Originally posted by Serge
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LXDE-Based Lubuntu Will Not Ship Mir Display Server
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Originally posted by Awesomeness View PostIt's also important to note that compositing does not mean any requirement for 3D-accelerated OpenGL drivers.
It was only Weston (not Wayland) that required 3D drivers in the past but even that is gone: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/it...s-1779133.html
At least KWin 5 will support software rendering under Wayland as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V8i8zZPzbU
Originally posted by k1l_ View Postso anyone thinks that is still just about technical arguments and not about politics and business competition from the big companies behind the distributions?
Originally posted by Serge View PostThe technical challenges presented by Mir's development model have been explained by concerned developers many times now. However, I can't help but shake the feeling that these challenges are easily surmountable with sufficient motivation. After all, developers are engineers, and solving technical problems is what engineers do best. Ultimately, every time I read Martin Grasslin complaining about Mir, I keep getting the impression that his anti-Mir stance is mainly fueled by politics. I don't mean to say that Martin's concerns are invalid, or that overcoming these challenges is as easy as a snap of the fingers, but a developer's role is to develop solutions, and his refusal to develop (or integrate) solutions to these problems cannot be explained by purely technical terms.
Personally, I am very upset at the direction Canonical decided to go. I feel that Canonical's decision to develop a competing display server when Wayland was already in development fragments the community and divides projects. Thus, I believe that Canonical's decision is causing damage to the community. I believe that Canonical's decision was driven by business rather than technical considerations. I believe that the lack of cooperation Canonical is facing from the rest of the community will cause financial harm to Canonical. I believe that Canonical's decision was selfish, and I believe that the community response will cause this selfish decision to backfire.
Thus, on a personal level I approve of the lack of outside support, and occassionally outright hostility, that Canonical is having to deal with. I don't think that Red Hat is behind any of this. I get the impression that the amount of influence Red Hat has over GTK and Wayland development is very minor. However, I also believe that whatever influence Red Hat does have, Red Hat earned through years of paying some developer salaries. Considering that Novell and Mandrake / Mandriva used to do the same but eventually found this difficult to sustain, Red Hat's behavior becomes even more admirable in retrospect. Canonical had the same opportunities to be involved in GTK and Wayland development, and had been urged by outsiders to contribute more, but most allege that Canonical has traditionally kept this involvement minimal. Now, Canonical is reaping what it has sowed, and in my mind, this is all fair and good. (Also, I hate adware, so I always enjoy a company that develops adware get kicked in the shin.)
But in the end, I still think that the community response against Canonical and Mir is motivated by ideological rather than technical reasons, and on some level this causes me some shame, as I consider myself to be a part of this community. I don't think that the community should be more receptive of Mir, but I do think that we should at least call it what it is: political concerns, not technical ones.
Qt's development, on the other hand, is controlled by a for-profit company, not a community. I would be extremely surprised if Digia denies Canonical assistance in upstreaming Mir support, especially if Canonical offers to do most of the legwork.
Edit: I also want to add that I realize Canonical is a business that has the right to decide where to spend its money, but I think what people overlook is that Canonical owes a debt to the community for providing the bulk of the stack that Canonical has built its business around. Canonical does not need to contribute back - the license terms do not mandate reciprocation - but what stings the most about this is that I think Canonical is actually hurting the community that it is in debt to.
Originally posted by Ericg View PostIts partially technical arguments, its also non-technical arguments as well. MIR does server side allocation because on ARM thats better, but on x86 its worse-- Canonical is betting ARM is the future, which is fine, but what if something supplants ARM and client-side allocation is better there? Wayland does client side because its the best choice for all architectures except ARM, where the loss / gain is minimal. Its being agnostic.
There's also the issue of the license, a lot of FOSS developers refuse to sign over copyright of their code out of fear that the new holder will close source the product. COULD Canonical do that? Yes. WILL they do that? We don't know, so far they havent had the power (and the balls) to take a jump like that.
There's also the issue that Canonical has stated that they ONLY care about Unity. ABI and API breaks will come at the behest of the Unity team, if they break KDE, or Gnome, or XFCE in the process then thats their problem. Wayland promises API stability for 1.x.x and I believe ABI stability for 1.1.x (ABI is in the same situation as Xorg is right now so thats not a change)
As for the license, they can't close source the original free one, they can only make closed source derivatives (it was already analyzed on another thread), the same as everyone with MIT. The license issue would actually be strictly political, because the only concern is that not everyone has the same rights. But there is no risk of losing Mir because of the CLA.
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Originally posted by mrugiero View PostAs for the license, they can't close source the original free one, they can only make closed source derivatives (it was already analyzed on another thread), the same as everyone with MIT. The license issue would actually be strictly political, because the only concern is that not everyone has the same rights. But there is no risk of losing Mir because of the CLA.All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.
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Originally posted by Ericg View PostTrue that they can't close the already open code, but they CAN decide that Mir 1.9.9 is open source and the Re-architectured Mir 2.0 is closed source and also incompatible with Mir 1.9.9. Canonical has shown they don't exactly play fair OR make always smart decisions when it comes to Ubuntu so I'm not holding my breath. While I want to believe that Canonical doesnt have it in them to close-up Mir at some point in the future, Mark did say that Ubuntu was about making money first and foremost, so I don't really put anything past them... Greed makes people stupid.
But I don't think they will close it, though, because at the very least that would be very bad for their most basic marketing campaign (that little speech saying Ubuntu would always be free and all of that).
I do expect, however, their carriers to ship modified, closed source derivatives.
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Originally posted by Serge View Postevery time I read Martin Grasslin complaining about Mir, I keep getting the impression that his anti-Mir stance is mainly fueled by politics.
OTOH Canonical?s ?political?/economic reasons are clear for everybody who?s not braindead: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html
Originally posted by Serge View PostI don't mean to say that Martin's concerns are invalid, or that overcoming these challenges is as easy as a snap of the fingers, but a developer's role is to develop solutions, and his refusal to develop (or integrate) solutions to these problems cannot be explained by purely technical terms.
Originally posted by Serge View PostI believe that Canonical's decision was driven by business rather than technical considerations. I believe that the lack of cooperation Canonical is facing from the rest of the community will cause financial harm to Canonical. I believe that Canonical's decision was selfish, and I believe that the community response will cause this selfish decision to backfire.
The KWin devs have been preparing for Wayland since at least 2011, maybe longer.
Even though my programming times are long over, I can clearly remember that programming ?if X do ? else do ?? code is an entirely different thing to do than asking for 3 or more conditions. As he explained in the G+ post, KWin is now being developed for 2 and only 2 display servers.
Since at least 2010 Canonical was telling everybody that Ubuntu will switch to Wayland: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551
Fast forward to 2013 and suddenly everything said in the past 3 years is invalid, and everything said in the past 6 months even lies (because Mir was in development then already) but nonetheless everybody else is expected to support Mir.
Why is that? Why do only Ubuntu fans feel so especially deserving? No one every seriously cried that KWin does not support Android's SurfaceFlinger or OSX? Quartz.
If somebody asks Martin if KWin will natively support:
Android SurfaceFlinger,
OS X Quartz,
or Ubuntu?s Mir,
the reply will always be No. Not a single Android or OS X users would ever cry foul for that but all those whining Ubuntu fanboys do.
Originally posted by Serge View PostHowever, I also believe that whatever influence Red Hat does have, Red Hat earned through years of paying some developer salaries.
Originally posted by Serge View PostConsidering that Novell and Mandrake / Mandriva used to do the same but eventually found this difficult to sustain, Red Hat's behavior becomes even more admirable in retrospect.
Novell had financial problems because A) they had to still support all their old Netware stuff (that costs money) and B) Novell bought Ximian before SUSE which meant that Microsoft fanboy Miguel De Icaza was in charge for all Linux decisions ? many that led to outcries in the community: First trying to completely ban KDE from SUSE Linux, then pushing Mono everywhere, later closing off Compiz development for the public, etc.
Originally posted by Serge View PostBut in the end, I still think that the community response against Canonical and Mir is motivated by ideological rather than technical reasons, and on some level this causes me some shame, as I consider myself to be a part of this community. I don't think that the community should be more receptive of Mir, but I do think that we should at least call it what it is: political concerns, not technical ones.
Even if the backlash was solely politically motivated (although I already proved that there are also technical issues and getting pissed after being insulted is an emotional, not a political reason): There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The Free Software movement is a political movement! It is a democratic movement! And moving against a ?self-appointed dictator for life? is completely aligned with democratic goals.
Originally posted by Serge View PostQt's development, on the other hand, is controlled by a for-profit company, not a community. I would be extremely surprised if Digia denies Canonical assistance in upstreaming Mir support, especially if Canonical offers to do most of the legwork.
And no, Qt is not controlled by a company instead of a community. Ever since open governance Qt is a community project. Digia controls some aspects but not Qt in general.
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Originally posted by Ericg View PostIts partially technical arguments, its also non-technical arguments as well. MIR does server side allocation because on ARM thats better, but on x86 its worse-- Canonical is betting ARM is the future, which is fine, but what if something supplants ARM and client-side allocation is better there? Wayland does client side because its the best choice for all architectures except ARM, where the loss / gain is minimal. Its being agnostic.
Originally posted by Ericg View PostThere's also the issue of the license, a lot of FOSS developers refuse to sign over copyright of their code out of fear that the new holder will close source the product. COULD Canonical do that? Yes. WILL they do that? We don't know, so far they havent had the power (and the balls) to take a jump like that.
Originally posted by Ericg View PostThere's also the issue that Canonical has stated that they ONLY care about Unity. ABI and API breaks will come at the behest of the Unity team, if they break KDE, or Gnome, or XFCE in the process then thats their problem. Wayland promises API stability for 1.x.x and I believe ABI stability for 1.1.x (ABI is in the same situation as Xorg is right now so thats not a change)
I think the problem in here is, that we have a range of possible decisions in the future for MIR. but instead of keeping them open or balance the arguments, a majority goes mad against ubuntu/canonical fed by some very few people with more than just technical intentions. i just think that most of the problems can be resolved once we calm down and come back to the technical point and dont dont think making money with a linux distribution is bad at all. just think of the other ones that make money with it and what we all gain from that.
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Originally posted by Awesomeness View PostI see no politics in https://plus.google.com/115606635748...ts/136nV4uojKH
OTOH Canonical?s ?political?/economic reasons are clear for everybody who?s not braindead: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html
It's downstream?s duty to integrate upstream, not the other way around.
So, not blindly playing by Canonical?s rules is politically motivated instead of technically? Seriously: I don?t get your argument.
The KWin devs have been preparing for Wayland since at least 2011, maybe longer.
Even though my programming times are long over, I can clearly remember that programming ?if X do ? else do ?? code is an entirely different thing to do than asking for 3 or more conditions. As he explained in the G+ post, KWin is now being developed for 2 and only 2 display servers.
Since at least 2010 Canonical was telling everybody that Ubuntu will switch to Wayland: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551
Fast forward to 2013 and suddenly everything said in the past 3 years is invalid, and everything said in the past 6 months even lies (because Mir was in development then already) but nonetheless everybody else is expected to support Mir.
Why is that? Why do only Ubuntu fans feel so especially deserving? No one every seriously cried that KWin does not support Android's SurfaceFlinger or OSX? Quartz.
If somebody asks Martin if KWin will natively support:
Android SurfaceFlinger,
OS X Quartz,
or Ubuntu?s Mir,
the reply will always be No. Not a single Android or OS X users would ever cry foul for that but all those whining Ubuntu fanboys do.
Red Hat has a good reputation because they do good community work and do not constantly try to screw everybody over.
Mandriva went bankrupt several times because the company was always led by idiots.
Novell had financial problems because A) they had to still support all their old Netware stuff (that costs money) and B) Novell bought Ximian before SUSE which meant that Microsoft fanboy Miguel De Icaza was in charge for all Linux decisions ? many that led to outcries in the community: First trying to completely ban KDE from SUSE Linux, then pushing Mono everywhere, later closing off Compiz development for the public, etc.
Whatever? Canonical is trying to bullshit everyone else and the backlash is what they deserve for lying about Wayland?s allegedly inferior technology, trying to screw everybody over with their CLA Mir, etc.
Even if the backlash was solely politically motivated (although I already proved that there are also technical issues and getting pissed after being insulted is an emotional, not a political reason): There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The Free Software movement is a political movement! It is a democratic movement! And moving against a ?self-appointed dictator for life? is completely aligned with democratic goals.
Whichever plugins Canonical ever wrote for Qt (the first was appmenu-qt, QMir is just the most recent one), Canonical never ever tried to upstream anything of it. That would mean to hand over licensing authority to some else. Even worse: To an institution that has a long-standing contract that forever guaranties complete freedom for Qt (KDE Free Qt Foundation).
And no, Qt is not controlled by a company instead of a community. Ever since open governance Qt is a community project. Digia controls some aspects but not Qt in general.
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Originally posted by Awesomeness View PostSeems like you have no arguments ?
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Closed-source carrier derivatives can never be trusted
Originally posted by mrugiero View PostI do expect, however, their carriers to ship modified, closed source derivatives.
As for distros like LXDE-and older WMs like IceWM, they are meant for older x86 machines and x86 netobooks, both of which slow down badly when using compositing. I will go so far as to say that any machine that either predated Windows VIsta or was considered unable to run Vista when it was sold should be considered a good candidate for a non-compositing, X-only DE. After all, no pre-Vista computer sold with Windoze on it was designed for desktop compositing. Getting rid of compositing really helps both responsiveness and video playback on them.
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