Intel Reverts Plans, Will Not Support Ubuntu's XMir

[Serge]

Well reading the article and most of the comments here at the thread and also watching the Mir developing story all summer long leaves me an unpleasant taste in my mouth about Canonical but not only for it.

Guys keep in mind that we are talking about companies and not sole developers!
Companies run after profit. They take decisions considering how they will gain more profit short term and long term. Market share and all these widely known stuff.
Please stop talking about ''contributions'' from companies to OSS code! They invest not contribute!!
If a company writes code for FOSS it is because it wants to take advantage and make profits from the particular OSS project because the company cannot maintain it by itself only. So it needs the community and the gift is that we can get the software free until the company finds a way to make it its own child or take advantage of the existing code tree and fork it...
That's almost the story of Canonical for Mir... They coded a bit for Wayland and when they decided to make their own child they just forked it took advantage from the community work there and voila Mir!
Very bad behavior to the community to say the least...

I am an AMD satisfied generally user both on CPU and GPU (mostly now with LK3.11 and R600g improved driver which I use RHD5850) for my desktop but I have to say that Intel surprised me well with this decision.
Only the way seems to be unprofessional as a previous folk said and a bit like taking revenge for something but the point is that Canonical must raise on its own their new child! Correct in my opinion... They brought a not needed fragmentation for the community (but obviously needed for their profits and plans) and they must support it by themselves.

You are absolutely correct in that entities that utilize open source code are not obligated to contribute code back upstream. When these entities are companies with money and coders employed, it's a nice, polite thing for them to do, but by no means is it required of them. However, at the least it is expected that they do not actively take action that results in harm to these communities.

Canonical's OS is built almost entirely out of community code (in this sense I am using community in a greater sense that basically includes everyone outside Canonical, including other companies). Only a few small parts of it are written by Canonical (highly visible to us when we use Ubuntu, of course - we interact directly with programs like LightDM and Unity - but ultimately this is still only a small part of what is Ubuntu). It is entirely justifiable for community members to be upset at Canonical, whose primary product exists due to the work of the community, when Canonical makes decisions that hurt the community.

[bwat47]

Completely different situation. Intel not using Gallium or whatever doesn't fragment the entire Linux Desktop ecosystem the way Canonical's Mir does.

And regarding the intel gallium situation, its not like they even 'invented something' to use instead of gallium, they've just continued using the architecture that they were already using before gallium even existed, because they are happy with it and the driver is mature.

[matel]

The real victim(s)

The real victim(s): the Intel dev(s) who made the patches. He/she/they thought implementing support was a good idea to spend some time on. After all the work was done, management came to tell that all that work was useless and had to be reverted. I guess you all can agree that this kind of management style is very unmotivating for the dev(s). If management did not want support for XMir, they had to tell their employees in advance. Not after all the work was done. It seems Intel management is abusing their workforce for strategical reasons: to spread FUD regarding Canonical's plans to conqueror the mobile device market.

I really hope some technology company sees this opportunity. I guess there are Intel devs who are open for a new carreer opportunity.

[MartinN]

Maybe Mark/Canonical has the money to hire a gpu driver developer to maintain their own subtree/patches. In a sense, they had to expect this kind of response from Intel, and probably NVidia and AMD soon.

Either way, this only re-confirms the strategic misstep Canonical made by opting for Mir/XMir, particularly in the face of no technical merit/advantage of Mir over Wayland/Weston.

Google has done the same thing with Android, but they have the muscle to pull it off. Let's hope Canonical does too.

As for mobile, iOS and Android are going to remain dominant for a while. In my view, there's still room for one more player to cut out a piece of the market - perhaps Sailfish and/or Tizen... but I definitely do not see Ubuntu becoming relevant in the mobile space anytime soon.

[valeriodean]

The real victim(s): the Intel dev(s) who made the patches. He/she/they thought implementing support was a good idea to spend some time on. After all the work was done, management came to tell that all that work was useless and had to be reverted. I guess you all can agree that this kind of management style is very unmotivating for the dev(s). If management did not want support for XMir, they had to tell their employees in advance. Not after all the work was done. It seems Intel management is abusing their workforce for strategical reasons: to spread FUD regarding Canonical's plans to conqueror the mobile device market.

I really hope some technology company sees this opportunity. I guess there are Intel devs who are open for a new carreer opportunity.

Pretty much the opposite: merging a work that help another server display, that is in competition with the one developed by your company, without ASK to your command chain, is more a mistake of that dev than an error of the management.

[Kano]

When you look at the SIZE of the patch then it is something that Canonical could easyly maintain in their repository. The biggest single file had 179 lines - i don't see that critical. Most likely Intel does not want that the devs use Ubuntu and try it

Btw. the Intel vs AMD comparision with socket 1150 vs AM3+ CPU is very stupid. The TDP is for CPU+GPU, that means you need to compare it against an APU. Intel 1150 boards need about 10w now with Haswell idle - as long as you use a basic board and a good psu (not overpowered). Thats impossible to reach when you need to add a gfx card.

[dee.]

Maybe Mark/Canonical has the money to hire a gpu driver developer to maintain their own subtree/patches. In a sense, they had to expect this kind of response from Intel, and probably NVidia and AMD soon.

Either way, this only re-confirms the strategic misstep Canonical made by opting for Mir/XMir, particularly in the face of no technical merit/advantage of Mir over Wayland/Weston.

Google has done the same thing with Android, but they have the muscle to pull it off. Let's hope Canonical does too.

As for mobile, iOS and Android are going to remain dominant for a while. In my view, there's still room for one more player to cut out a piece of the market - perhaps Sailfish and/or Tizen... but I definitely do not see Ubuntu becoming relevant in the mobile space anytime soon.

There's room for more than one competitors on the mobile market... if you consider that only about 50-60% of phones are currently smartphones, that means the smartphone market has room to grow to almost twice its current size. There's an emerging low-end-smartphone market, which will eventually replace all or almost all dumbphones.

I predict that Firefox OS will take most of the low-end smartphone market, while Tizen & Sailfish will compete with Android for the midlevel market. iOS is pretty much already just on the high-end market and falling already even there, except for USA where Apple is over-represented for political reasons (patent warfare, friendly courts). The high-end market will probably be contested by Sailfish, Android and iOS.

If Ubuntu plays their cards right, they might be able to compete with Firefox OS for some of the low-end market. That would require Canonical to start making some actually smart decisions for a chance. I really sincerely hope for that to happen, but I'm not keeping my hopes up too much... probably, Ubuntu will remain a niche OS on the mobile, mostly for geeks who load it on their phones themselves.

Windows phone? I'm not even going to mention it. It's a dead platform, same as blackberry or webOS.

[matel]

Pretty much the opposite: merging a work that help another server display, that is in competition with the one developed by your company, without ASK to your command chain, is more a mistake of that dev than an error of the management.

I don't think there are much devs in the world that need to get permission first for everything they code. Remember, devs are scarce on the job market. If a company requires a dev to ask everything first, chances are high the dev will leave the company soon.

Update: also note the patch is very small. They did not coded for weeks on this...

[M1kkko]

But if this trend continues and idiotic companies and idividual start screwing Canonical then Ubuntu will die and Linux will die along with it. Again, Ubuntu == Linux. With the current anti Canonical attitude you can all start moving your stuff from Ubuntu to Windows. Because there is no chance for Linux except through Canonical. In 5 years, with the current attitude, you will all run Windows 8 and like it. Bill Gates might finally win and take everything.

I have no idea what you've been taking, but I'd suggest not to touch that stuff for a while.

Alright. So are you now 100% certain that it is not indeed Canonical that is screwing itself up, by jumping off to their own, new, fully unstandard display server? Are you now absolutely positive that it was, in fact, some idiotic companies and individuals who screwed with Canonical to the point where they had absolutely no choice but to abandon the technology they were at first advocating, that was and still is to be the standard Linux display server?

Again, nobody is even screwing with them. They themselves chose the path which requires a lot more work, so that's what they are going to get.

[t.s.]

guys.. guys..!
Please, stop feeding the troll (??$$). If you want, read the comment, but don't reply (feeding) him. I bet your life will be more beautiful.