A Vast Majority Of Linux's Input Improvements Are Developed By One Individual

[schmidtbag]

They did exactly what you said, only applied features downstream. They just happened to be a lot of features. And yes, Gnome devs are well known for turning them down. They even turned down a proposal from both Ubuntu and KDE for appindicators a while back. (not that I care, I don't like indicators) So even with two out of the main three DE's trying to create a standard, Gnome preferred to go their own way. I'm not even saying they are wrong to do that, just that it is hypocritical of you to say it's ok for Gnome to do whatever they want with their DE while criticizing Canonical for doing the same thing.

You still seem to be missing the point. Canonical's solution was to perpetuate their own problem while still using Gnome in the process. What about that are you not understanding? It's fighting fire with fire. You don't solve a problem by using the very things that are causing the problem (which in this case was immature software and parts of Gnome itself).
That being said, you seem to be completely blind to the fact that Canonical wasn't making their own standard. They were mooching off of someone else's, and twisting it in a way that only caused fragmentation. Had Canonical started fresh (even if they continued to use GTK3), I wouldn't have criticized them.

So no, I'm not being a hypocrite. I don't care much that Canonical made Unity, my gripe is why how they went about doing it, and even more that they abandoned it.

[cynical]

Are the Gnome devs known to turn down commits? Has Canonical not submitted bug fixes? Because I imagine they would, and that those would be accepted. Any patches or small features that aren't accepted, Canonical could just apply to only Ubuntu downstream, like they always do. Even that I don't prefer, but at least it's not reinventing the wheel, using parts of the wheel they already had.

They did exactly what you said, only applied features downstream. They just happened to be a lot of features. And yes, Gnome devs are well known for turning them down. They even turned down a proposal from both Ubuntu and KDE for appindicators a while back. (not that I care, I don't like indicators) So even with two out of the main three DE's trying to create a standard, Gnome preferred to go their own way. I'm not even saying they are wrong to do that, just that it is hypocritical of you to say it's ok for Gnome to do whatever they want with their DE while criticizing Canonical for doing the same thing.

[stompcrash]

Wow, it seems he's been working on this for a very long time. I think it was him I conversed with over email even before 1.0 when there was some obscure issue with some device I have, maybe the Logitec Trackman Marble FX. I don't remember the code being too hard to understand at the time.

[schmidtbag]

I mean you are obviously assuming that Gnome developers would agree with and accept their contributions, but if that were true, they never would have created Unity in the first place.

Are the Gnome devs known to turn down commits? Has Canonical not submitted bug fixes? Because I imagine they would, and that those would be accepted. Any patches or small features that aren't accepted, Canonical could just apply to only Ubuntu downstream, like they always do. Even that I don't prefer, but at least it's not reinventing the wheel, using parts of the wheel they already had.

[cynical]

Had Canonical just focused on Gnome, it would've been in much better shape years sooner.

I mean you are obviously assuming that Gnome developers would agree with and accept their contributions, but if that were true, they never would have created Unity in the first place.

You know I was saying the exact same thing myself, right? The entire basis behind my argument can be summarized as "fragmentation occurs when people have goals that others do not agree with" (implying when people have the opportunity to, which is very easily possible with FOSS software).

So the solution for Canonical should have been what? Conform to whatever Gnome wanted?

[angrypie]

With no Red Hat and its employees, half of the current Linux userspace wouldn't exist in its current form (gnome, wayland, systemd, dbus, colord, NetworkManager, polkit, sssd, packagekit, kvm).

Is your argument for or against Red Hat-ware?

I hope IBM keeps the Red Hat technique of promoting independent open source projects of which then you build commercial products on top.

The BSDs already fit this niche. Just ask Sony if they aren't happy ripping off BSD-licensed code.

[schmidtbag]

That's because of the typical propaganda about Red Hat doing no wrong and Canonical being the devil. Essentially the stuff you are still perpetuating.

How exactly am I perpetuating that "propaganda"? I'm not exactly painting RH in a positive light, and I said more positive things about Canonical than I have of RH.
Seeing as you're obviously heavily biased on this situation, part of me questions if you're worth wasting my time on.

This is a dumb point. Why doesn't Gnome just fold up shop and help KDE "get better and speed up the process"? Why don't all distributions just fold up and help Debian get better?

It's a dumb point to you because you're looking at it in the most absurd way possible. My gripe (as well as many others) with Unity is how Canonical was like "Gnome isn't good or stable enough for our needs, so, we're just going to start our own interface from scratch, using parts of Gnome" which is just hypocritical. Had Canonical started a completely fresh new interface that had little to nothing to do with Gnome, I don't think I'd really care because Canonical wasn't wrong that Gnome at the time was flawed, and so was KDE. Unity overall was pretty distinct. But because Unity had Gnome dependencies, they weren't escaping from the problems of Gnome. Meanwhile, they were dividing their own time and resources with their own developments. Had Canonical just focused on Gnome, it would've been in much better shape years sooner. The part that really makes it all come together as "that was stupid" is how Canonical abandoned Unity, even at a time when it was good enough to be found in other distros.
So - my gripe is how Canonical wasted the time and resources of basically everyone who was invested in Gnome or "vanilla" Ubuntu.

Maybe it's because they have their own goals, and it's impossible to achieve them without agreement from others unless you own the codebase yourself?

You know I was saying the exact same thing myself, right? The entire basis behind my argument can be summarized as "fragmentation occurs when people have goals that others do not agree with" (implying when people have the opportunity to, which is very easily possible with FOSS software).

You know that whole "NIH" thing you are complaining about? Yeah, Gnome and Red Hat do that all the time. Except when they do it, people adopt their systems and call it community driven. It's nothing but propaganda.

Huh? I'm not complaining about that. I don't give a shit if Canonical or RH do that; not my problem, since I don't participate in either of their ecosystems and have no intention to in the foreseeable future.

[cynical]

Hmm, for whatever reason I thought upstart came after systemd. My bad.

That's because of the typical propaganda about Red Hat doing no wrong and Canonical being the devil. Essentially the stuff you are still perpetuating.

Regardless of how bad Gnome 3 was, Unity (which also was pretty broken to start with) was still heavily dependent on it. Rather than make their own fork, Canonical could've just helped Gnome 3 get better and speed up the process. Remember: the reason people gripe about Canonical is because of how many times they fork things. It's not always something as big as Unity or Mir either.
Anyway, I'm aware there were other forks, but to my knowledge, most of them were basically just mashups of different environments. Unity was far more ambitious, and the greatest issue is Canonical actually had the resources to fix Gnome 3. Instead, they just decided to do things their own way. Same applies to Mir.

This is a dumb point. Why doesn't Gnome just fold up shop and help KDE "get better and speed up the process"? Why don't all distributions just fold up and help Debian get better? Maybe it's because they have their own goals, and it's impossible to achieve them without agreement from others unless you own the codebase yourself?

Canonical didn't develop Unity just because "they wanted to do their own thing". They had disagreements with Gnome developers on what should be done, and obviously could not get the changes they wanted done in Gnome for that reason. Even the performance updates that were added recently took months of discussion. The only reason Canonical has changed course now is because they are dropping everything to do with the desktop. This will bite them in the future as they are now at the mercy of the Gnome project. You know that whole "NIH" thing you are complaining about? Yeah, Gnome and Red Hat do that all the time. Except when they do it, people adopt their systems and call it community driven. It's nothing but propaganda.

[schmidtbag]

how are you not getting that there's no other libinput expert to hire atm? did you read article?

How are you not getting that it doesn't take a genius to maintain libinput, and that libinput is already in really good shape? If you're an expert in Xserver or Wayland, you can probably figure out how to maintain libinput without mentoring. After all, there are still people pitching in changes to it. Sure, Hutterer is absolutely right that someone should be mentored, since taking precautionary measures is always a smart choice. But my point is the worst-case scenario (where he is unexpectedly unavailable with no trained replacement) will not result in any significant issues. It will not be an ideal situation, but libinput isn't going to suddenly crumble without him.

[pal666]

Exactly my point... They hire experts. They're not going to put someone in Hutterer's position who doesn't know a thing about what they're doing. That's why if whoever they do hire doesn't know what they're doing, they have the resources to find someone else. How are you not getting this?

how are you not getting that there's no other libinput expert to hire atm? did you read article?