benefits of that are very diffuse, but
they probably include, yes, more overall kernel developers! Rather than
attacking them for not having the wherewithall to crank out kernel patches, we
should be thanking them. They bring something to the table that literally
noone else has. Even Ted Tso, who is a serious badass, cannot say that.

~~~
andrewf
Hackers working for Google, Red Hat and Novell aren't setting their day to day
priorities around increasing Linux adoption. They're interested in making
money for Google, Red Hat and Novell.

~~~
hyperbovine
With Google, I can maybe see your point. But how anybody can argue that Red
Hat & Novell's fortunes are not tied to Linux adoption rates, is beyond me.

~~~
amatriain
I guess he means that if it's not a problem in a use case in which their
corporate clients are interested, it is a non-issue for them.

------
zppx
Last time I checked much of the work in Ubuntu was done by the teams (Kernel
team, Server team, several translation teams, etc), the majority of members of
each team are not employed by Canonical, and this is a problem.

As a matter of fact, I know of someone that worked in one of the Ubuntu teams,
when his work became well known, and someone at Red Hat discovered that he was
not paid they just hired him.

EDIT: I do not see this as a problem though, I watch closely the Dragonfly BSD
project and as far as I know the majority of the developers are not paid to
contribute with the project.

~~~
po
I don't think there is as much sniping of talent in the BSD world as in linux.
I feel like the Linux distros are more competitive with each other so it seems
like a bit of a problem to me.

~~~
DrSprout
Competition is a good thing. It's only a problem for Ubuntu.

And it's not even that much of a problem for Ubuntu's end users, since
Ubuntu's biggest problem is making meaningful contributions upstream.

------
jbellis
It's a little snarky, but Ted isn't the first to have observed that Canonical
has very high developer turnover rates.

~~~
nailer
One of my friends, through efforts involved in (OSS subsystem) maintenance,
worked at, and loved Canonical for a period. He's a seriously talented dude
and widely considered number 2 in his field. But yeah, he ended up at another
Linux vendor and has been there for a very long time since.

------
JadeNB
I don't know anything about the personalities involved, and, for all I know,
the letter is quite justified; but "I think that I've done you a big favour by
giving you 10 minutes of my time" seems to be one of those remarks to which
there is [a canonical
reply](<http://modernarthur.com/blog/christwhatanasshole.html>) (no pun
intended).

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I knew who he was and still thought it was an asshole comment.

Though I was particularly put off by the bit at the bottom, where he says that
even if Ubuntu does hire and train up people to work on upstream kernel or
filesystem issues Google's deep pockets mean they will just poach them once
they are trained up.

Hopefully at Google they'll actually work on the upstream Linux rather than
the Android fork.

~~~
drewcrawford
Asshole comment or not, if Canonical wants help they should pay for it. Ted's
not obligated to continue work for free simply because he's done so much work
for free in the past. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's the opposite.

I might fix my girlfriend's computer for free, but I make sure to bill
everyone else.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Asking him to work for free, and asking him not to be an asshole are two very
different things.

I assume you don't act like an asshole no matter who you are helping. I'd go
further and assume that even when you turn down people asking for your help,
and suggest they might want to hire someone instead, you're still not an
asshole to them.

~~~
hga
It's pretty hard to not to make "an asshole comment" when you're trying in one
email to convince a company to change their way of doing business.

Anyone who has watched Canonical since Hardy Heron (also an LTS release) knows
that the company has deep and systemic problems. I wouldn't be surprised if
the tone of Ted's response is also a result of past history with them of the
sort that's illustrated by this message.

I might go even further and say that if you're as serious a member of the
Linux kernel development community as Ted is, you might be rather concerned
about Canonical's practices and how they're likely turning off a lot of would
be Linux users.

~~~
chc
How on earth is Canonical turning off would-be Linux users? They've finally
made a distro that has a reputation (deserved or not) for being usable by the
common man. How is that anything but good? You think Linux would greatly
benefit from being more of a geek ghetto than it already is?

~~~
hga
It's not good when they then release broken distributions or upgrades that
break stuff that was previously working.

Going back to Hardy Heron, if you were using a machine with a Broadcom 43xx
wireless card, you would have been rather upset for that to have stopped
working. Or for HH to frequently crash without saying anything (even Windows
gives you a BSOD).

What I'm saying is that while the objective is obviously good, the execution
appears to be so bad than in combination with that objective it may well be a
disaster.

------
wingo
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=588930>

------
tashbarg
Ubuntu surprises me often with their amount of patching upstream projects.
Somehow, they can't wait for projects to publish stable releases.

A little digging in the package repositories showed, that 2.5% of lynx
packages contain svn, git or cvs in their version number. This means, they
were either a stable release that was patched with something from the repo or
even a complete snapshot from the repo. Debian, for comparison, has only half
as many packages with that criteria.

------
papachito
What Ted seems to ignore is that Ubuntu's company is a barely profitable one
so they just can't afford (yet) to have lots of well paid kernel developers.

Canonical does not make billions unlike Google and even Red Hat. It was funded
by a guy who gave money from his own pocket and a lot of it and managed to
make Linux popular, so kudos to him and I'm sure they'll get lots of kernel
developers if they ever manage to be very profitable.

~~~
gamache
I don't think Ted's ignoring that; it's just not his responsibility. If Ubuntu
wants wizard-level fixes at short deadlines, they need to hire and retain
wizards, and that's that.

~~~
hga
Exactly. There are certain required costs to play certain games, and if
they're not willing or able to pony up the resources necessary to play their
game (making a good release out of Debian unstable every 6 months) then that's
not his problem. I myself have left more than one company because they hired
me to do X but then didn't have the will or the means to buy necessary stuff
(e.g. a UNIX license).

See elsewhere in this topic where I addressed how their low quality releases
starting with Hardy Heron may in fact be hurting Linux. If true, that and the
resulting backlash against Canonical would have it end up in even worse shape
financially and therefore less able to hire hackers of the level required.
I.e. kernel hackers like Ted who keep fielding their requests for help and who
are acutely aware of their lack of quality in their releases might be
particularly unmoved by the "we're bringing Linux to the masses" argument.

~~~
papachito
> then that's not his problem

Who said it was his problem?

~~~
hga
I'm using it as a figure of speech, not a quote or paraphrase of anything
anyone said.

~~~
papachito
But that is part of the problem, Ted is complaining that he's not responsible
for fixing Ubuntu's bugs and then people say he's right. Only problem is that
Canonical never said he was responsible for anything. So what is he ranting
about?

