tomhudson's Journal: Canonical's Ticking Time Clock

From the "Anyone want to start up a dead pool?" department.

Canonical's Ticking Time Clock
Given Canonical's history of abandoned users and product announcements that come up short in execution, Shuttleworth's most recent goal of 200 million users by 2015 doesn't compute. There's simply no path from "declining OS vendor" to "competing on an equal footing with Microsoft, Apple and Google." It's the sort of rhetoric a CEO would say to rally the troops, but it's become obvious that it's already too late. [more]

How can you kill that which is already dead?

[gmhowell]

More accurately, how can you kill that which was never alive? Seriously, this is like creating a Frankenstein's monster, hooking it up to a defibrillator and heart/lung machine and calling it 'alive'.

Re:

[tomhudson]

Well, viruses that infect people are technically not living things, but we still say we "kill" them, even though we don't actually do that - just denature them at best by applying heat, etc.

But I think your description of "a Frankenstein's monster, hooked up to a defibrillator and heart/lung machine" might come close to where Canonical is heading.

experiment always work, even when they fail

[kermidge]

Sad to say, I think you've nailed it. Nicely written, as well.

I liked Ubuntu when I first started using it, oh, about six years back. With few hiccups, it just worked, let me do what I wanted including whatever customizations I preferred (little things I'd long done on Windows - thickened the window borders, embiggened the mouse cursor, got the fonts and their sizing to my liking, etc.) I'd looked into half a dozen distros going back to Xandros; Ubuntu was one of a few I'd set up for dual-boot and kept p

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[tomhudson]

Thanks for the compliment.

I know what you mean about "my enthusiasm for diving under the hood is waning". At some point, it's just repetitive - switch distro, figure out how to get back what you've lost, time passes, switch distro, repeat ...

In one way, though, it's a good thing, because it prevents us from getting all ossified and seeing only one distro's "one true way of doing things." For example, since switching form suse to fedora, there are a few things I like (and a few I don't) that I kind of w

Re:

[kermidge]

Yeah, the struggle amongst aware, comfortable, and in a rut can be... fun. (As in: I was helping a friend with haying, stacking bales on the trailer. After a few runs up and down the field I asked him if it was time for lunch anytime soon. He looked back, laughed, said "You having fun yet?")

A couple times per year I'll haul down some .ISOs and take 'em for a spin in VirtualBox so's to see what's going on. Every so often a nice surprise, such as Zorin, done by a high school kid in France. I'm gonna wai

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[tomhudson]

Well, you're working on something.

Not really - it's one thing to write a quick post, another to stare at code for hours on end. My stupid eyes won't let me do the latter any more because of retinopathy, so I've been taxing my brain trying to figure out if there's life after coding, and if so, what it looks like.

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[kermidge]

Yeah. I had meant that comment in good spirit and faith. I've been wanting to say something possibly useful to your post on bleeding eyeballs; having a few visual devils of my own to deal with I feel more than just a bit of empathy, but every time I tried to compose something in my head it came out limned somewheres as vacuous, patronizing, or fatuous. Oops. (Not the most inspiring inscription I could have chosen for my tombstone, but certainly the most accurate. [grin])

Hmm. Something to do... Politic

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[tomhudson]

I was thinking of making another run at politics, but it really IS messy, dirty, sleazy (it's been noted that it's the most corrupt jurisdiction in the western world - beats anything in the US, and we have several ongoing corruption probes), so that's not exactly my cup of tea.

I really, really hate giving up. I'm thinking that maybe some of the funk I'm in is a side effect of the blood pressure medication I was taking. I'm going to try something a bit different on the coding side and see what comes of

Canonical

[Tet]

Heh. I read this a few days ago, but I hadn't noticed that you'd written it. I agree with nearly all of it. It's not a viable business, and there's only so long Shuttleworth can keep bankrolling it. Personally, I think it's a weak excuse for a distribution, too.

Re:

[tomhudson]

Thanks for the positive feedback. However, it doesn't address the real issue directly - that most open source doesn't have a valid financial model.

It's one reason why Linus did his "you should do everyone a favour and just kill yourselves" rant against opensuse - the resources that *could* be used to develop something that works properly are spread among far to many distros and projects, and none of them is in a position to spend what it takes to fix the problems, because they won't get a ROI on it - eve

Re:

[Tet]

I am stuck with a linux desktop that can't talk to my camcorder, scanner (though the linux-compatible printer now *finally* works), etc.

To be fair, those things are rarely due to resources being spread too thinly or duplicated efforts elsewhere and are far more commonly caused by patents, obstructive vendors and unethical business practices. Apple gets around this by paying the vendors, which simply isn't an option for most Linux distributions.

Red Hat seem to have a pretty good business model when it com