What's Canonical thinking about Bazaar?

[Karl Fogel]

"Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn" <zooko at zooko.com> writes:
>> Canonical released Launchpad's source, completely and ahead of
>> schedule.  I feel that shows some kind of good faith.
>
> Ah, actually the way I and most people that I've talked to perceive it
> is that Canonical kept Launchpad's source closed for a long time,
> which shows some kind of bad faith.  I also believe that Canonical
> did that at least in part for strategic reasons (to make sure there
> weren't mini-launchpads trying to steal the thunder of launchpad.net)
> and not just for the typical "open sourcing stuff is hard and takes a
> long time to finish" reasons.
>
> Sorry, but that's (a) what I'm hereby alleging about your company's
> past and (b) what most people I've talked to also assume about the
> situation.

This is probably the sort of thread it's always a bad idea to get
involved in, but I'm going to anyway.  I realize you are in part
reporting what you have heard others say, so this is addressed back to
them too.

First, I don't think any party is under some kind of obligation to open
source their code (except when license terms require it of course).  If
merely not open sourcing code is "bad faith", that really just dilutes
the term "bad faith" to the point of meaninglessness.  Canonical made a
public promise about Launchpad, and Canonical kept that promise.

The accusation that Canonical makes decisions "for strategic reasons"
doesn't strike me as particularly revelatory :-).  Yes, that, and
postage rates will go up some time in the next year.

Second, open sourcing stuff *is* hard and takes a long time to finish.
Try it.  I spent most of my first six or seven months at Canonical
working on the open sourcing of Launchpad; for the final few months
before the release it was really 100% or more of my time, and I *still*
didn't get to every loose end that I wanted to.  There are all sorts of
issues with code layout, with weird licensing obligations that only take
effect once you start distributing code, with unanticipated license
interactions, technical issues of making the code ready for newcomers to
build... And it wasn't just me dealing with this stuff, it was many
other people on Canonical's Launchpad development team.  It cost us
serious time: bugs unfixed, features slowed down.  I won't bore you with
the details, but if you want them, they're there.

If you've never tried to open source a big, complex piece of software
that depends on many libraries, you don't realize how expensive it can
be.  I am not at all surprised that Canonical took its time before
sinking resources into this task -- doing it had real development costs.
(There are benefits too, of course, but remember that Canonical has to
pay the costs up front.)

> Anyway, maybe you shouldn't bring up launchpad when you're arguing
> that Canonical is full of good faith.  ;-)

On the contrary, I think one should.

> Thanks for your work, which I believe to be in good faith, on bzr,

It is.  And, speaking as someone with only one substantive patch in
Bazaar, "you're welcome".

Best,
-Karl