The OOo, LibreOffice Tale Should Be a Warning To Canonical, Other FOSS Projects

[Cybe R. Wizard]

I won't snip any of this because it is important and can stand
re-iteration.

On Tue, 19 Apr 2011 14:02:54 -0400
Michael Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/04/oracle-gives-up-on-ooo-after-community-forks-the-project.ars
> 
> Oracle is throwing in the towel on OpenOffice after the majority of
> the community jumped ship and sided with The Document Foundation and
> LibreOffice.  This move by the community to fork OOo due to Oracle's
> heavy handed handling of the project should be a warning to not just
> Canonical, but any other major Open Source project that runs things
> like a totalitarian regime and fails to listen to the cries of its
> community.
> 
> Anger the community enough and they will fork the project, and the
> community will leave the original to molder and die.
> 
> That's the beauty of Open Source, if the project you love is being run
> by a tyrant who isn't listening to your suggestion or complaint you
> can fork the project and build a new community based on higher ideals.
>  There is a growing sense that Canonical isn't listening to its
> community.  There's been several issues which haven't been addressed
> for some time, and when they're brought up they're usually blown off.
> One of the big issues is the removal of the monitor model selection
> feature from the screen resolution system preferences window.  This
> has left a greatly underestimated number of users in a quandary, and
> since the majority of them are newbies to Linux most give up and never
> give Ubuntu a second glance.  This in turn is hurting Ubuntu's image
> as a "user friendly" Linux distribution in the eyes of those whom the
> project depends the most more so than developers ... the user
> community.  Without the users Ubuntu would be Linux distro that simply
> exists but isn't being used.
> 
> Unity is another issue.  Given time Unity may turn out to be a great
> desktop for Ubuntu, but it still needs work.  Canonical is really
> gambling with their future releasing Unity in 11.04 and making it
> compulsory in 11.10.  I understand the releases in between the LTS
> distributions are meant to perfect new features and technology for the
> next LTS release, but Canonical should have made Unity voluntary only
> and gave users incentives to use it to help the dev community make the
> necessary improvements.  Thus, once the next TLS release came around
> Canonical could release Ubuntu with a version of Unity that was rock
> solid.
> 
> The moral of the story is, if you fail to listen to your community
> they'll fork the project, and abandon the original to die in
> obscurity.  If it can happened to Open Office it can happen to Ubuntu,
> and Gnome too.
> 
Michael, you are right.  My own take on the new Ubuntu direction is that
it is on a headlong course toward a brick wall.  I /do/ think the
desktop is doomed in the future but doubt that an Iphone UI is going to
be its death.  I imagine that people who really get work done will
want nothing to do with Unity (or GNOME shell, FTM) and will run
quickly to a saner replacement.  It seems that lots of folks agree and
it looks further like Mint (much as I hope not but I 'ain't openin' that
can-0-worms' again!) is going to be the short-term gainer.
I would be willing to bet that forks of Ubuntu that use a
still-normal-looking UI will prosper going forward.  

Liam, what about that one you had entertained thoughts of producing?
You may gain easy help these days.    ;-]

Cybe R. Wizard
-- 
Registered GNU/Linux user # 126326
Registered Ubuntu User # 2136