bb_matt said:
Yeah it's terrible.
I mean the guy is charging, er, well he's charging absolutely, er nothing for it.
And he's also paying a team to develop it in conjunction with the Debian guys - man, what a bastard !
Whilst I applaud the whole marketing drive, and free-CD via post system introduced by Ubuntu, I have to be skeptical about the altruism of it all. Canonical are on a serious brand-building drive, in order to later support their commercial interests in Linux. I will refer you back to the Redhat/Fedora fiasco to decide whether this is a good or bad thing. At least Redhat based their distribution off -- nothing. They built their own distribution. Ubuntu is most certainly leveraging Debian for commercial interests, off the back of a huge group of maintainers of the Debian distribution. Canonical gets free marketing and karma++ for shipping Ubuntu CD's. The Debian project gets a stab in the face.
bb_matt said:
His vision is also to provide an easy to use distribution for Africa and the developing world, what a total schmuck the guy must be.
It's not a terrible vision, at that. I have to agree --- but. It's not being aimed at "Africa" at all. Just look at where it's being marketed, made, and supported. Also, one has to consider the question why Mr Shuttleworth would create, and appoint a BRITISH company, to solve the problems of Africa.
Canonical Website said:
Canonical is a global organisation headquartered in the Isle of Man, with employees throughout Europe, North America, South America and Australia.
Wouldn't a distribution FOR Africa be better made IN Africa, by Africans who can then be gainfully employed LOCALLY instead of having to hunt for jobs in the UK? The phrase "everywhere but here" comes to mind when one looks at Canonical.
I fail to see how Ubuntu is helping .za at all. Impi Linux, on the other hand is created by a bunch of lowly paid students, and one very poor manager, who also writes .za's best free accounting package, Cubit. They battle to even download the source code for the packages that makes up their distribution.
bb_matt said:
You know, TheRoDent, have respect for your knowledge, but why do you have to lay the smack down on pretty much everything you don't agree with ?
Agreed, sometimes I might not make available my reasoning which is wrong, so consider this post my full view(s) on Ubuntu. I hope that my reasoning here might at least sway your opinion a little. But when I smack something I don't do it without reason. I normally carefully form, and research my opinions. I obviously lack a lot in communicating those opinions effectively. My bad.
bb_matt said:
From everything I've read about Ubuntu, which is quite a lot as I follow Linux news closely, Shuttleworth is doing everything he can to produce a distribution based on Debian which keeps the core values of Linux and doesn't break any dependencies of Debian, and you say he's "raping it"
My view is, that the press information you see is pretty much misleading. It is once again part of a bigger marketing machine. Dig through the debian mailing lists, and you'll see that there is quite some discontent. The "core" values aren't being maintained all that much.
bb_matt said:
Nice one - so lets knock anyone who tries to make a difference.
Hey, how about the fact that he'll pay to have the damn thing shipped to your door, neatly packaged, for absolutely nothing !
I don't dispute that Ubuntu CD's are making a difference. I just also believe it to be the cheapest form of marketing. Not that there's anything wrong with receiving good marketing by giving away CD's for free. I just don't believe it is being done solely for "philantropy" and a "need to popularize Linux". I believe it is being done
purely for marketing purposes.
bb_matt said:
Oh wait, I know, he's a super rich famous guy, so he can't be seen making a Linux distribution, no way !
I never said that, you did. I believe he's perfectly welcome to make a distribution as is anyone else. What I am saying is that in my view it should not be done for commercial interests off the back of the Debian developers.
Here are a few facts you may not be aware of:
1. The tool, launchpad, that is used to maintain Ubuntu, is non-free, and proprietary to Canonical. My view, and a lot of others' is that this is hardly in line with the "social contract" of the Debian distribution. Sure, Canonical can do whatever they want with the code they wrote. But surely, it would have been a great "give back" to the thousands of developers and maintainers upon which they base their distribution, if the system, if useful, could be used to further support the Debian project.
2. Ubuntu has been "appropriating" debian maintainers in their Launchpad as the maintainers for the Ubuntu variant packages.
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg214171.html
Many debian maintainers feel this to be unfair, and incorrect. Canonical as the packagers, have modified these packages away from what the Debian maintainers signed off, yet are still pointing everything back to these maintainers. These maintainers are associated with the Debian project, not Ubuntu.
Canonical's hands are hardly clean. There's a lot of friction with the Debian team due to Ubuntu. This friction has valid roots.
There is no kernel.org mirror for South Africa. There is no sourceforge project download mirror in South Africa. In fact, most open source software is very difficult to obtain in South Africa, and if it is obtainable, it is most surely out of date. Instead of creating a commercial distribution using a British company, don't you think we could have used some of these mirrors local, considering our bandwidth quandary? I think it would have cost Mr Shuttleworth MUCH less to establish those mirrors here than create an entire company for a new distribution. Such a thing would actually HELP people to develop more open source software in .za plus solved the starving hacker problem.
Receiving a free Ubuntu CD, does not give you the source code. Whilst Canonical are willing to send source CD's to you (not via shipit, mind you), they prefer that you download the source. From --- guess where --- the UK.
This does open source development in South Africa even LESS favours. Bandwidth is expensive, and international traffic even moreso. It's great, we can have the entire .za "Ubuntu'ised" except if you want to recompile your Ubuntu kernel, you have to download it abroad. If you want to customize your PHP, you have to download it abroad. The CD's are more dangerous than good. Get people hooked on Linux - Good Thing (tm). Get them hooked to a distro for which source code is extremely difficult to obtain. Bad Thing (tm).
Ubuntu does the local Linux development community no favours. Sure, it favours users, it's a neat and clean way to get Linux on your desktop.
BUT THEN WHAT?
From a users' perspective, yes, Ubuntu is a great thing. From an Open Source Developers' and hackers perspective, it's just one more distro, trying to get to the top of the ladder, without giving back to the people that make it so.
Call it a "purist" view, whatever you want. The fact is that Mr Shuttleworth, Canonical, and Ubuntu are riding on the backs of thousands of hackers' hard work, using Ubuntu as a clever marketing plan for Canonical.
If Shuttleworth wanted to create an African distribution, why not simply contribute the language translations back to the Debian project, and support the Debian project?
I'll tell you why. Because there's no "brand" to be made out of the name "Debian" for commercial gain. I read headlines such as
'Canonical appoints Obsidian as first Ubuntu support partner worldwide'
and get extremely pissed off. Can you start seeing how Canonical is already controlling "Ubuntu" and it's brand, by APPOINTING companies as their "OFFICIAL SUPPORT PARTNER" ?
It remains my view that Shuttleworth, and Canonical are misusing Debian for their own interests. Whilst nothing illegal about it, I still find it disgusting that Ubunt-nut is being "postured" as this "African" distribution with great philantropical behest, when, in fact, it is not. It's not even remotely African.
The kernel it's running isn't even OFFICIALLY DOWNLOADABLE in South Africa.
