
Shuttleworth: Free software zealots are antisocial muppets who love to hate - ailideex
http://www.zdnet.com/article/ubuntus-shuttleworth-free-software-zealots-are-antisocial-muppets-who-love-to-hate/
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stinkytaco
Oy vey, what to say about this. On one hand, the "people who don't like my
stuff are crazy loons with an agenda" sounds like something you might hear
from a fringe politician (or a mainstream one these days). It's just a bad way
of putting it and the paternal condescension it indicates is part of the
reason people hated on Ubuntu projects.

On the other, I'm brought to mind of when Tollef Fog Heen left the Debian
project. He complained that the community had forgotten its important creed
"assume good faith". And I'm inclined to agree with him, the amount of vitriol
surrounding systemd was way out of proportion to its actual impact. The amount
of shit thrown at Ubuntu for simply writing software is uncanny. If you don't
like it, don't use it, even express your criticism; but Ubuntu comes in for
criticism for experimenting and trying to move software forward, and that's
unfair. Ubuntu and Canonical are willing to take risks. I don't always like
them (I don't use Ubuntu), but I can respect them for trying.

EDIT: Here's the post from Tollef: [https://hackerfall.com/story/resigning-as-
a-debian-systemd-m...](https://hackerfall.com/story/resigning-as-a-debian-
systemd-maintainer)

I think he puts the same sentiment in a much more diplomatic way.

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echlebek
This is flamebait. There's nothing actionable here, just a rant. The only
takeaway I can see is that I should avoid Ubuntu because its founder no longer
believes in its core mission.

:(

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caryhartline
Here is the full quote that the author is taking these quotes from:

> +Martin Kozub we have lots of IoT projects using Mir as a compositor so that
> code continues to receive investment. I agree, it's a very fast, clean and
> powerful graphics composition engine, and smart people love it for that.

> 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.

> I came to be disgusted with the hate on Mir. Really, it changed my opinion
> of the free software community.

> 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.

~~~
jasonkostempski
>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.

He seems to imply iOS/Andoid competition and compositing/convergence have
something to do with each other. Neither iOS or Android have it. Windows 10
Phone has it, but no one is buying those, so it's obviously not the killer
feature he thinks it is. The complaint is that a ton of resources are being
wasted around a feature no one asked for. Phone sized computer with a blob of
icons that runs 1 application at a time, without the walled garden, make sure
C/C++ code can be utilized, that's all anyone is asking for. Developers will
deal with having to redo the UI for their application, it's not a problem that
needs solving anytime soon. No walled garden is the feature that would set
Canonical apart, there's no need for a silly gimmick to entice potential
buyers.

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JdeBP
Reporting of this by _The Register_ was headlined yesterday at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14077029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14077029)
. It is interesting how the ZDNet headline manages to be more tabloidesque
than _The Register_ 's.

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arca_vorago
"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. F __* that s __*. "

Sure Mark, if you want to pretend all the criticism of Canonical was just
because it "was investing in (free software)", you go ahead and do that. Just
be aware it's still pretending by burying your head in the sand, and ignoring
the very real and well reasoned criticisms.

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jacquesm
[https://plus.google.com/+MarkShuttleworthCanonical/posts/7LY...](https://plus.google.com/+MarkShuttleworthCanonical/posts/7LYubpaHUHH)

That's the post, either it has been edited or he doesn't say anything like
that or that quote came from some other interview that I can't find a source
for (but which seems to be widely cited in various news items so you'd expect
there to be an original somewhere).

~~~
stinkytaco
It's in the comments of the post.

~~~
jacquesm
Ah right, found it, those are by default collapsed and search doesn't find
them on the page. Thank you.

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davexunit
_Very_ misleading title.

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chriswarbo
I'll openly admit that I'm a Free Software zealot, but Mark's characterisation
of zealotry doesn't quite apply to my way of thinking:

> 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.

I hate on, and have no respect for, Windows for precisely one reason: it's
proprietary. My zealotry is so fierce, that I don't consider Windows to do
anything well; because whatever it does, it does unethically. Of course, I
acknowledge that _if we ignore the ethics_ , then it may have some good
solutions to various things, but I consider the ethics to be so important that
there's no way for any other aspect to make up for it. I basically consider
Windows to be a fancy tech demo, like Duke Nukem Forever, which so far has
still failed to ship anything useful (where "shipping something useful" ==
"contributing software to the public good").

On the other hand, Canonical have shipped an awful lot of useful stuff, which
I respect them for. They've also shipped stuff that I may not find useful, but
still thank them for. They've also failed to ship some stuff too, like the
server software for UbuntuOne, which remained in the tech demo stage (i.e.
proprietary) until it was discontinued.

My opinion of Canonical has never depended on whether they're "mainstream".

> 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. F __* that s __ _.

iOS is only a tech preview, so I'll focus on Android.

Android ships a fair amount of stuff, which I respect. I understand that many
copies of Android also throw some unethical components into the mix too, which
is a shame. It's also a shame that many mobile phone manufacturers are
shipping tech previews rather than user-controlled general-purpose computers.

Based on my own usage of Android (I built it from git for my OpenMoko in
2008), it was nice but sluggish. The fact it exists at all is enough to
satisfy my ethical concerns about FOSS mobile software: whether or not it gets
bundled with proprietary stuff, on crippled remotely-operated spying devices,
is a different (but important!) concern that may or may not benefit from
competition. On desktops we have Linux, the BSDs, Haiku, FreeDOS, etc. yet
many machines still come bundled with Windows and OS X; having many FOSS
options didn't neccessarily help FOSS adoption.

Regarding Unity: I see the point of it, as a very user-visible way for
Canonical to differentiate themselves from being a "mere vendor" (like, say,
Debian). Yes, it's "non-standard", but that's part of the point. I don't
actually use it, or GNOME, XFCE, etc. (I use xmonad with no DE) but I've run
across it and didn't have any problems.

As for Mir, it _could* be a differentiating factor, but it's mostly hidden
from the user. It's one of those situations where nobody notices it unless it
goes wrong. The same goes for Wayland, and Xorg. For that reason, it's
probably better to pool resources into a common, "works everywhere" graphics
implementation. Wayland seems to have won the developer mindshare at this
point.

