Debian Forks as Stormy Seas Lie Ahead.

Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek - Sailing the Stormy Seas (Image credit: imagehere.com)

Seriously, I think some people just have self-destructive personalities.

Such is the case for Debian, where a few souls have foolishly convinced themselves that a Fork is necessary.

For what, exactly?

I submit the big unspoken reason is 'work avoidance'.

It would seem, the majority of major Distros have had no difficulty merging systemd and there are no reports I am aware of that would indicate problems of any kind aside from planned and routine systemd maintenance upgrades.

So, I am thinking, What kind of effect will such a fork have?

Most likely, it will create fear, uncertainty, doubt about whether either Distro is viable and if either should be taken seriously at this point.

Thus, a cloud now has formed over the Debian camp and all indications are that Devuan will be the name of a newly announced Fork.

Will Devuan be taken seriously?  Will there be a fractious split and move en masse from Debian to Devuan?

I am going to say No to both questions.

This marks the end of the systemd controversy at Debian.  Those who wish to leave for greener pastures are welcome to do so.  Debian will continue their slow, pragmatic, sloth-like progress and those who have hitched their wagons to it, will submit to whatever happens.

The cheering for Devuan will eventually reach a crescendo, then fade.  Reality will set in.  A very large volume of work must be done if Devuan will ever come to fruition.  Work avoidance won't suffice this time.

It should come as no surprise, and for good technical reasons, I wouldn't touch Debian with a barge pole, much less a fork of it.

As far as I am concerned, neither has anything to offer that would be considered superior to Red Hat (Fedora ) technology.  For one, Red Hat is fully Linux Standard Base and systemd compliant. Two, it is a commercial Distro that actually makes a 'profit', unlike Canonical Ltd.Ubuntu where Mr. Shuttleworth plucks down an occasional IOU to cover operating expenses so he can keep his insolvent business going.

You see, unfortunately and in retrospect Mr. Shuttleworth made a bad strategic decision early on.

Namely, Ubuntu hitched its wagon to Debian, which, as we all know, now has forked. Canonical Ltd. regardless of their gantt charts, project management milestones, and other various metrics will have to 'cow-tow' to whatever Debian chooses to do.  That, alone, breeds much confusion and has taken its toll.  It even pushes out the planned roll-out of Mir display technology for at least another year (16.04 tentatively).  Unity, the Ubuntu desktop GUI, has become effectively an island unto itself.  None of the other Distros will support it.  Not one.  Mr. Shuttleworth succeeded in only driving a wedge into the upstream development community.  Unlike Unity, GNOME with Wayland is on time, stable, and well supported, particularly by Red Hat.

There is no confusion in the Fedora camp.  It's full steam ahead for the anticipated release of Fedora 21 Workstation, along side the newly created divisions for Server and Cloud, this all being done under the governance and financial assistance of Red Hat.

Fedora is the largest Community Distro and the R&D factory for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  No confusion exists due to their thoughtful planning and execution.

Stay the course Red Hat, Fedora, stormy seas lie ahead.  -- Dietrich

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Debian on Death's Doorstep: Developers Resist Systemd by Resigning

Is Debian Dying?

There is no shortage of consternation brewing over on the Debian Debacle Cul-de-sac where the nattering nabobs of negativity have forced yet another vote taking for the decoupling (or not) of the current plan to migrate to a replacement for sysvinit system.

The votes are in and it would appear no change in plans will take place.

So, it's full steam ahead with standards-compliant systemd replacing the aged sysvinit middle-ware design.

What lies ahead?  Much discussion preceding the vote taking took place including the proposition of forking Debian.  Yes.  A fork.

And, despite the issue of migrating over 40,000 applications, the proposition is still being taken seriously.

From my vantage point, Debian has always been a 'speed bump' on the road to innovation.  Their software management policy is simply unacceptable in today's world where life can change in a New York Minute.

The concern should present to those Debian derivatives, of which there are many, that delays in moving forward on systemd continue to mount.

Canonical Ltd. Mark Shuttleworth has intimated in a question and answer session (video) including Mir, their Wayland alternative, won't happen any sooner 2016.  I predict that there will be further delay as other unforeseen Debian issues present during their migration to systemd support.

Developers of Debian derivatives and application software ought to be giving serious consideration to the overall 'health status' of their beloved operating system.  They have their work cut out for themselves.  Not only must their Distro middle-ware be modified, but also the applications that run on it.  That is a 'double-whammy' and I'd suspect that when the going gets tough, you'll hear more kvetching and see Developers who can't knuckle-under hitting the exit doors seeking to retire their Derivative or joining up in the RPM camp.  I hope that the latter will be their preference.

Looking at the above chart from Wikipedia showing those major Distros that have adopted systemd, both Debian and Ubuntu stand out and, as a result, all their derivatives will fall into the same status until Debian can reach a stable systemd plateau.  It is interesting to note Gentoo and Slackware have indicated no plan to change over to systemd.

Are these indications that Debian is in the midst of her final initial death throws?

If developers align to advocating for a Fork, then the demise of Debian may well soon follow as a wholesale 'plate tectonic shift' occurs.

As for Me, I am wagering Debian's days are numbered.  What say you?

-- Dietrich

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Why Working Towards a Singular Purpose With Linux Matters

Viking Ship (Image Credit: image-pearl.com) 

Open Source isn't really about Application Software.  No, it's a philosophy.  That's it.

Most think of Open Source in the context of Software Development, naturally, but it goes further than that.  It is, essentially, a mindset and 'way of life'.

One can share in a cooperative fashion making contributions to a singular cause and remain compatible with Open Source.  This is a human trait -- a willingness to cooperate, share, help others.  Nurturing and embracing the Open Source philosophy can produce positive results on many levels.

Open Source and the Gnu Public License confer the end-user flexibility to access and make changes to the Linux codebase.

Working cooperatively in lock-step fashion in a large team of Developers requires sharing in the goals of a project and furtherance of those goals, even when there might be some disagreement with the approach taken to do a task or disagreement with agreed-to management objectives or community goals.

The current 'rift' which has developed around whether Debian should or should not incorporate middle-ware design changes promulgated by Red Hat has become a focus of discussion with consideration being given to forking the entire Debian codebase in an effort to retain control of those design changes which are pending in merging systemd into Debian.

The very idea of being able to fork a code base is a good thing.  It was demonstrable when Oracle asserted their control over OpenOffice in a way which resulted in irreconcilable differences with the Open Source Community sufficiently to cause a fork to LibreOffice.  It is assumed that conditions were reached where the requirements set forth by Oracle management oversight were recognized as incompatible with Open Source, the philosophy, and so we now see the end result.

The outcome in this example fortunately was a good one.  It relieved an intractable situation and enabled work to continue on an otherwise viable project.

The Debian Project has taken input on the decision to switch away from aged sysvinit to systemd some time ago.  It was all done with requests for public feedback to be considered in making the final choice.

I feel that choice, to switch to systemd, was a good one given systemd's recognized 'net' technical merits.

Yet, today, we see splinter groups who for their own reasons, some which may be valid and some which may not be valid, wish to fork Debian.

What will the unforeseen 'unintended consequences' of taking such action be?

In my estimation, it will put a 'cloud' over Debian, for one, and produce increased end-user confusion with 'mixed messages' implied as to what is 'good verses bad' design.  A fork of Debian is divisive and will so cause an 'us verses them' environment, hostility, isolation, continued disagreement and is not conducive to cooperation and compatible with the Open Source philosophy.

The Vikings learned to build ships with arrays of oars wherein men would cooperate to function in a collective purpose moving their oars in the water in unison to a drum beat, thereby moving the vessel efficiently and speedily like no other.

It was effective.  It was necessarily cooperative or it would not work.  Ignoring the drum beat would cause the ship to founder and not be propelled forward.

Having yet another fork of Linux is arguably good and bad.  It moves manpower away from one project to another.

Forking dilutes the effectiveness of staying to a singular purpose, a singular api, and introduces more variation which makes achieving standards all the more difficult.

It is because Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX are singular apis that a thriving ecosystem was born.  Out of singularity standardization developed, de facto and otherwise.  There was less confusion as all parties involved know the API is singular and coding applications is vastly simplified.

In terms of commercial involvement, such considerations matter greatly.  Cost for one is reduced when it is known in advance that software behaves one and only one way and so administrative controls can be put in place to promote stability.  Enterprise craves stability.  Systems must run uninterrupted.  Any perceived inconsistencies regarding one particular operating system, Linux, will be viewed as 'weaknesses' and that is to be expected.  No CIO wants to have multiple APIs and their attendant complexities to support.  It is at minimum, inefficient and less than stable and less than cost-effective.

Thus, I feel, while forking is important, and Debian 'purists' have the best of intentions, the end result of such a fork will result in a general decline in the use of Debian regardless of which middle-ware is utilitzed.

It is because of this forking, cloning with Distro-sprawl that I reached the conclusion that sticking with ONE Distro was crucial to the overall success of Linux on the Desktop and in the Data Center.  With that said, I chose Fedora by virtue of its Red Hat guidance and breadth of community involvement.

So, just because one can fork, clone, by virtue of the GPLv2 licensing terms, doesn't mean one should.  While it made sense to fork OpenOffice.org, it does not with Debian and will be harmful.

Restraint and adherence to one API is vital to moving Linux into the realm of mass adoption.  -- Dietrich

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Cry Babies Cry. Programmers Code.

A schism of sorts is forming in the Debian developer community as one developer has gone on record to formally criticize Debian's decision to adopt systemd in an Open Letter to the Linux World.

Here's what I have to say to Mr. Christopher Barry and others who may agree with his viewpoint.  Accept it.  Systemd is a done deal.  It's here for good reasons whether you realize it or not.  But I hope you eventually grasp why it was written, as it does solve many inherent 'known' problems with aged sysvinit.

And, as expected, a chorus of cry babies has been awoken, like sleeping dogs, taking aim (again) at systemd.

Those who complain in this instance, I am afraid, have a simple agenda.  

They are lazy.

As such and with much creativity they will persist lodging complaints so as to avoid doing some difficult, but not insurmountable, work.  Yes, there are many pain points in addressing merging systemd PID 1 code that are due to its 'middleware' central/critical role, which result in dependency changes and in some cases some major code rewrites that must be done to conform with this new technology standard.

Ah, standard.  There's the rub.  There are legions of arrogant, swaggering Open Source code jockeys who like to strut their stuff by spinning off their 'me too' Distro with their own branding overnight.  Have you taken a count of how many Linux Distributions there are now?

Standardization strengthens the power of Linux.  Distro sprawl does not.

The planned integration of systemd is now officially deployed to Debian Jessie Beta 1. This means that all the 'foot dragger' derivatives must follow suit with doing what is needed to align with this major system design change.

So, while we see some dig in their heels by organizing a boycott, others choose to simply whine, as the din gets louder and louder.  Soon, though, the cry babies will run out of tears, pick up their toys, and go home whilst the real-world Programmers continue to keep their heads down, doing the grunt work with little fanfare and nary a complaint.

Cry Babies cry.  Programmers code.  -- Dietrich

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Debian, Ubuntu Cave In: Standardize on Systemd

by Dietrich Schmitz

It's almost too painful to watch.  Really.  

Whenever Debian gets around to getting off their collective hands and coming to grips with reality, it's as though a new Pope were being selected and we are all waiting with great anticipation for the 'smoke signal' indicating a decision has been made.

Good grief.  This is what constitutes progress for Linux.  It's really border-line funny how Debian committees work through the pros and cons of adopting Upstart vs. systemd.

Do these Folks realize they are running the risk of becoming irrelevant in their inaction while the earth continues to turn on its axis?  Seriously, systemd is a foregone conclusion and while it took time for me to digest the technical issues during the past year, I do see its importance.

The thing is, this does represent not only a technical advancement, but also galvanizes the Distro community into a level of conformance which begets standardization.

Oh there's the standardization word again.  I said it.

Let me pose a hypothetical question for you developers out there:

What would happen if you dropped all of your current development efforts on your Distro X and enlisted to work on one mainstream Top 5 Distro, such as Fedora?

Think about that question for a moment.  What would you be giving up and what would you be gaining?

The initial knee-jerk reaction might be to say "I'd be losing my right to choice".  But would you?

Is the act of being independent and creating variation 'because I can' and "it's my right" of higher importance than say putting forth the effort to build a superior singular Distro?  Imagine if you would, hundreds, thousands of developers going to work on one Distro.  Leveraging the intellectual resources and manpower would be amazing.

But wait, all of that 'variation'?  It would fall to the wayside and we as developers could all focus on working with one software API, one file hierarchy structure.  The effect would be the same as if overnight we all chose Android and focused on application development in that ecosystem.

Honestly, I wonder where Linux will wind up and hope that if consolidation occurs as I predict, more effort will be redirected to a single Distro which can be forged, annealed, hardened to become as popular as Windows.

The success of Windows is as much about a monopoly as it is about one standard, one api, which was embraced and flourished.  Microsoft Windows legacy 8 is aged and I believe we have reached a turning point where Corporate Enterprise knows it must do something to unshackle itself from a marriage to an ever-restrictive proprietary solution.

Mark Shuttleworth acts like a defeated Man in his Losing Graciously concession to adopting systemd.  It's silly.  Look at the big picture.

One Distro, one API, with thousands of developers behind it, is a powerful thing.

-- Dietrich 

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The Debian Init System Deba{te|cle}

by Dietrich Schmitz

Debian Linux has had a long-standing reputation of being staid and pragmatic in their decision-making.  Even their software release management policy is on the long side when compared with other Distros.  A typical 2-year software cycle just doesn't cut it in today's Internet World operating at the 'speed of light'.

So, it would appear, the time has come for Debian's maintainers to make a decision as to which init system to adopt going forward.

While Debian 7 Squeeze includes systemd as an installable option, the default init system is sysvinit.

The debate currently being conducted at Debian is whether they should move to Upstart (used by Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu Linux), or, to systemd instead, going forward and as such a position statement has just been drafted on the Debian wiki site.

Sysvinit Disadvantages

The Debian Team has had many years of good results using sysvinit, but recognize it's limits are now beginning to show strain.  And with a feature freeze for Debian 8 nearing, they must determine which init system will become the new default replacement for the aged sysvinit.  

Here is their list of disadvantages for using sysvinit going forward:

• Sysvinit lacks service supervision. While /etc/inittab provides this capability, management of /etc/inittab is quite restrictive. Upstart eliminates the need for complicated PID file handling for all services. There are bolt-ons that allow you to do service supervision on top of sysvinit, such as runit, but it's clear that these are bolt-ons.
• Sysvinit does not track dependencies between services. Insserv/startpar provides this on top of sysvinit, but this is again very much a bolt-on, and only handles dependencies at boot/shutdown time (i.e., during runlevel changes) and can't handle any complicated service interdependencies at runtime. Upstart expresses this information in the native service configuration format, clearly and concisely.
• Sysvinit requires complex shell scripts for each service. While some of the complexity has been abstracted out into common helpers (lsb-functions; start-stop-daemon), having to represent each service's start/stop handling as a program is a severe handicap. Upstart jobs are simple, declarative, easy to maintain, and easy to modify locally as needed. They also eliminate the longstanding nuisance of update-rc.d reactivating services behind the administrator's back on upgrade.
• Sysvinit is linear. It stopped being a good fit for boot management on Debian the moment Debian adopted udev. There are many race conditions that persist in Debian today when booting with sysvinit, and although these may be fixable, the complexity for fixing them with sysvinit is very high. We're better off switching to an init system that's designed to work together with the event-based kernel and udev.

Upstart vs. SystemD

Clearly, Debian developers recognize that the time has come to make a change.  

In the opinion of the author(s) of the position statement, it would seem to place both init systems on equal footing insofar as features are concerned: 

"In terms of overall feature uplift of the init system itself, there is really rather little to distinguish upstart from systemd. Both would represent a huge step forward for Debian over sysvinit. If Debian did not adopt upstart, systemd would certainly be my second choice."

Looking further for some substantive information in the position statement, the author(s) go on to make some subjective comparisons:

But despite the init systems being comparable at the feature level, there are reasons that I think upstart is a better fit for Debian than systemd.

• SystemD is Linux-specific. Upstream has been very clear that they are not interested in accepting porting patches to enable systemd to be used with kernels other than the Linux kernel. If Debian wishes to continue to support non-Linux ports, this significantly reduces the benefit that maintainers would gain from having a simpler init format to support.

• SystemD is hasty. Debian is late to the party when it comes to adopting a better init system, but systemd is evolving rapidly and does not have a long track record of backwards-compatibility that it can point to. While systemd is unlikely to break any interfaces that upstream has promised to maintain, I think there is a risk that newer dependencies will be driven by the version requirements in Fedora and RHEL, leaving Debian to fend for itself with respect to sorting out rocky transitions on upgrade - not unlike the problematic udev transitions of the past. Upstart is committed to maintaining compatibility across stable releases of Debian, just as it currently does between Ubuntu LTS releases. While upstart seeks to leverage newer kernel features where this makes sense, we are committed to having sane upgrade paths and not depend on such kernel features prematurely.

• SystemD is "greedy". Most of the recent arguments about why it's dangerous to adopt upstart instead of systemd center around features that are being built into systemd in a manner that can't be separated out (e.g., cgroup management in PID 1). There is an advantage to the implementor to put these features in-process in init, because it ensures early availability with no concerns about startup ordering at boot, but it commits downstreams to a monolithic design with respect to parts of the system architecture which are not settled questions in the wider ecosystem. Debian should take a principled position regarding its future architecture, and not find itself at the mercy of other parties who wish to dictate design to us.

So, it is apparent the author(s) are in favor of Upstart but would 'consider' systemd, yet, go on to reinforce with additional reasons why Upstart should be considered over systemd.

As though that were not enough, Google Plus user and Intel employee/Gnome community member +Sriram Ramkrishna  threw his opinion into the mix characterizing the whole subject as having morphed from its original purpose.  Ramkrishna writes:

"...the whole debian systemd discussion has turned into a referendum on GNOME being the default DE for Debian with those who want to switch advocating switching to XFCE as I would imagine that it works closest to what GNOME 2. Why they didn't pick Mate, I don't understand if they want the GNOME 2 experience.

The discussion seems to miss the fact that they would miss out on Wayland and moving to a new display server? They can of course do what they want as that is their prerogative. But it seems that long simmering resentment against GNOME and the change in UI has risen to the fore with the small dependency that GNOME has on systemd. They are using that as an excuse to drive a change in DE.
There are a lot of good reason to use systemd, all that has been rehashed. But the biggest nonsense I've read (as an IT guy) is the fact that we should have a choice in init systems. What the fuck? Essentially people just want to make every part of the OS to be hot swappable. Who would want to support such a system? Who will QA all these combinations? It's madness!..."

However valid the reasons set forth in the Upstart vs. systemd position statement may be, the level of emotion rises whenever a discussion is had concerning moving to +Lennart Poettering's  systemd.  Personally, I believe in the long-term systemd will become the best option receiving full support from the Linux Foundation's kernel.org developers insofar as plans to merge udev and systemd into the kernel are concerned.

The concern is that Debian's pragmatism may work against them and cause a backlog queue of software development issues.  So, acting in a timely fashion in today's world is vital to remaining competitive for any Linux Distribution.  

Hopefully, the Debian Team have recognized this and will respond by making adjustments to how their organizational structure and decision making process works to result in overall efficiency improvements.

As for the Debian init system issue, my money is on Debian going with Upstart, since that was the system chosen by Canonical Ltd. for Ubuntu and Mark Shuttleworth has no intention in making a change any time soon.  This would put both Distros and their derivatives in alignment with each other going forward and efficiencies would obtain.

Here's hoping Debian reaches a decision which best serves their future needs.

-- Dietrich

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SolusOS Sunsets as Ikey Doherty Rises

by Dietrich Schmitz

+Ikey Doherty, founder of SolusOS (image: right), wrote on his website the other day:

“It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the closure of SolusOS. Simply put, there is no longer enough manpower to fulfill [sic] the vision. What began as a Debian derivative evolved into an independent distribution, without the large development team required to back such an effort.”

However difficult that decision may have been, I know that Ikey has broken through to the other side.  You see, it's been a long, long, terribly difficult life struggle for him as I gauged his progress over the last year.  Finding work, keeping his dreams alive, was almost impossible, and, at times, desperate.

Yet, somehow, he kept going and one day not long ago landed a really good full-time paying job that put his exceptional talents to good use.  If you think about it, the struggles, the frustration, all were not for naught.  Everything happens for a reason.

Ikey had to do what he 'had to do' and SolusOS was his mountain to climb, his intellectual struggle, to reach the mountain top.  It was that he maintained the struggle, fought hard for what he believes in, that kept him going and ultimately led him to his destiny.

No, I am not sad.  I am exceedingly happy for Ikey and know that he'll be taking on life's challenges and changes as he has always done -- with zest and an unparalleled joie de vivre -- straight on, dukes up and swinging -- fighting the good fight.   

This is a Man with integrity, ethics, and exceptional capability on his way up.  Step aside.  Best of Luck my Friend.

-- Dietrich

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Cloverleaf Dead: The Kids Pick Up Their Toys and Go Home

by Dietrich Schmitz

It began with Fuduntu's spring closure announcement, then its team opened a new project called FUSE, a spin of openSUSE.   And now comes another announcement by Shawn Dunn "...we are stopping development on Cloverleaf...":

"Due to many factors, the most important being lack of available manpower, we will be refactoring our efforts as part of the openSUSE project, whether in an official or non-official capacity. 

Initially, we had calculated on having 7-10 active developers available to work on Cloverleaf as an independent distribution, based on openSUSE. 

As things turned out, many of the developers we had factored into our plans had things pop up in daily life, whether personal or professional, and that has cut down on our ability to keep up with changes from the upstream and still develop Cloverleaf into a distribution that would have the same sort of polish that Fuduntu did.     Right now, we only have three active developers and it just isn’t possible to develop a satisfactory project with our current manpower."

That's too bad.  But perhaps the bar was set too high?  And to do anything with openSUSE would have meant developing a much deeper understanding of its internals which are quite broad and expansive.

I personally think that the brain trust of Fuduntu was largely a 'one man band'.  The take-away is that having any one individual in charge of development will always be risky, which left all of the Fuduntu community 'high and dry', unfortunately.

You should therefore ask yourself these questions:  Is my Distro being maintained by more than one programmer?, and, Will my Distro still be around in five years?

I happen to believe only a few Distributions will remain in five years and they will consist of Debian and derivatives, Ubuntu and derivatives, Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, Mageia, Arch Linux and Gentoo.

All others are cookie cutter Distros of sorts and have no real redeeming value beyond being mixes of the aforementioned base Distributions.  There's no innovation in that.  The programmers who maintain them will eventually leave their respective communities 'at the drop of a hat', kind of like what happened with Cloverleaf.    When they chose openSUSE following the initial Confused by FUSE episode, I suspected then the project wouldn't have longevity.  It turns out, I was right.

The Kids picked up their toys and went home.  So long.

-- Dietrich

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Thank You Cloverleaf for the Referrals, If Nothing Else.

by Dietrich Schmitz

I have to laugh.  In reviewing referral sources for the month of June, Cloverleaf-linux.org is quite active.

Thank you so much Cloverleaf Team!

If nothing else, my story, to which you so generously linked, does have merit. (Image credit: bubblews.com)

And, I think those who assess the level of mean-spirited behavior your clan displayed in the comment section confirms what I wrote.

Much of what goes on in many camps, like yours, is ego-driven, opportunistic, and shows little talent.  It is, yet, another cookie cutter Distro in the ever-growing Distrowatch sprawl.

My prediction is that you'll have one year of busy bee work and then everyone will grow tired and then say, "I don't want to play anymore.", and then that will be the end of it.

I give credit to only a few community Distro teams for having the intellectual capacity to drive and move Linux forward.  Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mageia, Gentoo and Arch really do the bulk of the technology grunt work, while the other rag tag teams ride on their coattails and take every opportunity to pat themselves on the back.

Otherwise, it's pure ego fulfillment and much intellectual masturbation prevails in the Linux ecosystem.

Don't like what I write?  Please.  By all means, put up another back-link to it and thank you very much in advance for the referrals and, of course, we mustn't forget, your usual vitriol.

Cheers!

--Dietrich

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Your Career: Large Linux Project Involvement Key

by Dietrich Schmitz

When everyone pulls their own oar and to a beat the vessel moves along quite well does it not?

Every organization operates much like this on a certain level.

Without a cadence, timing, planning, and execution, the vessel won't move forward -- at least not efficiently.

It might even sit still and possibly move backwards.

When conflicting goals and interests arise, those oars no longer operate in unison.

What would it be like if suddenly, the majority of developers chose not to write for their respective Distribution and all came aboard one large vessel equipped with many oars?

Might then the ability to reach goals and objectives increase and be obtained more quickly?  Might the vessel be more powerful and move with greater speed?

How do you see yourself (the Developer) having an effect on the outcomes of Linux 'at large' in terms of achieving success?  What is your measure of success?

Would working on a single larger project be more meaningful if you knew the potential for your work's positive effect would be realized?

These are things which I have thought about as I survey the current Distribution sprawl.  So many are bound to recede into insignificance and I predict only a few, larger ones, will remain standing in five years.  I submit, as few as six Distros will still be around.  The rest of you, former hackers, wasting time on an obscure Distribution, will have grown jaded, tired and moved on leaving dead projects behind.  Those Distros will whither, dry up and simply die.  If this is true, then wouldn't making a decision today to redirect your talent to actually doing something which has a chance of being genuinely useful in five years be an important career decision?

I fear for young Developers who have invested their energy in smaller Distros and their projects without thinking about whether they are doing what's best for their own career path.

I've written that I feel there are too many Distros.  Qualitatively, only a few have merit, technology-wise, and the rest, like Cloverleaf, are merely clones with just some minor adaptation.  Sadly, this isn't progress.  It isn't innovating and for the young ambitious Developer, it is a waste of your precious skills, talent and time.  It won't advance your career.  Worse, if a project closes unexpectedly, you'll have potentially wasted many hours or years of your life, for naught.  Don't allow that to happen.  Don't say, "I wasted [x] years of my life."  That would be a shame.

Find a large project.  Move up the food chain and mingle with the Big Fish in the Big Pond and learn from truly experienced technology professionals.  Gain from advanced thinking that thrives in those environments and benefit from accelerated learning.

I don't care which, but move up the scale to the large Distros, Debian, Fedora, Mageia, Ubuntu, and get involved.  Get your foot in the door there however you can and stay there where one can truly make a difference and grow intellectually at the same time.

Don't Become a Big Fish in a Little Pond.  It won't help your career.

-- Dietrich

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The Ubuntu FOSS Community: Merely Chumps on the Outside Looking In

by Dietrich Schmitz

Oh Dear.  I am at it again. ;)

This is a continuation in a series of stories examining the current state of affairs with Canonical Ltd. and Ubuntu.

Note, the use of just the word Ubuntu.  Canonical Ltd. prefer to call it that, not Ubuntu Linux.  They even prefer to call the Linux kernel the Ubuntu kernel.  There is no acknowledgement to the fact that they are using Linux.

How is this possible?  

Let's start with the fact that Mark Shuttleworth, a wealthy billionaire, established Ubuntu as a fork of Debian Linux.  Don't loose sight of that Folks as you read further.  See if you can follow my thought process.

He forked Debian Linux, which, by itself, isn't a crime. But keep in mind the notion that they took advantage of the 'good character' of Debian to begin with on their very first release.

But he has since done much 'harm' to the original good character of Ubuntu, which made it so popular to begin with.  You can read some of my previous posts to see how much of that good character is now gone replaced by a vision, mind you, of what Ubuntu 'should be', to the exclusion of the FOSS community.

How so?

Even now, Canonical Ltd. give lip service to having an interest in the community, but, their deeds contradict, and with each step taken, Ubuntu moves further away from its original good character, derived from Debian.  It no longer resembles the original product.

No, elitist Mark Shuttleworth has seen to that.  Unity replaces, at the expense of throwing the baby out with the bath water, an otherwise perfectly good, common-sense GUI that was perfectly intuitive, industry-standard that even today is the basis for other popular GUIs including Xfce, KDE Plasma Workspaces, and Windows 8.1 even.  Even Microsoft saw the errors of their ways and has backtracked on Windows 8 by throwing the magic bus in reverse, going back to what 'just works'.  No, when things aren't broken, don't fix them I say and so do millions of other people.

Yet, fix Mark Shuttleworth did break Ubuntu, and much to the complete exclusion of feedback from the FOSS community.  He went head-long into first deploying Unity with Ubuntu (Gnome 2.34) classic as a fall-back GUI, and through a series of version releases has today arrived at version 13.04 with just Unity.  Mind you, Unity (with 3D graphic effects) has no fall-back to 2D either and if your machine is one which Unity deems 'incompatible', your chance of having a usable operating system will be in the hands of something called llvmpipe, a graphical software emulation which will simulate in your cpu a graphics chipset so as to achieve Unity's 3D effects.  The result of this collective unilateral elitist decision making is that your machine in all likelihood will run like a 'sloth' under llvmpipe graphics emulation with your cpu overloaded by gpu emulation calls.

This is all mentioned to underscore a point.  Elitist Mark Shuttleworth chose to employ a new method of programming development called 'skunkworks' for a reason.  Canonical Ltd. are not the least bit interested in FOSS or much less community involvement.  Instead, they are on fast-track like a speeding locomotive to becoming second place only to Apple for the "we know what's best for you" category in the world of high technology.

That's right, and FOSS, community be damned as they get led around like cattle with rings in their noses on every capricious decision made exclusively by Canonical Ltd.  The FOSS community is misled into thinking they have an effect in supporting Ubuntu, but in reality, they are simply 'chumps' as Mark Shuttleworth runs his privately held company and does as he pleases.

After all, he is putting funding into the company right?  It's his right.  Or, is it?

Dear FOSS community members, 

I implore you to look at the situation for what it is.  You are simply 'on the outside looking in'.  You have no part in effectuating important FOSS-based decisions for the outcomes in any decisions currently made on the future development of Ubuntu.

What can be done?  

I'd ask you to consider stepping over to the Fedora or openSUSE projects to see what goes on there.

The stated goals for each project and the relationship of each to their respective commercial governance counterpart are clearly stated objectives.  To quote from the openSUSE project page:

"The openSUSE project is a worldwide effort that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. openSUSE creates one of the world's best Linux distributions, working together in an open, transparent and friendly manner as part of the worldwide Free and Open Source Software community. 

The project is controlled by its community and relies on the contributions of individuals, working as testers, writers, translators, usability experts, artists and ambassadors or developers. The project embraces a wide variety of technology, people with different levels of expertise, speaking different languages and having different cultural backgrounds."

Makes perfect sense, does it not?

Then, how come this isn't being done with Ubuntu?  Because you are chumps maybe?

Sad to say, but, it is true.  Your sincerety, good will, and integrity are being taken advantage of by a commercial entity which does nothing but give lip service to community involvement and FOSS.

Let's take a look at the relationship of Red Hat to the Fedora Project shall we?  Sure why not.  What do you have to lose?  Nothing.  This is an exercise in helping you see things as they are--a wake-up call, if you will.

"Both the Fedora Linux® distribution and Red Hat®Enterprise Linux are open source technologies. Fedora is built by the community (fedoraproject.org) for the benefit of the community. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is developed by Red Hat with the explicit intent of being used as an enterprise IT platform. 

Developers and Linux enthusiasts flock to Fedora for the latest features and the opportunity to directly collaborate with Red Hat engineering. Banks, stock exchanges, hospitals, and businesses that run the world's leading websites choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the platform's performance, stability, and security, which lets them implement mature and well-organized IT infrastructures across the enterprise."

Okay, I could go on ad. nauseam because there is plenty of well-documented reasons for creating a legal separation of community vs. commercial aspects which may be at conflict of interest with each other.  But I think I hit oil, so I will stop drilling.

What should be done about this?  

For starters begin a discussion in your community and bring together key figures who can moderate the discussion and reach your own conclusion as to whether having an 'openUbuntu' will be in the best interests of the FOSS community.

I submit that it is urgently needed because, one day, either Ubuntu will be gone, or, you won't even recognize it anymore, for the worse.

Do it today, begin talking about a plan to fork Ubuntu to put in place a FOSS version over which you exercise FULL CONTROL.

Don't be chumps on the outside looking in.

-- Dietrich

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