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Mark Shuttleworth Tries To Lure OpenSUSE Devs
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Nov 25, 2006 10:38 PM
from the trolling-for-talent dept.
from the trolling-for-talent dept.
polar_bear` writes "A lot of developers are angry at Novell for its deal with Microsoft, but is it fair game for other vendors to try to capitalize on dissatisfaction with Novell? Apparently, Mark Shuttleworth thinks so. Shuttleworth sent an invitation to the openSUSE developers list inviting developers 'concerned about the long term consequences' of Novell's deal to participate in Ubuntu Open Week and consider jumping ship to Ubuntu. OpenSUSE and Ubuntu developers are not amused."
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OpenSUSE Opens Up To Questions About the Microsoft Deal 288 comments
NewsForge is reporting on the recent IRC meeting that the OpenSUSE team held to answer a few questions about the controversial deal between Novell and Microsoft. The most prominent questions are highlighted and the complete IRC log is available from the article while the questions that didn't make the discussion will be posted on the OpenSUSE wiki.
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Mark Shuttleworth Tries To Lure OpenSUSE Devs
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Bad Call (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Your Bad Call was... (Score:5, Informative)
Ubuntu is sort of close... but by refusing to have anything proprietary it will never "just work" because graphics drivers and such aren't free as in beer yet.
Ubuntu 7.04 will have proprietary drivers installed by default to make way for AIGLX and Compiz or Beryl. And they are free as in beer, but they're not free as in speech.
There's a pretty big controversy a-brewin' at the wiki [ubuntu.com] about the decision, but I think it's justified. Some compromises have to be made in order to survive a proprietary world, and it's still primarily free software. I don't want Ubuntu to be left behind as the last major OS without a compositing window manager after Vista launches. What really concerns me is how this'll go over after the Kororaa controversy.
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't have an open mailing list for OpenSUSE if you don't want to deal with sometimes unwanted comments.
Nu-uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, I don't see why this is 'un-Linuxy'. Competition helps OSS thrive, and if you can convince developers to work on your project, why wouldn't you?
Re:The GPL is a Virus (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday September 12 2006, @03:31PM)
Derivative works of copyrighted works are not allowed at all without permission of the copyright holder anyways... the fact that the copyright holder says that derivative works can be freely created without royalty as long as they are put under the same license is not denying anybody any rights they would have otherwise had. People who bitch about how viral the GPL is should take a long hard look at this fact.
Besides, since the GPL's strength comes from Copyright, and Copyright can't protect ideas, so there's nothing to stop you from learning something from a GPL'd work and then reimplementing the ideas yourself, free of any constraints of the GPL, as long as you don't actually copy any previously copyrighted content that was covered by the GPL (but that has more to do with copyright than the GPL).
Re:Nu-uh (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday November 03, @04:58AM)
The Free Software Foundation has a whole bunch about the whole rewards mentality, but it really boils down to this: If a developer for OpenSuSE is obligated, then they cannot do their best work and will likely be far more counterproductive. This is because obligation to a "leader" (whatever the form of business, whether OSS or not) is feudal in nature and feudal systems emphasize pleasing the leader of the moment, rather than doing what needs to get done. The only way to do what needs to get done is to eliminate all feudal and monarchistic elements from the project.
(The Linux kernel is not an exception, because most of the modules that Linus ends up approving or disapproving have existed for some time and have an established track record. They were not developed to be pleasing to him, they were developed because it needed to get done. Those projects Linus turns down from the vanilla kernel often lead perfectly happy lives and are routinely patched in by assorted distros anyway.)
So the head of Ubuntu is trying to "poach" developers whose code SuSE will likely end up using anyway, as opposed to them being at SuSE and Ubuntu using the code if released. Big wah. It really doesn't impact SuSE, since they can still use the code developed. If it's not the code SuSE wanted done but nobody else thinks that SuSE's idea was worth coding for, then perhaps it was no big loss. If the idea was good, then the developers will develop it anyway. The only loser in this is whoever picks a scoring system that makes them lose.
Would I like it if people poached coders from my Open Source projects? Actually, yes. The SOBs rarely contribute anything as it is. I'd far prefer it if those who aren't interested left and those who were interested joined. It would make life much easier and progress much swifter.
Would I have always felt like that? Well, no, but the meds help a lot.
Re:Nu-uh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, like when Linus posted about Linux on the Minix list?
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3675.html)
Um, what? Who made you the authority on what OSS is "about"?
Also you contradict yourself. You say "OSS is about choice". News flash: Jumping ship is about choice. Mark Shuttleworth is reminding the openSUSE devs of one of the choices available to them.
Also, OSS is very much about attracting developers. Projects without developers don't go anywhere. Projects that have developers do, almost without regard to technical merit (cf. PHP)
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://jlarocco.com/)
So, let me get this straight. The openSUSE developers are smart enough to work on openSUSE, smart enough to be welcome to other distros, but too stupid to realize they can work on another distro if they want to?
Whatever OSS is about, Shuttleworth comes off as condescending. The openSUSE developers aren't idiots. If they're unhappy with Novell, they don't need to be reminded of their options.
Newsflash: Ubuntu is currently one of the most popular Linux distros around. They're not exactly hurting for developers. Certainly not enough to necessitate stealing developers from other distros.
With Ubuntu's questionable inclusion of non-GPL, "binary blob" and closed source drivers, maybe Shuttleworth should worry more about his own distro, and let the openSUSE developers worry about theirs.
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.whenpenguinsattack.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday February 22 2003, @10:59AM)
Not stupid, just ignorant of other options. As long as he wasn't an asshole about it, I see it as fair.
It seems to me that many of the complaints here are due to fear. You are afraid people will actually take him up on the offer.
"With Ubuntu's questionable inclusion of non-GPL, "binary blob" and closed source drivers, maybe Shuttleworth should worry more about his own distro, and let the openSUSE developers worry about theirs."
What you don't realize is that this is the only way a linux distribution has a chance at competing with Windows. Shuttleworth is a (smart) businessman and knows this as well.
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://grey.drunkencoders.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday September 06 2006, @02:54AM)
I read it as "Hi. If you are unhappy with Novell right now, I would like to extend an offer to join the Ubuntu project, as we are having developer sessions soon, which might be up your alley."
Microsoft developer community? (Score:4, Funny)
No - it would do the opposite.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No? Didn't think so either.
GNOME is funded by *everybody* (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://eklitzke.org/)
For better or for worse, GTK is a very attractive GUI toolkit for commercial developers to code with. Hence, Sun, Redhat, and (recently) Novell all write their apps in GTK and use Gnome for the desktop environment. In fact, until very recently Suse was a holdout to this rule, and was very KDE and Qt centric. I would wager that Gnome has seen much more code from Redhat (and Sun) than it has from Novell. And Gnome is still very much a free desktop environment.
As an aside, I would like to point out that despite great protest from KDE fans, it looks like Gnome is winning the desktop wars. Trolltech aside, Gnome and GTK have the most commercial support behind them, and that support is really translating into a huge amount of momentum for Gnome. I have long been a Gnome user, and I remember just a few years ago when the number of KDE users vastly outweighed the number of Gnome users, and now it seems just the opposite. Given this trend, and they heavy investment that Canonical has made in Gnome, it really doesn't make sense for them to switch desktop environments.
New distro (Score:5, Funny)
I'd call it STFU linux.
--
Sometimes people are as stupid as they look.
STUFAD (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.gamemaker.nu/)
Re:New distro (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.malti.org/)
one word for Novell: "consequences" (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.telegraphics.com.au/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 06, @03:35PM)
What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.stox.org/)
No big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://ninenine.com/)
Re:No big deal (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No big deal (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3675.html)
And yet it happens enough to cause projects like Linux, KDE, GNOME, OpenBSD, Apache, and so on, to get off the ground. Get used to it.
Michael clearly understands that $20m $368m (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't see the problem (Score:2)
That being said, I see no problem with this. With the likelihood of developers on the project scratching their heads and wondering what they should do, he extended an invitation. It's up to them whether to accept. It isn't surprised that some on both sides would disapprove and feel threatened.
I can see where some would think this is in bad taste, but letting them know they have a place to go if they want one is a good thing IMO.
More developers is good... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Informative)
Misunderstanding? (Score:1)
But then, I'm rather ignorant of the politics between distros, so perhaps I missed something . . .
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.metapenguin.org/)
On the other hand, as you will find out if you follow all those links in TFA+TFS, it appears *someone* at Ubuntu decided to ship binary drivers by default (!) in the next version of the OS. Now that is just wrong, for so many reasons. In any case, it doesn't show Ubuntu a pure-FOSS supporting distro. Some claim the decision was made with little or no community input.
And while the Novell/Microsoft deal is little more than corporate FUD, the binary driver issue and the world's most popular desktop disto's handling of the matter, is crucial. We need to pressure the hardware companies to release drivers, and Ubuntu may soon brutally undermine those efforts.
Mark, leave openSuse alone and do something about the binary driver issue. Please.
Mark Shuttleworth is filtering messages (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday August 16 2004, @09:50AM)
Response (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://fabioaquotte.com/)
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/20
Jury still out on this for me... (Score:1, Interesting)
-Recent announcements that closed source drivers would be default installed in Feisty Fawn is a concern for me, this is truly the edge of the slippery slope in some respects.
-The debacle with the art team and Edgy Eft (somewhat explained but I felt maybe a little too much of the SABDFL side was employed, similar to the proprietary drivers in Feisty)
-Now the open letter to OpenSUSE devs, that depending on how you read it might come across as a little disengenuous?
I can't say I'm totally turned off on Ubuntu, and the beauty of Linux is that there is always a distro to scratch your itch, but I am now waiting to see how Mark and Co handle the next few weeks/months to follow up with some of this behavior. I'm not jumping off any cliffs and I am definitely not assuming the worst about all of these things, but they do give me reason to pause.
For the first time in a while I'm distro shopping again, have to see how my laptop likes Fedora Core 6 one of these days. Or maybe things will play out and I"ll be handing out Feisty Fawn CDs to friends, time will tell...
Hold off? (Score:2)
Maybe join one of the independent projects that support all distros if you really disagree....?
-m
Relax, people (Score:1)
They forgot to link to... (Score:2, Informative)
FOSS is not to be fragile (Score:2)
(http://www.process64.com/)
Perhaps Novell made one, perhaps it did not; it depends on your perspective. But should that one action cause such wide-spread criticism, and calls to abandon the distro and the developers who worked behind it? Even while I have no comment on whether the Novell-MS deal was appropriate, I feel such a reaction is very sad. Is Open Source so fragile?? A fully commercial vendor meanwhile can make its mistakes, learn from it, correct it, move on.
For all the work the guys at Novell have put in (Gnome, Mono,
I have been a SUSE user for many years now, and _personally_ I find it the best. I have never really contributed to openSUSE, now I am thinking about how I can help the team in any small way I can.
Why (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Corel/Microsoft & Novell/Microsoft - look deep (Score:5, Informative)
(http://lotusleafslinks.tuxfamily.org/)
If so, I would hope openSUSE developers would be more concerned about this, rather than a clearly *open* offer from Shuttleworth. I used SUSE for several years prior to Novell coming into the SUSE picture, before I switched to Ubuntu Linux.
I said it before and I'll say it again, I think Mr. Shuttleworth is brilliant.
Look, if Microsoft wanted to bring Windows and Linux together, why didn't they do it when they partnered with Corel around six years ago? (if, indeed, it was a partnership, correct me if I'm wrong please) Does anyone remember Corel Linux? It, like Ubuntu, was a Debian based Linux distribution, with an easy to use graphical installer! And this was around six years ago! (There was even a Corel Linux for Dummies book, check Amazon dot com and see for yourself) Anyone who wants to gain an enlightened perspective can google about Corel Linux and Microsoft and inform themselves. Here are a few important articles:
"Corel Sells Out To Microsoft" [forbes.com]
"Interview: Corel's Linux VP on the Microsoft deal" [cnn.com] @ CNN 10/16/2000
"Microsoft Faces New Antitrust Probe Over Corel Deal" [washingtonpost.com]
"Government lawyers want to know more about a deal in which Microsoft gave Corel, perhaps best known for its WordPerfect program, $135 million in exchange for 24 million shares of Corel stock last October." "After the investment, Corel announced it would retreat from developing software designed to run on the Linux operating system, which competes with Microsoft's Windows operating system." - quotes source [washingtonpost.com]
"Microsoft Litigation" [groklaw.net] List - Educate yourself
I ask you: Who do YOU trust?
Do you want open meetings and discussions? Isn't that what an open source community thrives on? Or do you want secret meetings?
For those of you who would rather crack chair throwing or developer jokes and ignore the issue, read for yourself in an interview with Bill Gates dated 11/17/2006 where he mentions Novell, indemnification, and the word pioneering all in the same reponse to a question:
"Gates on Vista, Linux and more" [com.com]
History repeats itself, and I believe, in my opinion, we're seeing it happen right now. IMO the Corel/Microsoft events in history should not be ignored. In fact, I suggest they be looked at again closely and compared to the present Novell/Microsoft events for educational purposes.
How this looks to me (Score:1)
It is a positive development. (Score:1)
(http://www.nojailforpot.com/)
I have a fantasy in which OpenSuse collapses and the Novell BOD comes to its senses, fires Hovsepian, and repudiates the deal with MS. I would love to see something like this because I like Suse a lot.
blog quote made me lol (Score:5, Funny)
his emphasis
Ok, there's two, warring stereotypes here. First:
Did anyone else picture that being posted by Sir Fauntleroy Etherbottom III directly after his monocle flew right off into the crumpets?
"I dare say, this Shuttleworth fellow is the worst kind of bounder. This sort of thing is just not done!"
Second:
"Stuff like what Mark did"
Ok, Cletus, simmer down! Y'know cousin Mark ain't been right lately, not since his ol' smell hound done up and runned off.
Wonder what Miguel thinks about that... (Score:1, Insightful)
Peter.
Infighting within the linux communities... (Score:3, Insightful)
Developers! (Score:1)
(http://hiranyaloka.com/)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_AP3SGMxxM [youtube.com]
Relax (Score:2)