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."
I wonder... (Score:1, Interesting)
Mark Shuttleworth is filtering messages (Score:4, Interesting)
Response (Score:5, Interesting)
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/20
Re:Microsoft developer community? (Score:1, Interesting)
Most Microsoft developers don't realize that it's only a matter of time before Mr. Ballmer and friends show up to claim their work as Microsoft IP. That's no joke. Microsoft does not play nice with anyone. [PERIOD]
They *will* subtly change the MSDN licenses (they have already) such that *anything* you produce *will* be theirs
Time will tell all. Anyone who has not judged them or is not aware of their (Microsoft's) previous actions is doomed and/or a fool.
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...
Re:What's the problem? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nu-uh (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Interesting)
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:3, Interesting)
GNOME is funded by *everybody* (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bad Call (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
Re:Nu-uh (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, I am not a Ubuntu dev, so I may be wrong ,but from my short research:
I, for one, think they did the right thing. And the moment anyone produce a decent gfx card (say, can play A Tale in the desert and Savage 2), I will be moving to those gfx cards. Until then, I'm stuck with Nvidia or ATI.
Re:Your Bad Call was... (Score:2, Interesting)
And if that means that you have to compromise the licensing on someone else's code then that's a sacrifice that you are willing to make, right? Why not go the whole hog and just pirate Windows?
For reference: http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.h
"Closed source Linux kernel modules are illegal."
"Closed source Linux kernel modules are unworkable."
"Closed source Linux kernel modules are unethical."
Re:Your Bad Call was... (Score:1, Interesting)
WTF? Did you even follow the link, or do you have some criteria by which Greg Kroah-Hartman isn't a major kernel contributor?
It IS true that Linux has stated that in his PERSONAL opinion it is POSSIBLE for a non-derived module to exist as long as it wasn't "written with Linux in mind" (Reference: http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/3/228 [lkml.org]) but he certainly doesn't claim to speak for all major Linux contributors even to that extent.
Now if you actually have ANY source to support Linus or all major kernel contributors supporting all the proprietary crap in Ubuntu (principally wireless card drivers and increasingly graphic card drivers too) then how about you cite them? How about you apologise for the slur against Greg too?