Ubuntu's Shuttleworth's call to arms in open source stirs up controversy

jeremy · 05-19-2015, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Two weeks ago, at the kick-off to the Ubuntu Online Summit, Canonical founder and space-traveler Mark Shuttleworth presented an hour-long keynote. In many ways it was a fairly typical keynote, but Mark made one statement that really stuck in some people's craw.
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"There is a reasonable prospect that if we work together as a community and we are opened, and were focused, generous, thoughtful, and our story is great, that we can, in fact, bring all the world's applications to a free software platform."

This is a delightful statement that, in general, conveys so much of the spirit of the broader Free and Open Source community. You'd be hard-pressed to find any member of any Open Source community who would disagree with the notion that we should work together in an open way.

He then continued

"So, I'm issuing a call to people who participate in every desktop environment...to folks who work on all desktop environments to set aside our differences, to recognize that the opportunity now is bigger than those differences, to create experiences that span phones and tablets and PCs, to bring all of our applications, none of which are on one desktop environment or another to everywhere."

Again what Free and Open Source Software loving person could disagree with any of that?

Well, Aaron Seigo, a prominent member of the KDE world, took to Google Plus with this to say:

"The first step in making the world you want is to behave in line with that vision. Mark apparently doesn't understand that, having spent the last years creating schism after schism in the Linux desktop world, from Mir to Unity to making their own QML API from scratch and developing a mobile UX behind closed doors separate from work being done in the broader community, he is now suggesting that all the desktop projects should work together towards a common goal."

Aaron's criticism isn't coming completely out of left field here. Canonical (and, by proxy, Ubuntu) has a pretty well-established track record of "going it alone" (at least compared to many Open Source groups). There is a perception earned or not among a large portion of the Free and Open Source world that, if Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical aren't 100 happy with something, instead of getting involved and fixing whatever shortcomings it may have they stop playing with everyone else and go build their own tools. The display server (Mir) and the desktop environment (Unity) being the two most prominent, and controversial, of the bunch.

The original article was posted at NetworkWorld and there is quite a bit of follow-up, including some comments from Mark and Aaron, on Bryan's G+ post.

Do any LQ members have an opinion on the topic?

--jeremy

Timothy Miller · 05-19-2015, 02:18 PM

Aaron is 100 correct, Shuttleworth is being a giant hypocrite. Don't talk the talk, if you can't walk the walk Mark.

dugan · 05-19-2015, 02:21 PM

Quote:

"So, I'm issuing a call to people who participate in every desktop environment...to folks who work on all desktop environments to set aside our differences, to recognize that the opportunity now is bigger than those differences

I can't bring myself to click on any of the links. Was this the "I demand that everyone do everything my way now or else" that it sounded like?

Myk267 · 05-20-2015, 01:48 PM

As usual, people said things and other people got their feathers ruffled.