Mark Shuttleworth Tries To Lure OpenSUSE Devs 258
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."
Bad Call (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bad Call (Score:2, Insightful)
Folks at Ubuntu should borrow a leaf from Xandros and Freespire. These distributions actually work as advertised.
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Insightful)
one word for Novell: "consequences" (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
No big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Bad Call (Score:5, Insightful)
Michael clearly understands that $20m $368m (Score:1, Insightful)
No - it would do the opposite.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No? Didn't think so either.
More developers is good... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Insightful)
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:1, Insightful)
I'm getting tired of people saying that OSS is about freedom of choice, and then blasting other developers in the next sentence over choices they've made.
Wonder what Miguel thinks about that... (Score:1, Insightful)
Peter.
Why (Re:Microsoft developer community?) (Score:2, Insightful)
As for Shuttleworth, its about bloody time he piped down from his grand standing and actually got his damn distribution working correctly out of the box rather than jumping on every Microsoft and competitior bashing bandwagon that goes past his doorway, and instead, actually correct the deficiencies in his distribution; like the lack of WPA configuration and setup - no wpa-gui sucks, its broken and doesn't work.
The day I can dump a ditribution on his oh-so-generic laptop (Toshiba A100) and everything works out of the box, without distorted sound, constant wireless network dropping - then Linux will have made a success on the desktop, until then, it'll be relegated to the server and the desktops of those with way too much time on their hands.
Yeah, I'll get marked down, and a jihad declared on my ass because I *dare* question the almighty penguin agenda, but for christ sake, part of being an adult is accepting praise as well as acknowledging deficiencies and correcting them as they arrise - something which the Linux/OpenSource community is no very good at.
Infighting within the linux communities... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad Call (Score:3, Insightful)
This is about Freedom, not money. (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft has to, somehow, put a cage around it. It can be a big cage. It can be a HUGE cage. But Microsoft needs to put a cage around it.
Microsoft is trying that with this "patent agreement". It (with Novell's support) splits FOSS into two groups: "Microsoft supported" and "lawyers may sue you".
That gives Microsoft another chance to move the people from the "lawyers may sue you" group into the "Microsoft supported" group. And once they're there, they're in the cage and Microsoft can alter the rules how ever they want, whenever they want.
Which is why I have a problem with Novell's "patent agreement" with Microsoft. Particularly with how Novell is marketing it in Europe where they are pushing the "patent protection" as an important "feature" of SuSE.
Seems to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Each of us must decide if the Novell/Microsoft deal changed the way we fundamentally view Novell and Suse. That is even more true of anyone developing a platform that is a part of this deal.
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Insightful)
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, Insightful)
Don't have an open mailing list for OpenSUSE if you don't want to deal with sometimes unwanted comments.
Re:The GPL is a Virus (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Bad Call (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, like when Linus posted about Linux on the Minix list?
Re:Why (Re:Microsoft developer community?) (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Who ever the coward who marked me down, show your face, or are you yet another Linux fanboy unwilling to accept a little criticism of your beloved OS; I have no love for Windows, Linux or what have you; I use what gets the job done, out of the box, with minimum work required; and if Windows does that, then so be it; stop the religious jihad, and start focusing on the problems.
2) Why isn't that WPA information on the ubuntu website? the ubuntu documentation is absolutely crap - would I help out to fix it up? yeap, but not if it requires me to jump through hundreds of hoops just to get something in there.
3) The ipw3945 driver has been available for quite some time; sure, you can distribute the firmware, but there is nothing stopping a distribution like Fedora from including it with their kernel binary; also, why don't they set things up so that when the firmware is installed, you don't need to edit 1/2 dozen files just to make sure that the regulatory daemon loads before the wpa_supplicant, but at the same time, ensuring that the wpa_supplicant is excuted before the eth1-up script is executed.
Its about making sure that your configuration is wise enough to take into account when new drivers are added, and how to handle those new drivers that have been added, so that the different parts are loaded in the correct order - if MacOS X, Windows and others can do the job, why can't Linux?
4) The problem with Linux, more correctly UNIX is that documentation maintainers make grand assumptions, assuming that everyone has atleast 2 years of UNIX under their belt and a keen interest in tinkering around with their system to get things working - the fact is, those who are like me, sure, we have the technical know how, but at the same time, we don't want to sit there for ages trying to get something working, we just want to follow some instructions, and voila, it works.
Mark the astronaut is simply jealous (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember when Mr. Shuttleworth was calling for developers to improve the looks of Ubuntu? Well this is the same call. Let's get them when they are pissed. They got evident skills.
Re:Mark Shuttleworth is filtering messages (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're trying to communicate with him directly, then the right method is email. If you're trying to make a personal public message then the right forum is your own blog (or something like slashdot.)
Re:GNOME is funded by *everybody* (Score:3, Insightful)
Gnome will be winning the desktop wars when Linux starts winning the desktop wars, and there are no signs that we're even making any progress in this area. As much as Linux is growing, the fact that companies are writing more apps in GTK isn't a sign of Gnome's superiority or even progress in this area as it's still mostly servers and specialty machines.
KDE or Gnome it doesn't matter. They maybe the leper with the most fingers, but they still can't wipe their ass. Whether companies choose to ship Gnome as the default desktop or not it makes no difference, because none of them are succeeding on the merits of being a general purpose desktop OS.
Re:Infighting within the linux communities... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad Call (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I realize that completely. Regardless, distributing binary drivers is in a grey area concerning GPL compliance. Which was my point originally. Shuttleworth/Ubuntu doesn't necessarily have the moral high ground when it comes to GPL adherence.
Re:Your Bad Call was... (Score:3, Insightful)
O, Tempora! O, Mores!
Re:Open is not an invitation to be a jerk (Score:3, Insightful)
Either way, Mark Shuttleworth wasn't being malicious. He wasn't trying to offend anyone. Moral rights are subjective things, and clearly this didn't offend his own morals, so he wasn't abusing anyone's trust.
Re:Bad Call (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bad Call (Score:3, Insightful)
Posting about Linux on the Minix list is more akin to posting about Kubuntu or Xubuntu on the Ubuntu lists, or about Ubuntu on the Debian lists , or about Mandrake on the Red Hat lists (when the projects were first started, that is). When derivatives start there's always going to be an announcement on the origional list or no one will know about the derivative.
Ubuntu, however, is not even remotely an offshoot of OpenSuse. Ubuntu also already has a thriving community and the OpenSuse developers already know about it. They know their options, there's no real need to advertise.
Re:Bad Call (Score:2, Insightful)
Because it has nothing to do with the development of OpenSuse. The developers list is like OpenSuse's office. You don't go into GM headquarters and hang flyers asking engineers to work for Toyota, that's just not cool.
If someone made project related to OpenSuse, or maybe a fork and said, "Hey, look what I'm starting, help me out if you want" cool. If someone says "Hey, look at these project that's existed for 3 years and has a thriving community, why don't you help us instead" that leaves a bitter taste. It's all about context.
Of course it's fair game (Score:3, Insightful)
Spamming the list with repeated messages would be wrong, as would making threats, lying, etc. I don't see how a single, polite invitation to switch groups would be wrong at almost any time, though.
Re:Mark Shuttleworth is filtering messages (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nu-uh (Score:4, Insightful)