I agree with you except for the part about Jono Bacon

Story: Was it something I said?Total Replies: 10
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slacker_mike

Oct 19, 2012
9:28 PM EDT
First off nice commentary on the Ubuntu stealth development mode. I think this is a bad move on Canonical's part and will most likely further alienate longtime Ubuntu users.

I will take exception though with saying Jono is the solution, I don't see any evidence to back that assertion up. Don't get me wrong I am not saying Jono is a bad guy, but he has followed the company line on Ubuntu's controversial decisions and defended those decisions many times. I think it would be wrong to assume that Jono shares a vastly different view of how Ubuntu should conduct their development and how Canonical engages the community, after all how Canonical engages the community is Jono's current responsibility. Why would we assume Jono isn't fully behind Mark's vision? I hope for Jono's sake he fully believes that this is the right move for Canonical/Ubuntu otherwise he is just spouting rhetoric he himself doesn't believe .

Anyway it will be interesting to see where Canonical goes from here.
lcafiero

Oct 19, 2012
11:03 PM EDT
Thanks, slacker_mike.

As far as a "solution," I think Jono has a better concept of community and surely has a firmer commitment to FOSS than Mark Shuttleworth, or at least that what I had hoped to convey in the blog item. Whether things would be better or whether that's just wishful thinking, I guess, would remain to be seen (or give a lot of fodder to "what if . . ." speculation).
helios

Oct 20, 2012
12:56 PM EDT
Jono has a sweet gig and I imagine he's going to say what he's paid to say. I'm not condeming him....he's got a family to support and all the "outrage" from the community isn't going to change that. Those that will later (or already have) condemn him for his actions and statements might not be facing a monthly mortgage payment or kids that need braces. Jono's gonna do what Jono has to do and I think we need to understand that before the tsunami of condemnation sweeps across the Linuxphere. Taking the moral high road or marching in lockstep might be fashionable, but in this job market, I can understand anyone doing their best to keep their job.
Steven_Rosenber

Oct 20, 2012
3:06 PM EDT
@helios, you are correct.
slacker_mike

Oct 20, 2012
3:34 PM EDT
@Helios and Steven, I understand that Jono wants to keep his job and support his family, I don't question that at all. I do think it is presumptuous to assume that Ubuntu is moving in a direction that Jono is somehow so uncomfortable with he is scared to speak his mind. Jono has publicly supported Canonical's decisions and he has expressed many times how much he enjoys his job so there is no reason to think he doesn't fully support Mark's vision. I would think that Mark would tend to surround himself with like-minded people to achieve his goals and I think there is evidence to support the conclusion that Jono supports Mark's decisions. I truly hope Jono believes what in what he is working on because I would imagine how difficult it would be to "manage" a community towards a goal that you were personally uncomfortable with.
Steven_Rosenber

Oct 20, 2012
3:59 PM EDT
The secret sauce on how to make developing a Linux distribution pay isn't so easy to brew up. Red Hat has figured it out. Canonical is trying to make it happen and support however many employees it has.

Things like Juju and ARM development on the server are very compelling. How that leads to revenue, I don't know. The desktop is a whole other sales and marketing job.

I hope that Canonical can make it work. I still don't see Jono as fully in sync with SABDFL. I see Jono as a guy trying to put out fires started by SABDFL.
tracyanne

Oct 20, 2012
4:54 PM EDT
After reading various comments and Markies blog, I've come to the conclusion that this latest move isn't a closing down of the development process, but rather the opposite, an opening up, by a smidgen, by allowing more people, albeit selected non employees (Ubuntu Community members) of Canonical to be involved in the closed pre release development process.
lcafiero

Oct 20, 2012
9:04 PM EDT
I'm not so sure I agree, tracyanne, and unless you're speaking "1984" newspeak, you can't close some processes and say that your processes, on the whole, are more open.

The Fedora Project is transparent -- painfully and to a fault. I don't know how open OpenSUSE is, but I'd venture that there are no "skunkworks" there. I'd be willing to bet that each of those projects offers those who are willing to help a proverbial shovel and asks them to rhetorically dig in (to say nothing of smaller distros rolling out a red carpet for folks who wish to help).

But Ubuntu? The Mark's original blog post suggests a vetting process where you might qualify as an "in" or an "out" person. I'd like to hear how this dovetails into their concept of "community."
tracyanne

Oct 20, 2012
9:57 PM EDT
@ lcafiero

Larry many of the software developed in house at Canonical are not available to anyone until after the development process is completed. Only Canonical employees actually get to have any input into the development process until Canonical is ready to release, then the source code is made available to the community (or thrown over the wall, Android style). That is up until now.

The change here is that Markie is going to allow selected non employees of Canonical. In other words Community Developers, artists, designers, and other interested parties, that Markie feels he can trust to stick to the Canonical party line, to play with the source code etc, while the in house applications are being developed.

By definition that makes the development process somewhat more open than it was before, because real community members will be commenting and contributing to the development process. It is NOT open in the full sense of Free Open Source Software, but it will be more open that it has been.

The source code will still be thrown over the fence, most of the FOSS community won't get a look in until the software is thrown over the fence/Markie gets to make his big PR announcement.

This whole thing is not so much an opening up of the development process in the sense of real community involvement, it is rather a PR exercise, designed once again to keep Ubuntu in the headlines, and nothing much more.

Good luck to anyone who wants to get involved though, they had better have a history of talking up the party line.
flufferbeer

Oct 24, 2012
12:11 PM EDT
>> But Ubuntu? The Mark's original blog post suggests a vetting process where you might qualify as an "in" or an "out" person. I'd like to hear how this dovetails into their concept of "community." <<

+1 1cafier0,

Seems to me that those less QQute fanbois are already geared-up to spin $huttleworthle$$'s elitist nonsense onto the gullible Baboontu "community" BIGTIME!!!

My 2c
Steven_Rosenber

Oct 24, 2012
12:31 PM EDT
If Jono spoke first, SABFTL second, Ubuntu would be in a whole other place.

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