On: Canonical, Ltd. On Record: Seeking Open Core

[bad_user]

    I love Ubuntu because its commandline and developer 
    tools are fantastic, really a pleasure to use

Then you should give credit where credit is due: to Debian, not Ubuntu.

I love Ubuntu for their UI breakthroughs, but I'm only tolerating them for stealing Debian's work as long as Ubuntu stays free (as in price).

If you want to sell your Linux distribution, at least build it yourself.

    So I could develop useful applications for myself or 
    other developers, but not for too many end users. 

If your app is so dependent on GTK+ as to be unportable to other platforms, you're doing it wrong.

[kingkilr → bad_user]

> stealing Debian's work

That's a completely unfair statement. I wasn't aware following the license of an open source statement constituted stealing.

[sprout → kingkilr]

That was more a hypothetical.

[djacobs → bad_user]

  Then you should give credit where credit is due:
  to Debian, not Ubuntu.

I didn't mean to say Ubuntu, actually. I just meant that Linux is a great place for developers because the tools are there (and fantastic). That said, making (say) my Ruby Unix utilities available to my typical audience (my boss... very much on Windows XP) just doesn't work. Instead my workflow goes something like... 1. code a nifty tool to process data, 2. realize that my boss probably doesn't know what a commandline is, and 3. shoot him an e-mail saying "send me your data files, and I'll have my program analyze them". There's a disconnect there that seems hard to break if we don't get a useful/clean UI system going. And not many developers are willing to add UI sugar to their solid open-source libraries.

  If your app is so dependent on GTK+ as to be
  unportable to other platforms, you're doing it wrong.

I guarantee the typical Mac or Windows user is not going to install my GTK app on their computer, whether it's portable or not. Mac users will loathe the new interface and icons, while Windows users will not like the manual upgrades or quasi-FHS-compliant config file locations.

If instead you're suggesting I recode my GTK app in Cocoa and .NET, I can't use my beloved Linux tools for that, so in that case, I'd stick to coding on non-Linux platforms.

[sigzero → bad_user]

Do you know how many distros are rip offs or tweaks of other distros?

[bad_user → sigzero]

All I know is that Red Hat, SUSE and Debian (the other 3 biggies that matter) are not rip offs or tweaks of other distros.

[eru → bad_user]

So, what?

[dochtman → bad_user]

So you only love Ubuntu's UI breakthroughs so long as they don't get paid for their work?

I think the article linked here is too extremist. I still believe open core can be done in a manner that satisfies everyone. On the other hand, I can't think of any good examples.

[mhw → bad_user]

> I love Ubuntu for their UI breakthroughs, but I'm only tolerating them for stealing Debian's work as long as Ubuntu stays free (as in price).

> If you want to sell your Linux distribution, at least build it yourself.

So you're saying that what the free-software community really values is more package managers? Red Hat, SUSE and Debian all have their own, and if you want to be respected like the big boys you'd damn well better invent your own packaging format?