KDE Developers Continue To Be Frustrated With Canonical

[synaptix]

I feel like this is already settled. From now on Unity and Mir go together. Other DEs use Wayland like they always planned to. Ubuntu won't have any non-unity versions anymore unless someone wants to maintain Wayland for Ubuntu.

Canonical decided they make phones now. For whatever reason they decided Wayland wouldn't work for phones or wouldn't be ready on time or they could just do things 10x better. Doesn't matter what the reason was or whether they were right. They thought they were right so they made the call and now it's done.

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551

The next major transition for Unity will be to deliver it on Wayland, the OpenGL-based display management system. We?d like to embrace Wayland early, as much of the work we?re doing on uTouch and other input systems will be relevant for Wayland and it?s an area we can make a useful contribution to the project.

We?re confident we?ll be able to retain the ability to run X applications in a compatibility mode, so this is not a transition that needs to reset the world of desktop free software. Nor is it a transition everyone needs to make at the same time: for the same reason we?ll keep investing in the 2D experience on Ubuntu despite also believing that Unity, with all its GL dependencies, is the best interface for the desktop. We?ll help GNOME and KDE with the transition, there?s no reason for them not to be there on day one either.

[dee.]

Anyway, I don't see a technical reason to want KWin running on Mir, either.

My guess is, it went something like this:

First, the suits at Canonical (ie. Mark and his cronies) want to make their own display server for whatever inexplicable reasons. Maybe they're thinking like: "We're starting this Mir project because we need to be more like Apple, Apple did their own display server too!" or maybe, "we need to be a leader in the Linux community!" or maybe, "we need to differentiate our product to strengthen our brand!" Or maybe it was just more batshit lunacy from Mark: "Red Hat is doing everything they can to kill Canonical! They're doing it because they're meanies and jealous of us, so we can't use anything they're involved in!"

Either way, the suits at Canonical (henceforth: TSAC) probably figured, that their new pet project would be met with praise. We're doing an open source project! We're doing something big! Everyone will praise us! Naturally, because TSAC are quite self-centered people, they didn't foresee any of the controversy. They didn't (and still don't) understand any of the reasons why people would get upset over their actions.

Then, Canonical announces Mir. And all this happens, which is still happening here in this thread. And the TSAC are having furious meetings, with whiteboards and mindmaps and all that, buzzwords are flying in the air like shit in a monkey house when the zoo bought a surplus shipment of prunes. And they say, "people are criticizing us for all kinds of crazy reasons! They're saying things like, 'Mir is a one-distro solution', and 'no one else uses Mir', and they're calling us divisive, and things! How do we deal with this? We need damage control. We need to get some other DE to support Mir, it'll be good PR!"

More furious meetings are held, memos are passed like cheap cigars. Then eventually, someone, possibly Mark himself, says: "Enough of this! We need to solve this. Let's just get some DE to implement support. How about KDE? They're a smaller niche DE with not much userbase, they'll surely be easy to bully to do what we want!"

And so it is decided, KDE has to run on Mir - because then Canonical can say "look, it isn't just a one-distro solution, other support it too!" They need it for PR. Of course at this point, they have already forgotten, that their primary justification for creating Mir in the first place was to "do something where we control everything and can prioritize Unity and not have to care about other DE's", but that's just how TSAC - like all suits everywhere - work.

Are we done with the stupid "X is gay" now?
First, making ad hominems doesn't make you sound smart.
Second, do you consider actually important what people like to do in private? If so, maybe you are more like Canonical, Google, Microsoft and the NSA you'd think.

This same comment goes for everyone on the "X is gay" off topic. I'd report all of you, but I'm too lazy to look for all of the posts.

Exactly right, people's sex lives are their own business. If someone likes to suck cock, that's their business and doesn't make them a better or worse person than someone who doesn't like sucking cock. Using "gay" as an insult is just idiotic and makes whoever does it sound like a brain moron, no matter what side of whatever issue they're on.

AFAIK, GNOME is not that much community driven, as it has strong influences from Red Hat. I don't know about KDE. LXDE and XFCE are completely community driven, AFAIK.

A software can be community-driven even if it's sponsored by a company (or several). See: the Linux kernel.

[gens]

Don't people see the obvious conflict of interests that is going on here?

people see what they want to see

like you dont see how Xorg people worked on wayland
how wayland was made in collaboration by many people from many companies till it was good for all
how enlightenment E19 will work great on wayland (e18 does already afaik)

and MIR is made for unity and nothing else (dosent even plan on having a stable api)


it is bad to follow an opinion of a big company
big companies have never been "good" and never will be
even red hat has some people doing amazing stuff for OSS while some others go against the community

so you need to judge on a case by case basis
and Canonical in general spawns fanboys by using... basically FUD (at least mark does)

[mrugiero]

A software can be community-driven even if it's sponsored by a company (or several). See: the Linux kernel.

Yes, it can. I don't really know how much influence in the decisions Red Hat has, though. I think that's mostly what would make the difference between being a company funded, community driven project, or a company driven but community friendly project. I consider at the very least community friendly, as you can always volunteer yourself to support things and (AFAIK) your patches will get accepted if they have good quality.

[gens]

A software can be community-driven even if it's sponsored by a company (or several). See: the Linux kernel.

somehow i doubt the community has much to say in gnome development

[Alex Sarmiento]

people see what they want to see

like you dont see how Xorg people worked on wayland
how wayland was made in collaboration by many people from many companies till it was good for all
how enlightenment E19 will work great on wayland (e18 does already afaik)

and MIR is made for unity and nothing else (dosent even plan on having a stable api)


it is bad to follow an opinion of a big company
big companies have never been "good" and never will be
even red hat has some people doing amazing stuff for OSS while some others go against the community

so you need to judge on a case by case basis
and Canonical in general spawns fanboys by using... basically FUD (at least mark does)

What is your point? Big companies use open source software for their own benefit . Intel and samsung created Wayland for their own interests and goals.

[mrugiero]

What is your point? Big companies use open source software for their own benefit

True.

Intel and samsung created Wayland for their own interests and goals.

False. Intel and Samsung had nothing to do with the creation of Wayland, although they invested a lot of time and money on it later. Wayland started as an idea of Khristian Hogsberg, a Red Hat employee, supposedly as a hobby project (although, if we are on conspiracy theories today, one could argue that as he is and was at the time a Red Hat employee, he was actually working for them in this project).

EDIT: Also, his point is that one solution is one company only, while the other is a diverse group of companies. This alone makes it harder to lead for a single company and to use dirty tactics to leave the others out.

[RahulSundaram]

somehow i doubt the community has much to say in gnome development

Anyone can volunteer and contribute to GNOME as much as they can contribute to KDE or Linux kernel for that matter. It depends on your skill levels and interest. You don't get to drive development just by being opinionated though.

[Alex Sarmiento]

Anyone can volunteer and contribute to GNOME as much as they can contribute to KDE or Linux kernel for that matter. It depends on your skill levels and interest. You don't get to drive development just by being opinionated though.

It seems it was easier to just fork the gnome thing.

[Alex Sarmiento]

True.

False. Intel and Samsung had nothing to do with the creation of Wayland, although they invested a lot of time and money on it later. Wayland started as an idea of Khristian Hogsberg, a Red Hat employee, supposedly as a hobby project (although, if we are on conspiracy theories today, one could argue that as he is and was at the time a Red Hat employee, he was actually working for them in this project).

EDIT: Also, his point is that one solution is one company only, while the other is a diverse group of companies. This alone makes it harder to lead for a single company and to use dirty tactics to leave the others out.

Is not that guy working for intel now? And is not you comment just highlighting the fact that this "community" is in reality a community of companies ?