Shuttleworth Challenged Over Mir Comments

[hiryu]

Several distributions tried to support Unity, but decided against it after it became clear that it would be a huge effort to separate it from Ubuntu specific code paths, dependencies, and assumptions. This is exactly why people are concerned about Mir, and why cross-distribution standards are so important. Wayland is designed not be locked into a single vendor, while Canonical's projects are. So it is Canonical's fault, in so much as it was their design decisions that made doing like you suggested immensely impractical. Canonical has the right to do this, but it is you who are spreading FUD when you say it is purely up to the other distributions to go with either Unity or Mir. And for me personally, this is why I do not think it is the right thing to do.

Plus it does NOT offer all the software that the other distributions offer - for instance, systemd which Shuttleworth dreads so much, despite the fact that it is not tied to any one distribution like Unity or Mir.

To be fair, didn't Redhat just kind of go "SURPRISE! SYSTEMD! We're not using upstart anymore!". Maybe my understanding of the events is incorrect, however.

I have written some upstart scripts, but I'm by no means a guru. I don't really know anything about systemd yet except it seems to be linux-only (which is why the gentoo guys have OpenRC, right?), but upstart seems to be a pretty decent piece of software. That said, I do think Mark is waaay overreacting to that particular situation, and you're right, it isn't a single distro solution. He acts like upstart was a display server or something...

[Hamish Wilson]

I really have no idea how systemd was announced. My point was simply to say that Ubuntu does not have all the same software that other distros have, and that sytemd is not a single distro solution.

[hiryu]

Like this?

http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.1/qtd...allicense.html

Yep, see that LGPL2.1 link in there? See the GPLv3 link in there right next to it? Read them and note the difference between them. Here, I'll even make it easy for you and provide the links:

http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.1/qtdoc/lgpl.html

http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.1/qtdoc/gpl.html

Digia lets you choose either the GPLv3 or the more permissive LGPL. Can't complain.

Next, ask yourself, what's more permissive? LGPL or GPLv3?

You're trying to make a point about the commercial license, but this is entirely irrelevant. You'll notice not one complaint that anyone has made about Mir's licensing is relating to the commercial license (except maybe to make it clear that their choice of GPLv3 is such that anyone with a commercial interest in Mir would have to purchase a license, which is fine in and of itself), but the open license. The point about asymmetry is about what people using the open source license are able to do with the software vs the company that primarily develops said software. Not to mention I already *explicitly* mentioned that the commercial license would also be restrictive.

But thanks for playing.

[Alex Sarmiento]

Several distributions tried to support Unity, but decided against it after it became clear that it would be a huge effort to separate it from Ubuntu specific code paths, dependencies, and assumptions. This is exactly why people are concerned about Mir, and why cross-distribution standards are so important. Wayland is designed not be locked into a single vendor, while Canonical's projects are. So it is Canonical's fault, in so much as it was their design decisions that made doing like you suggested immensely impractical. Canonical has the right to do this, but it is you who are spreading FUD when you say it is purely up to the other distributions to go with either Unity or Mir. And for me personally, this is why I do not think it is the right thing to do.

Plus it does NOT offer all the software that the other distributions offer - for instance, systemd which Shuttleworth dreads so much, despite the fact that it is not tied to any one distribution like Unity or Mir.

I kind of blame Gnome for that. Gnome 3 was, and still is, awful to begin with. I am very thankful that Canonical decided to make their own gnome shell and their own toolkit customizations, that i think are very nice, without depending on the nonsensical decisions from the gnome developers. Really, fuck off gnome developers. Linux Mint did the same and they too are dropping their dependency on gnome.Fortunately KDE was there too., So now that you mention it, is even more understandable what Canonical is doing by taking its own direction.

As for systemd, i think that is very nice and superior to upstart. It would be nice for Ubuntu to use it. But in the other hand is not really necessary , you really can live without it . Upstart is good enough. But these are very low level system software that most people should not be aware of.

About the asymmetry of the license, that sounds like pure rationalization. If you are a developer that is interested in open source software, that should not be any problem at all. I am sure this particular critic is not really about any kind of misbehavior from Canonical against the open source community . So i do not get the complains. So, when you say "developers" you are really saying Companies interested in selling proprietary software .

[Hamish Wilson]

I kind of blame Gnome for that.

Funny that you can blame Gnome for the fact that Unity does not work well on other distros...

[Alex Sarmiento]

Funny that you can blame Gnome for the fact that Unity does not work well on other distros...

Gnome, by design, does not work in any distribution! Gnome 3 is simply unusable . By the way, i was able to install Unity in arch and opensuse thanks to community made packages without any trouble . It required only a few patched packages like gtk plus some non patched ones . This is not the official way, but that is far from being impossible and not able to work. I swear i prefer this a million times than gnome-3

[Hamish Wilson]

Gnome, by design, does not work in any distribution! Gnome 3 is simply unusable.

Now look who is a hater spreading FUD.

By the way, i was able to install Unity in arch and opensuse thanks to community made packages without any trouble . It required only a few patched packages like gtk plus some non patched ones . This is not the official way, but that is far from being impossible and not able to work.

Well, I never said it was impossible, just a lot of work, in accordance to what both Fedora and OpenSUSE contributors observed:

http://ostatic.com/blog/fedora-opensuse-give-up-on-unity

And if the following is to be believed, some of the problems have been resolved, but others a liable to crop up:

http://lwn.net/Articles/566250/

It is far from a level playing field when it comes to other distributions wanting to support it.