non-Unity flavours and Mir

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tuesday, June 18, 2013 12:45:18 PM Oliver Grawert wrote:
> hi,
> 
> On Di, 2013-06-18 at 12:11 +0200, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
> > 2013/6/18 Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com>:
> > > hi,
> > > 
> > > On Di, 2013-06-18 at 11:16 +0200, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
> > >> Hi!
> > >> 
> > >> 2013/6/18 Steve Langasek <steve.langasek at ubuntu.com>:
> > >> > On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 05:13:33PM -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > >> >> I think Jonathon's post earlier today captures the core issue:
> > >> >> 
> > >> >> On Monday, June 17, 2013 09:05:08 PM Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> > >> >> [...]
> > >> >> 
> > >> >> As long as Canonical declines to work with the rest of the free
> > >> >> software
> > >> >> community,
> > >> > 
> > >> > Well, I think that's an altogether inaccurate and unfair
> > >> > characterization.
> > >> > Canonical has always been open to working with "the rest of the free
> > >> > software community"; what Canonical has not been willing to do is
> > >> > blindly
> > >> > follow where certain self-appointed "upstreams" would lead, when that
> > >> > conflicts with the business's goals.
> > >> 
> > >> Well, working with the upstreams (who usually know their code best),
> > >> making compromises, trying to convince upstreams that the way you
> > >> think something should be designed is best and finally, if there is a
> > >> consensus, implement that code and make it available to everyone is
> > >> basically the essence of "working with "the rest of the free software
> > >> community"". It has never been easy, and if upstreams reject certain
> > >> features, people are free to fork. But the dicussion needs to happen
> > >> first and stuff needs to be implemented closely to upstream, so
> > >> everyone knows about it and it can be accepted easily.
> > >> Especially the communication step was missing in the Wayland story.
> > > 
> > > so the right reaction is to now reject the communication from the
> > > upstream/flavour side as a punishment for this ?!?
> > 
> > There is no communication at the moment - mentioning stuff on a
> > Mailinglist, which upstream developers most likely won't read (you
> > cannot be subscribed to every distribution's ML) does not help.
> > Contacting the upstreams directly on their mailinglists (the KWin ML
> > or the GNOME Mutter ML) is the step to do.
> 
> well, this thread is called "non-Unity *flavours* and Mir" involving
> upstreams would be a secondary step ...
> 
> > My comment was about the communication with Wayland
> > . Speaking to
> > Wayland developers doesn't make sense anymore, since Ubuntu is doing
> > Mir now.
> 
> i personally don't care at all about Wayland or Mir and trust the
> specialists in their area to make the right decisions (as i know they
> will trust me for my areas) ...
> what bothers me in this thread is the attitude more than the topic,
> there is an offer for communication and it is declined with a foot
> stomping "i don't talk to you because you didn't talk to me first"
> attitude of ten year olds ...
> 
> ,, form people i consider friends that i learned to know as pretty
> rational people and that i thought i would know better ...
> 
> > Although emotion is involved, there are technical reasons for not
> > considering Mir, which Martin has summarized in a Blogpost.
> 
> to quote one of his reasons:
> "Ubuntu has always had one of the worst graphics stack in the free
> software world. I can see this in the bug tracker. The quality of the
> Mesa stack in Ubuntu is really bad."
> 
> right, thats a truely founded and technically proper researched
> statement ... sadly his blogpost is full of this ...
> 
> as a spectator who doesn't really know much or care about display
> servers (but who cares very much about the online community he lives in)
> and who tries to get all arguments from both sides to get an objective
> opinion about the topic i must say that Chris Halse Rogers' "Why Mir"
> series of blog posts appears a lot more rational with a lot less FUD
> spread across it (and surprisingly no foot stomping at all)...

The same blog post you're quoting selectively from goes into rather more 
detail about concerns:

http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/05/mir-in-kubuntu/

Keep in mind that this is not from someone who isn't fundamentally anti-Ubuntu 
and or anti- Canonical.  He's taken a week of his time to come to UDS (first 
IDS in Orlando) and try to figure out how to collaborate better.  

While I appreciate Chris Halse Rogers posts on "Why Mir", those are precisely 
the ones Martin Pitt was referring to when he said:

> ... Now, I do understand that the Wayland protocol has certainly
> been looked at, but (1) what has been published from that decision
> making process has not been technically very convincing to these
> communities, ...

Many people don't think the primary motivation was technical and calling them 
names for thinking that isn't going to get anyone anywhere.  So far, there 
hasn't been a technical argument that people who understand this way better 
than I do find compelling.

Scott K