What's Canonical thinking about Bazaar?

[Matthew D. Fuller]

On Mon, Nov 02, 2009 at 10:32:28PM +1000 I heard the voice of
Ian Clatworthy, and lo! it spake thus:
> Ben Finney wrote:
> > 
> > I reiterate that this will further entrench a very negative
> > impression Bazaar has with many people: that Bazaar is a VCS tied
> > to a particular corporation, and communities would be better
> > advices to choose a VCS with a more independent focus, like Git or
> > Mercurial.
> > 
> > I had hoped that Canonical, and the Bazaar core developers, would
> > not want that impression to increase; but this makes me suspect
> > that impression may be right.
> 
> I really, *really* struggle with this FUD.

"FUD" implies that it's incorrect.

Bazaar's major developers are all Canonical employees.  To get your
code in, you need favorable opinions of it by Canonical employees.  In
practice, to get it in, you need not just good feelings, but also a
Canonical employee willing to adopt it and help railroad it until it
gets in.  You need to assign copyright of it to Canonical.  And now we
have the current discussion about rebranding it as Canonical Bazaar.

Now, I'm not necessarily saying any or all of these conditions are
going to in the future or have in the past directly hampered bazaar's
ability to service the non-Canonical community.  But they're all
body-blows in the perception sweepstakes; perception is reality.  And
seriously; if the goal were really to make it Canonical's thing that
they happened to share (rather than a community thing that Canonical
happens to support), you almost COULDN'T do anything more to push it
in that direction, because it's already wrapped around the stop.

Decisions in this direction seem to me like a statement that "Y'know
what, we're tired of fighting this perception, so we'll just wallow in
it instead."


-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)   |  fullermd at over-yonder.net
Systems/Network Administrator |  http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/
           On the Internet, nobody can hear you scream.