What's Canonical thinking about Bazaar?

[Ben Finney]

I don't have the bandwidth to contribute at length for now, but Stephen
is saying a lot of things I agree with (though some with which I
disagree, but I'll leave that for later :-).

Just to reiterate, though:

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:

> Ian Clatworthy writes:

>  > Clarifying my earlier response, the "FUD" I struggle with is that
>  > Bazaar is disadvantaged by it's association with Canonical.

If that were the idea being touted, I'd agree with you: it's FUD. That's
not at all what I'm saying.

What disadvantages Bazaar is the perception that, instead of “Bazaar is
a community project (and thank you to Canonical for continuing to make
that possible)”, rather we have “Bazaar is a Canonical product (and the
community is along for the ride)”.

Note that *it does not matter* to what extent this perception is true;
it is the *perception* that is harmful.

This disadvantages Bazaar in comparison to technically-comparable VCSen
like Mercurial and Git precisely to the extent that the perception
remains that those other VCSen are community projects but Canonical has
a controlling interest in Bazaar.

Please, please, if you will do nothing to quell that impression, at
least do nothing to further entrench it. The Bazaar community has little
influence over this matter as it is; we don't need to be fighting
against Canonical marketing on the issue.

>  > I also believe that "lock-in" fears are largely unfounded.

Again, nobody in this discussion has raised that spectre to my
knowledge. Lock-in isn't the problem; perceived lack of community
ownership is the problem.

> And if getting contributions from non-Canonical sources is a *goal*
> (vs. merely "actively encouraged"), I think the already high
> concentration of development activity in the Canonical group is going
> to work against achieving that goal.

Note that, while a detrimental way this could be addressed is to reduce
Canonical develpment involvement in Bazaar, a far more positive way
would be to actively encourage the perception (which implies actively
discouraging contradictions) that Bazaar is owned, not by Canonical
corporation, but by the community.

-- 
 \            “The whole area of [treating source code as intellectual |
  `\    property] is almost assuring a customer that you are not going |
_o__)               to do any innovation in the future.” —Gary Barnett |
Ben Finney