Canonical Releases Upstart 1.10 Init Daemon

[mrugiero]

I'm not saying I like that Canonical reserves the right to make the code proprietary. I really don't, and I wish that was explicitly forbidden in the CLA. But I just don't see how that situation is so much different than having a GPL-licensed open source application with a single developer, and I still think it's much better than having MIT- or BSD-licensed code.

I find it really amusing that Qt doesn't get the same flack by having a CLA and actually selling a proprietary version while Canonical doesn't do this and as far as we can tell never will.

First, I'll address the MIT/BSD situation. They do think of their code as a gift for anyone, they just don't care. It's symmetric. Everyone can do anything they like. You can agree or disagree with them, but this means you have exactly the same right as everyone else. So, it's at least somewhat fair. You can still make a GPL fork, if you want, so all work made on top of that, will be GPL.
Second, when there is a single developer, you can't blame him for doing whatever he wants: it's his sole work, nobody helped him, and he did gave his code. In the case of the CLA, the CLA exists because it's expected that several people will contribute, and they probably contribute because they want to help a free software project (with the exception of, in this case, Canonical paid developers). But then, you have more rights than all of the other developers, which is not only unfair to the user, but to the developers themselves.
On the Qt vs. Canonical situation, I don't like such a CLA at all, either.
On the other hand, the fact Canonical didn't make that closed source version yet, doesn't mean they won't, and chances are they have such intention: if it were to protect the project from being illegally used in closed source applications, they won't ask the right to sublicense, but the copyright (since they need to be the copyright holders for suing). They explicitly ask for the right to relicense and not the copyright, and guess what, they probably do that because they want to use that right to relicense.

And to readdress the point of the single developer, you can fix it by having multiple developers, which happens to be the case in most of the important projects.

[mrugiero]

Like it or not, vanilla Mir with Unity 8 is going to be default by 14.10. Xmir will be a very important component of it, to keep compatibility with old apps.
As XMir should not, if developed right, have any noticeable impact for end users, it makes sense to activate it by default as soon as it is ready (on a technical point of view I mean).

No bug is going to be reported and fixed if no one use the software. So better start such migration early and use multiple steps.
That's the whole point of "release early release often" in fact.

No, it doesn't. As you test vanilla Mir, you test XMir for apps just the same.
Also, IRL, things do have an impact, and there is a concept in software maintenance called bug surface, which is why you don't just add pointless layers.
Yet again, XMir is just an X server running on top of Mir, and testing it for apps is relatively trivial. And still, being a tester should be optional (since Ubuntu doesn't pay us to use Ubuntu, it's voluntary testing, and voluntary testing should be, well, voluntary), and that's the main drama: they are forcing novice users to become testers, if not for between-LTS releases (since you consider them glorified betas), they are still putting that on a LTS release.

Well, just the fact that they are supported for 9 months vs. 5 years for LTS should be enough.

No, it isn't enough. Give an actual reason why 9 months support implies a more advanced user than 5 years support. Also, with citation, I meant citation. Quote any Ubuntu source for that.

AFAIK, nearly all computers sold with Ubuntu pre-installed still come with Precise nowadays.

Irrelevant. A lot of people gets Ubuntu installed by a friend. All of the novice users I know, use it after a friend installed it. In several of such cases, I'm that friend.

If it's still not enough for you, I know it was stated multiple time on ubuntu-devel during the "let's ditch intermediate releases and call what's between LTSs a rolling release" debate. You can look for it if you want.

I know of such a debate, but that has nothing to do with being "for advanced users" or not, but with maintenance. It would become for more advanced users, but take a hint why they didn't make them rolling releases.

[Malizor]

It doesn't, because using XMir doesn't. If it'd make any sense to use XMir for the desktops, then you'd be right.

Like it or not, vanilla Mir with Unity 8 is going to be default by 14.10. Xmir will be a very important component of it, to keep compatibility with old apps.
As XMir should not, if developed right, have any noticeable impact for end users, it makes sense to activate it by default as soon as it is ready (on a technical point of view I mean).

No bug is going to be reported and fixed if no one use the software. So better start such migration early and use multiple steps.
That's the whole point of "release early release often" in fact.

Citation needed.

Well, just the fact that they are supported for 9 months vs. 5 years for LTS should be enough.
AFAIK, nearly all computers sold with Ubuntu pre-installed still come with Precise nowadays.
If it's still not enough for you, I know it was stated multiple time on ubuntu-devel during the "let's ditch intermediate releases and call what's between LTSs a rolling release" debate. You can look for it if you want.

[mrugiero]

Now, 13.10 will most likely be a special case because of Mir (still not switched on by default, so we don't know yet how much issues it will bring). But it makes sense to integrate it early to be more confident in its reliability in the next LTS.

It doesn't, because using XMir doesn't. If it'd make any sense to use XMir for the desktops, then you'd be right.

"intermediate" releases are for advanced users anyway.

Citation needed.

[bwat47]

This.



I agree that Ubuntu never was a perfectly stable distro. You usually had to wait 2 or three months after a release before having most visible bugs fixed.
But things are improving in this regard. For example 13.04 was usable from day one for me, which was actually the first time since I use Ubuntu.
Development releases are also much more reliable than before. Now, when you download a daily, you can be reasonably sure that it will boot and that you will have a graphical session. That was not the case before.

I could not disagree more. 13.04 was just as bad if not worse. For example 13.04 was released with a MASSIVE kernel bug because canonical decided to land some major patches to their kernel only days before 13.04's release, which not only b0rked hdmi for many, it also caused kernel panics on boot and/or audio not working at all on boot, and they took forever to release an update to fix it:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1169984

UOA/empathy is also extremely buggy in 13.04 to the point where its pretty much not usable: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...y/+bug/1170832, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...s/+bug/1069882, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...y/+bug/1168582 (I don't have any of these problems with upstream empathy/GOA, only ubuntu's crappy buggy UOA). And this one: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...n/+bug/1159411

Really annoying problems with ubuntu's patched nautilus 3.6 (I don't have issues like this at all with the same version of nautilus in any other distro): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...s/+bug/1173966

Really annoying issues with the version of glib in 13.04, that causes bugs in software such as pidgin: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...n/+bug/1108056 (don't have this problem with pidgin in other distros).

And some very annoying visual polish issues that also effect usability: b0rked libreoffice global menu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/indicator...n/+bug/1153350, unreadable text in nautilus gear menu caused by 13.04's gtk theme: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...s/+bug/1159449

13.04 is just as buggy as previous releases were. If ubuntu every hopes to achieve their goal of reaching mainstream, they need some serious improvements in QA. Its not OK for releases to be this buggy if you are aiming at the mainstream market.

Ubuntu has become synonymous with the word "buggy" for me

[Malizor]

In all fariness; it was not him

This.

But yeah, if bogot is going to suggest that all of these other distros are alpha; than yes, a comparison is fair-game and in this case; Ubuntu loses big time.

I agree that Ubuntu never was a perfectly stable distro. You usually had to wait 2 or three months after a release before having most visible bugs fixed.
But things are improving in this regard. For example 13.04 was usable from day one for me, which was actually the first time since I use Ubuntu.
Development releases are also much more reliable than before. Now, when you download a daily, you can be reasonably sure that it will boot and that you will have a graphical session. That was not the case before.
Upgrades are also smoother than before (way less breakages).
In fact it became a bit boring to test an Ubuntu development release since everything is usually fine with it. There are bugs but the system is usable most of the time.

Of course there is still work to do, but it's definitely moving in the right direction.

Now, 13.10 will most likely be a special case because of Mir (still not switched on by default, so we don't know yet how much issues it will bring). But it makes sense to integrate it early to be more confident in its reliability in the next LTS.
"intermediate" releases are for advanced users anyway.

[nightmarex]

Cheers to Ubuntu for being sane and not drinking the SystemD kool aid. I would never have thought that I would ever prefer Ubuntu over Arch Linux or OpenSuse but here we are.

How have I not noticed your name is an EQ reference until now?
There's always Gentoo for those who don't like sd they are still cooking udev AFAIK.

[ninez]

Since you consider those other distros to be alpha quality, it's a fair comparison, alpha versus alpha.

In all fariness; it was not him, but instead bogot that suggested that. But yeah, if bogot is going to suggest that all of these other distros are alpha; than yes, a comparison is fair-game and in this case; Ubuntu loses big time.

[LightBit]

Except Upstart has been thoroughly tested and systemd is only used in Fedora, openSUSE and Arch (all of them are alpha-quality distros).

Arch Linux isn't alpha-quality, it is actually very stable. I actually switched to Arch Linux from Ubuntu, because of bugs in Ubuntu 8.04.
OpenSUSE also doesn't seem alpha-quality.

[mrugiero]

You can't seriously judge the overall stability of Ubuntu (or any other distro) by testing a development release.
And, in this case, 13.10 is not even "feature-frozen", witch means that the bug-fixing sprint did not even start.

Since you consider those other distros to be alpha quality, it's a fair comparison, alpha versus alpha.