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

[chris]

On Tue, 2011-04-19 at 14:16 -0500, Cybe R. Wizard wrote:
> I won't snip any of this because it is important and can stand
> re-iteration.
> 
+1

The Kiwi

> 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 diI leave things alone ?
> 
> Is this the version you were thinking of ?
> 
> Hope you are feeling less rough .
> 
> e.
> > 
> > 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 originalI leave things alone ?
> 
> Is this the version you were thinking of ?
> 
> Hope you are feeling less rough .
> 
>  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
>