np237 ([info]np237) wrote,
@ 2006-11-27 00:13:00
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OpenSuSE developers' reactions to Mark Shuttleworth's troll

Last Friday, Mark Shuttleworth posted a big troll he also sent to the OpenSuSE mailing list. While the Novell/Microsoft deal has raised many legitimate concerns, I really think the Canonical leader should take the mote (in France, that would be a beam) out of his own eye first. As expected, the reactions from OpenSuSE developers were strong. But I was really shocked by two of them.

According to JP Rosevear, Mark Shuttleworth is, among other things, preventing the Debian GNOME maintainer from updating GNOME packages until after Ubuntu LSO had shipped because [he has] hired him, and trying to simultaneously supplant Debian's community with "Ubuntu" while relying heavily on the Debian community to be successful.

According to David Canar, Ubuntu's anti-community practices are well-known.

Yes, I was shocked to see these reactions. Not because of their strength, as they are perfectly justified. I was shocked to see that developers in the OpenSuSE community seem to be better informed than Debian developers about Canonical's dealings. When talking with random fellow developers, I see many of them who truly believe Mark Shuttleworth when he says he's just doing the best for Debian, despite everyday's proof of the opposite in Canonical's employees actions.

Shouldn't we be concerned at all about Ubuntu sucking the blood out of the Debian project? It strikes me that OpenSuSE developers care more about it than ourselves.


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(Anonymous)
2006-11-27 12:58 am UTC (link)
I seriously doubt that if this was actually the case, that Debian wouldn't know about it... there's enough Debian people who actively dislike Ubuntu already for whatever reasons that any actual dirt like that would have been dug up and exposed a long time ago. Not that some of it isn't true, such as the launchpad license stuff etc, but "sucking the blood out of the Debian project"? Do you actually believe that? I have to ask.

Also, it's kinda a good move to read the whole "troll" and try to see it with at least neutral eyes. It's still somewhat of a troll, but I don't think it was intended to be, but rather a friendly hand rather clumsily reached out.

Not that most Debian people would care, of course, since the distribution lives for its various wars on whoever strays near.

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bogus charges
(Anonymous)
2006-11-27 02:44 am UTC (link)
Like many, I disagree with Ubuntu's decision to go with proprietary drivers and to use proprietary tools in its own development. But the charges coming from the SUSE folks seem bogus to me.

First off, the charge that he somehow deliberately subverted Debian by hiring away the Gnome manager and somehow preventing him from doing work on Debian. Debian doesn't have just one guy doing Gnome work, and if the project suffers because one guy suddenly gets a full-time job, that's Debian's problem, not Ubuntu's. Has it occurred to you that the reason Debian people don't seem to be informed about that charge is that it isn't true?

Second, the charge that Ubuntu's going to profit off the work of others. Mark Shuttleworth has spent millions of his personal money on Ubuntu and as best I can tell, he has no realistic plan to ever get it back and he doesn't seem to care all that much. All the for-profit arm is going to do is slow down the rate that he spends down his personal wealth.

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Re: bogus charges
[info]np237
2006-11-27 08:28 am UTC (link)
Has it occurred to you that the reason Debian people don't seem to be informed about that charge is that it isn't true?

As one of the other GNOME maintainers, I can assure you this charge is true.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: bogus charges
(Anonymous)
2006-11-27 11:15 am UTC (link)
As one of the other GNOME maintainers, I can assure you this charge is true.


As an outsider, I would be interested to see links to public emails (mailinglists etc) that prove that point.

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Re: bogus charges
[info]perligata
2006-11-28 02:18 am UTC (link)
I'd be pretty surprised if there were any public emails -- the maintainer in question (if it's who I think it is) is also French and Joss probably talked to him personally about it; also, if it's who I think it is, I doubt he would have publicly made a big deal about it.

I'll note that I'd never heard of this though, and I tend to be relatively up to date on Debian drama...

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Re: bogus charges
(Anonymous)
2006-11-28 11:06 am UTC (link)
It seems to me that the only GNOME packages still stuck at 2.14 in experimental are the ones you maintain (-panel, -applets, -session).

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: bogus charges
[info]np237
2006-11-28 11:12 am UTC (link)
Haha, nice try, Mr Anonymous.

I don't maintain -panel and -applets. -session was stuck by control-center, and I have uploaded both of them yesterday, but I wouldn't recommend to use them anyway because control-center 2.16 is broken.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]kelseykoxil
2008-07-17 03:56 am UTC (link)
Nunes - Jun 21st It seems to me that with some improvements, autoconf and automake could do a better job.

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[info]simbab
2006-11-27 04:01 am UTC (link)
Wow. The Ubuntunistas really don't get it do they?

I went a little acidic on my personal journal reacting to the whole affair, but I am tired of Ubuntu's undeserved reputation and just astroturfing in open source in general.

I do believe that Ubuntu is abusing Debian, and I am pretty pissed to learn about the GNOME nonsense...now I know why KDE versions show up so quickly relative to GNOME versions.

I wholeheartedly believe that Mozilla and Ubuntu both have jumped the shark, as it were, I'm just hoping that the rest of the open source world will come to realize that.

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To be bias or not be bias?
(Anonymous)
2006-11-29 02:07 am UTC (link)
I see no problem with Mark Shuttleworth inviting developers of OpenSuse.

Nobody was coerced nor threatened.

He is presenting them an opportunity that was taken away by the Novell-Microsoft deal to FOSS OpenSuse developers - that is, the right to create income stream from the contributions they made.

It's not Suse vs. Ubuntu. It's about community and ecology. This is about everybody having a home in FOSS.

;)

If it was true that Mark Shuttleworth is halting release of GNome - there is no problem.

First : You've been hired. You can always resign your post to somebody you think that can make judgment that is not affected by Mark Shuttleworth. I see a conflict of interest on the maintainers part.

Second: I think you just missed the opportunity for Debian here. Debian can become an ad-hock standard of all distro's based from it. Because of your whining you missed a good opportunity.

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: To be bias or not be bias?
(Anonymous)
2006-11-29 02:16 am UTC (link)
mark shuttleworth anti-community?

You know from the tone of JP Rosevear; it sound's like "It's payback time."
This is not how a FOSS contributor acts. JP Rosevear thinks that they can laud the MicroNov deal while they allow both parties to tear what FOSS ecology is all about.

So much for their complaint on a simple letter from Mark Shuttleworth.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: To be bias or not be bias?
[info]np237
2006-11-29 09:00 am UTC (link)
Trying to hide the lack of argumentation on your side in a succession of unrelated, incomprehensible statements is not going to make your point.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: To be bias or not be bias?
(Anonymous)
2006-11-29 09:54 am UTC (link)
argument:
A reason or reasons offered in proof, to induce belief, or
convince the mind; reasoning expressed in words; as, an
argument about, concerning, or regarding a proposition,
for or in favor of it, or against it.

argumentation:
1. The act of forming reasons, making inductions, drawing
conclusions, and applying them to the case in discussion;
the operation of inferring propositions, not known or
admitted as true, from facts or principles known,
admitted, or proved to be true.
[1913 Webster]

At least show us where it's lacking and where it's incomprehensible.
;)

For Microsoft, a FOSS developer is an unpaid developer, and that any modifications made should only be used privately and should not be shared. Isn't that already undermining the ecology of FOSS? Novell should have known well but then again, who is really being anti-community? ;)

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: To be bias or not be bias?
(Anonymous)
2006-11-30 06:15 am UTC (link)
Did not mozilla complained to the debian community to not continue using their trademark because they have made changes that were not religiously contributed back to mozilla for approval?

The behaviour of JP Rovespear was uncalled for. He did not do so on balanced reasoning but based it on character defamation.

I do not claim that the Debian community, as a whole, hates Ubuntu. But sometimes their demands goes more than the realm of having ubuntu contribute back code; they want ubuntu to place those changes back to their code and do the conflict resolution for them. Also, the debian community demands that ubuntu should include their logo in every package that they distribute. Well, if that is the case they should also have that same condition to all debian-based distros.

http://www.xandros.com/about.html
http://www.morphix.org/

It's a pity that they single-out Ubuntu because of it's success.

My point is simple, nobody is perfect, everyone have can commit faults; like you and I. The contention between debian and ubuntu are being worked out by Mark Shuttleworth and his team with the debian leaders.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/sounder/2006-July/008134.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/06/msg00278.html
http://blog.madduck.net/debian/2006.05.24-ubuntu-and-debian
http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/the_supermarket_thing.html

I have high hopes on the teams behind Ubuntu and Debian that they are rational and mature individuals and will take things in the right direction.

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