Nice take on Ubuntu, Unity and Canonical

http://deindre.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/how-ive-learnt-canonical-isnt-the-wrong/

During last months I have often heard Canonical be addressed as the worst company whithin opensource ecosystem, while everyone else is the good, and the motivations were very odd, something like “Canonical is not-ethical, ’cause Ubuntu is a mix and match of our product (i.e. GNOME) and their ugly patches”. I’m sure we can try to disprove this habit, expecially considering the “mix and match” is GPL approved, and there isn’t any ethical or not-ethical purposes in patches. I believe it could be done with a better communication marketing.

 

I read the whole article and didn't feel too happy about it. The impression I get is that people, quite reasonably, want their opinion and feedback to be heeded and taken into account when deciding the direction of Ubuntu.

IMO, that could lead to chaos at worst, or at least a distinct slowing down of "progress" as interpreted by someone. The thing that Ubuntu is (approximately) a one-man-show is quite okay with me. I still have the choice not to use it.

The same thing happens over at Mozilla and Google (and, if this is to be believed, even in a proprietary concern). The whole LibO/OpenOffice business is now a year old.

Developers ultimately do something (after taking a lot of factors into consideration) and there follows an outcry, often from people not closely involved with the process or from people whose ideas were not accepted. There are calls for voting, acrimony, bitterness, resignations, etc. All part of the game.

At least the Linux world has variety and the ability for the cognoscenti to cook up their own distros. I recall mackguy tried to count 'em

 

Very nicely put Vasa, instead of appreciating how much Ubuntu has done to spread Linux desktop, all I find here is resentment and for no reason except envy. Ubuntu is not forcing Unity down on us, one can log in to a classic deskto with effects or without, if that don't satisfy, they offer xfce, kde and ldxe varieties. Also time and again I would find jerks using the latest Ubuntu and then bickerng and moaning about how it doesn't work on their system. Have they heard about LTS?