Conflicting Goals Create Tension in OSS Community 135
An anonymous reader writes "Mark Shuttleworth, of Ubuntu, has a post up meant to clear the air and clarify the project's place in the Debian community. He's specifically referring to comments made by Matthew Garrett earlier this month." From the post: "A little introspection is healthy, and Debian will benefit from the discussion. Matt is to be credited for his open commentary - a lesser person would simply have disengaged, quietly. I hope that Matt will in fact stay involved in Debian, either directly or through Ubuntu, because his talent and humour are both of enormous benefit to the project. I also hope that Debian developers will make better use of the work we do in Ubuntu, integrating relevant bits of it back into Debian so as to help uplift some of those other peaks - Xandros, Linspire, Maemo, Skolelinux and of course Etch."
Please (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please (Score:5, Insightful)
You really can't have it both ways.
And not to imply that this is "bad" in any way - I was just struck by this comment attached to this particular story. The next time Slashdork posts the usual "what does the community think?" or "the community must do something about this!!" I wonder if I'll see a post making this same point. Probably not.
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I must have been out when that was going on. Can you give an example of when it's happened?
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Sure he can. People regularly live with multiple, contradictory definitions of important concepts.
The definition of "community" seems to be what's at stake here. One possible definition would be something like "a group of people who always think in exactly the same way as one another." If everybody always thinks the same, then there's never any conflict, and everyone is happy. Hooray, bounce bounce.
This is an unworkable definition, but there are people who sincerely be
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that there is no OSS community; which you
have turned it into just "community". In effect,
it is like claiming that the Blue community
exists simply because (any) community exists.
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You really can't have it both ways."
Why can't we have it both ways? When faced with a common enemy, people put aside their petty differences and work co-operatively towards a common goal. Then, when there is no longer a larger threat, they return to
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There is no tension in the OSS community, but there certainly is in Debian's.
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Unity Fallacy [r30.net]. It's quite possible this particular poster is consistent in asserting there's no such thing as the OSS community in cases where it's squaring off against proprietarian vendors. Just because such a view is unusual on Slashdot doesn't necessarily mean there's any personal inconsistency in thinking.
Inconsistent views from one person is hypocrisy, but inconsistent views among people is just disagreement.
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I found this http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_Licensing#Patent
Cheers
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Just in the super-unlikely case that you haven't actually ever worked on commercial software, I thought I'd give you the link that best describes the real world:
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/inde x.html [dilbert.com]
There's a good reason geeks who love code development do so much of it for free. In general, I'd say that OSS projects are better run and executed than commercial projects. They just aren't as well funded
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Surely an OSS Community...
(sorry)
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More correct than incorrect - Re:Please (Score:1)
* Brilliant Talent. The same brilliant talent may be completely disorganised and hence requires a helping hand. Sometimes great thinkers and sometimes great ideas.
* Supporters. Early adopters, like-minded individuals.
* Acumen - Usually in business. Hole plugging, streamlining, organisational and communication skills.
Even the "OSS Community" is fickle. Sometimes it is just stubborn and sometimes it is the old-dog that won't learn the new trick. You get out of
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_forgot_poland [wikipedia.org]
a mile away (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, anyone who's ever gotten even remotely involved in wikipedia could have seen this one coming a mile away. This is why, at work, you have "project managers", that have final say (and yet, also take the burden and responsibility of making decisions).
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There is exactly one remaining MAJOR application area where Windows still rules, unchallenged. Without it, I think Linux of some flavor (probably Ubuntu), would be taking over the desktop right now.
Games.
It's as simple as that. There is no other major high-volume application that Linux doesn't do well. Games are not only good news for Microsoft, but Intel as well. Who the heck needs a Core Duo to run Word? It seems very strange that the top
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There, it's said. Sure, they make huge amounts of money (for publishers; developers rarely break even) and they're important to a lot of people. But they're mostly one-shot, throw-away pieces of software that aren't maintained over a period of time and have a very short marketable lifespan. As such they don't benefit much from free software development (which excels at maintainance, not short time-to-market) and it doesn't really matter what platform they run on.
So what if they
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However, a major problem for Linux is the natural tension between businesses and the free software movement. OSS is threatening big software money. See:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/1 [launchpad.net]
Oddly enough, business managers don't like using stuff that threatens business. Funny how that works.
The name "Ubunutu" is unfortunate. Managers naturally ask me what it means when I recommend it, and the
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Ubuntu is noise here. They talk a lot, but they sound like hippies because they mostly are hippies. RedHat and Novell are the ones to bring in. Especially Novell, with a well-known brand that managers are probably already familiar with, from Netware. Those g
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However, what we run in our development team is up to us. Everyone else runs RedHat, except for one guy running Fedora. I run Ubuntu to help increase coverage of the user-space, but it's probably fairly pointless.
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Untrue.
they're going to get a big contract in 'real soon now'
Already happened.
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So succintly put! A beauty...
Cheers,
CC
Re:a mile away & OSS fantasies (Score:2)
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And why they have to pay people to go there (NS) (Score:1, Insightful)
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I have to say I have never found Ubuntu easier to install than Debian. (Well I guess Ubuntu has a live cd installer but for me that just takes longer. If I am going to install it, I don't need to good into a full KDE or Gnome environment to do it.)
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Re:a mile away (Score:5, Informative)
Maintainers != Project Managers (Score:5, Insightful)
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they can have something to report up the chain.
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Project managers do a lot more than "review submitted code/content and decide whether it should be included in the production version of the product." They drive the process, not just filter it.
Maintainers drive the process, not just filter it. In most cases that's because the maintainers are also the primary developers on the project. The only project I know of where the maintainers act simply as filters is the Linux kernel, and in the kernel the volume of submissions is so large and so many are rejec
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The fact is that unless you started your own OSS project, you're probably going to be working to achieve someone else goal rather than your own to a certa
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Leadership (Score:2)
O. Wyss
let the arguments rage (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:let the arguments rage (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:let the arguments rage (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunatly along with outstanding coding skills the OSS comunity has its share of egos, and as with an OSS project your job (usually) isn't on the line you can make your point more forceably and with less tact than in a work situation. The only problem is alot of the time both sides of a row are right - just unable to see the common ground and resolve their egos for the good of the project.
I do wonder whether some of this is down to lack of face to face in person meetings between the various parties...
Re: Raging Arguments... (Score:2, Insightful)
The thorough discussions apparently remove the risk of mistakes associated with conformity, called "groupspeak" by some consulting firms.
However, when all is said and done, the code for a function needs to be stable. At what point does the free-for-all become a liability?
*nix projects a somewhat splintered image. There is a group of users who are unhappy with the other two closed OS vendors, and are surveying the state of affairs. I at least
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Personally, I recommend Ubuntu 6.06. I myself recently switched over to it, and have found it to be a very pleasant experiance. I even managed to convince a friend that he should totally switch after, within the space of about 20 minutes, everything "worked." Unlike in previous distos, he was able to get 3d acceleration working properly, dvd+MP3+Other Proprietary codecs, ut2k4, and he just loves the simplicity of apt-get and synaptic. Immediatly before running Ubuntu, he tried running openSUSE, which didn't
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we are never going to agree on how to do things... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:we are never going to agree on how to do things (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh wait...
[Debian|Ubuntu] can't be everything to everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a very well-written summation of the issues.
To paraphrase a comment from a message board I visit, "[Debian|Ubuntu] can't be everything to everyone."
Debian provides a wonderful base for many other distributions, not just Ubuntu, and it is a rock-solid platform for servers. It runs on many different architectures, and can be used on machines from a handheld up to a massive server. This is one of its greatest strengths, but also one of its greatest weaknesses.
Ubuntu, on the other hand, is far more focused than Debian is. Starting with the general base (the plateau, as Mark called it), it builds a strong distribution targeted to only 3-4 architectures (counting SPARC), which opens many more options. This is no different than many other distributions have done. For example, Knoppix is another version of Debian with customizations on top of it for a specific platform (or platforms).
Ubuntu can't be everything to everyone, because everyone has different needs and goals, and Ubuntu has a specific focus. Similarly, Debian can't be everything to everyone, because it is a more general distribution, a jack of all trades (and master of none).
Re:[Debian|Ubuntu] can't be everything to everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
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There's absolutely no reason for there to be any antagonism between Debian and any of the Debian-derived distributions. Debian can't be everything for everyone, but it certainly provides a wonderful starting point for others to
Is the problem maturity? (Score:4, Interesting)
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A disturbing lack of thought is manifest. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody who has worked with Debian already should have a deep and profound respect for the fact that Debian is plain and broad. When you sit down at a Debian computer, you are seated before a gateway to what might be the most customizable distribution in existence. All of the packages are roughly as far away as "$ sudo aptitude", and it is all but guaranteed that no matter how complicated or convoluted the package you want is, it will be downloaded and installed, along with dependencies, and you don't have to worry about a damn thing. (If you've ever compiled your own VLC or GIMP, you know what I'm talking about.)
The problem is that people would like to see specialization in Debian. Debian is not for specialization. It's for everybody to make what they want. Taking that away from Debian compromises the entire goal of the project...
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The problem with debian is not that there is too much choice, it's that there is too much required choice. You HAVE to put in all the effort of selecting what you want from the package database. And you HAVE to mix and match apps, themes and add-ons until you get a consistent and usable de
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Perhaps you should actually try installing a recent version of Debian sometime soon. In the meantime, these screenshots [osdir.com] of Debian Etch's installer should reassure anyone who might be feeling a bit nervous after reading so much FUD.
Beta... (Score:2)
This is one of the problems with Debian. Stable while very stable tends to be lag every other distro. Heck most people I know use the testing and often unstable.
I don't call beta software a recent version. I call it a future version.
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Etch is what I'm using, which is why I posted those screenshots. Even so, Sarge [debian.org] has task-based package selection as well, so the parent's comment is still just FUD.
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A fact, maybe, but I think only from a limited perspective. Maybe it could not exist exactly as it is in its current form without Debian. If Debian didn't exist, they might have used another distribution as its base.
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This touches the keystone of Debian's virtue. There's a kind of rock solid inevitability about it. I've been running Ubuntu for some time now but plan on switching back to Debian precicely because it is "plain and broad" as you say.
Slashdot discovers journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
You take a straightforward, uncontroversial statement (Shuttleworth's blog entry) that practically everyone agrees with. Then you publish a headline saying there's a "conflict", and pretend there's a huge row going on.
Pretty soon you've got a heated argument going on, mostly between people who haven't read the statement that allegedly started it all.
What does it all prove? That Slashdot isn't "stuff that matters" any more, it's stuff that draws mass readership. Just what we were trying to get away from when we first started reading Slashdot ...
Re:Slashdot discovers journalism (Score:5, Interesting)
Does all this matter in all honesty? To most people probably not. We're a bunch of nerds discussing things from America's movement into a police state like society to the latest gimmick software. Both cannot be "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters" in all cases.
As for addressing the article it's self. OSS does have 3 sides and we have to remember this. As long as we keep everyones goal in sight (good free software with the freedom to do whatever we like to it) then our paths may cross at times but we'll work together for the greater good. My biggest worry for OSS is when it gets too big and it's flooded by people who think they can make money out of it instead of the love of good software as we have now.
People love to read about conflicts (Score:2)
The moral of all this is that to make the front page of /. it's better to have a conflict (which are unavoidable with any project the size of Debian) than to have thousands of hours of hard work.
--Go Debian!
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I come here to read interesting points of view (even if
Blog post more about Debian's focus and sid (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe he's right. Debian's never been succesful at meeting the scheduled release dates. If Ubuntu is capable of delivering better desktop releases, and in soon perhaps also better server releases, then what's the point of struggling and perpertually flamewaring t
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I know you said this in jest, but I can't help wondering that The Slashdot Effect and the Above Sentiment, are mutually exclusive. Either that, or many Slashdotters just give up on reading the article, if it still hasn't loaded in 5 minutes.
In any case, you are forgiven.
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A bit of a collective mea culpa? (Score:2, Insightful)
Shuttleworth is ackowledging that many of the Ubuntu users/booster club members are thinking out of their ass. Cruise over to the Uubuntu forums (or any of the unbearable "I just installed Ubuntu" threads on Digg) and you'll see a blatant ignorance of Debian. Not of its existence necessarily, but of Debian's immense role in the Linux world for all of these years. Mark knows it, the Slackware folks know it (but don't want to deal with th
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Well (Score:1)
Ubuntu not immune to conflicts (Score:2, Insightful)
Mark Shuttleworth is not in a position to tell other projects how to manage a project without conflicts. I recall that just before the Dapper release some German Kubuntu developers threatened to leave the project because Canonical refused to communicate with them. One of these rebelling German guys was the main developer of K/Ubuntu's new live-cd.
Part of the problem seemed to be that these Kubuntu developers were not paid employees. There was one paid employee in the lead of the Kubuntu project and this em
Ubuntu is community, then distro (Score:3, Interesting)
It really seems to me that Ubuntu really is more of a community than a just a distro. Packages appear to be carefully selected based on what the community is asking for, and the effect of the community forums for support make it a great distro for the newbie (be nice to the newbie! when properly nurtured, they can grow into gurus!).
I think that if Debian total fell apart for any reason, Ubuntu would continue to move forward. If the community found another distro to serve as a base, I think they would just use that base.
It's all about community, the people. Without that, software really doesn't matter much.
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If Debian fell apart, Ubuntu would have to pick up the development side of all the debian packages it relies on.
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http://srom.zgp.org/ [zgp.org]
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Well, just whose point of view do you expect him to present?
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, although I wish you to find my client not guilty let me go over some points that the prosecution has raised, as I think they are entirely valid. .
KFG
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I notice you didn't disagree with him.
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>
> 1.One GUI.
>
> 2. Ability to play DirectX games.
>
> 3. Double click driver and application installs. "Fire and forget"
>
> 4. No preaching. I don't really give a rat's ass about what is free and what isn't.
As your points, especially the last one, make it abundantly clear, what you want is not Linux but a free[*] clone of Windows. Nothing wrong with this, of course, but what does it have to do with Linux and why any of the developers working on Linux [deskt
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And you want it all to still remain at a cost of zero, I bet.
It always fries my ass when people scream about stuff like "I want to play DirectX games" but aren't willing to pay a single cent to see it happen. How do you think it can be done when you won't pay? Do you think Microsoft are magnanimously giving away DirectX technology? They aren't even giving it to their own products anymore (i.e., DX10 only for Vista).
Ah, screw it, I know I'm feeding trolls but I will go ahead and bash a few more of your idi
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[5-point list elided]
That's cool, and it ties in fine with this discussion: Mark Shuttleworth wrote about a large group of people with conflicting goals. For all that you want a single GUI and consistency, other people love having lots of choice. You don't "give a rat's ass about what is free and what isn't"; lots of people care a lot about it.
Now you can almost certainly find a distro that gives you what you want (well, maybe not DirectX), while others can find distros that
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That's okay. I, to be totally frank, don't particularly care if you become a linux user or not.
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And there's the conflict right there. I want MORE than one GUI! I want choice and options and freedom and configurability and the absence of artificial restrictions.
p.s. But then again, I'm using FreeBSD and not Linux. Maybe you Linux users really do want a centralized dictatorship. Whatever.
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Still, what you really want is a free verison of Windows. This is probably what you're looking for. [reactos.org]
Re:Has the Shuttleworth parasite written any GPL c (Score:2)
Please Obliterate the Parent. (Score:2)
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