GNOME Developers Attack Canonical’s Decision on Unity

Gnome and Canonical have been hissing at each other ever since Mark Shuttleworth said Red Hat is proprietary. Ignore all the highfalutin' stuff, it's a plain old spitting match and neither side is going to change.

It's no secret that Ubuntu/Canonical, in certain targeted areas, doesn't exactly want to work with the upstream but actually become the upstream.

Steven: You're right, Canonical is always blamed for not contributing to Free Software and not contributing to upstream.

Now, they're contributing Free Software and becoming upstream, and still people are upset.

What those people better could have said, maybe, is: You should contribute to _our_ Free Software!

On the other hand, it's an opportunity as well, I guess: If Unity will be bad, then those might lead to new chances for Gnome-based distro's, or for tons of short blog-articles on how to 'replace Unitiy with Gnome on Natty'.

Funny thing to note - I'm not sure if I'm the first one - but if you literally translate Meerkat to English, both are UNIX-commands.

Well.. Mark Shuttleworth was wrong when he called Red Hat proprietary. In this move he may be wrong not because of a split with GNOME, but rather because it may alienate his user base and mindshare in the Linux community may shift elsewhere. Granted, Canonical's target audience may not be current Linux users but it isn't a good idea to anger current Ubuntu users, some of whom are fiercely loyal to the distro. Much of Ubuntu's marketing machine has been based on a friendly and, at times, almost adoring tech press and on mindshare.

I didn't see anything hostile in Jon McCann's comments and I actually share his doubts about the likelihood of a quick and successful transition. I think the description of his comments as an "attack" is a bit overblown. GNOME doesn't depend on Ubuntu. As noted in the article, Unity does depend heavily on GNOME.

> it isn't a good idea to anger current Ubuntu users

Few Ubuntu users get angry with Mark Shuttleworth. They stick with Ubuntu no matter what.

bigg: So far that is true. Might Unity change that if it is implement poorly? That is an open question.

Quoting: [Most] Ubuntu users [...] stick with Ubuntu no matter what.

That might be true, but it may no be the version.

YBT