Sun, 04 Sep 2005
Back in June, I noted that LaunchPad isn’t free sotware, and because of that concluded:
And that’s pretty much the point where Canonical’s not a free software company, but a vendor providing proprietary services for the free software community.
I got a couple of private comments (which are reflected in an update to that post) to that which gave some fairly non-specific assertions that “the plan” was LaunchPad will be free software eventually, and that complaints would prove pretty redundant.
Since then, my referer logs pointed me at Joachim Breitner’s post on LaunchPad from July, that expressed some similar concerns. More interesting is the follow-on comment on the post from Mark Shuttleworth:
I can only say that I hope, in the fullness of time, you’ll be very happy with the way we handle Launchpad. Over time, it will be open sourced. Right now we compete with Progeny and Red Hat and other companies, so we need to have a unique offering to do so effectively, and that’s Launchpad.
I’d encourage you to read the whole thing to get the context, but to me, the only logical conclusion to that is that LaunchPad will be free when Canonical/Ubuntu are the only players in the market, or when Canonical’s current business model fails and they switch to a different one. Which is fine: if you write some software from scratch, it’s your choice what you do with it; but unless you’re an underpants gnome or a slashdot commenter, the above doesn’t qualify as a “plan” to free LaunchPad.
Tue, 07 Jun 2005
So, one of the current boring, argumentative threads on -devel is Is Ubuntu a debian derivative or is it a fork?. Which is a bit of a weird question, since really every derivative’s a fork, and vice-versa. The real question, of course, is whether Ubuntu is a “good” derivative or a “bad” one – whether it’s going to keep working with Debian and improve Debian, or whether it’s going to compete with Debian, stealing Debian’s users, developers, sponsors and mindshare, to the point where Debian’s a dead project.
If you ask, you naturally get a clear and confident answer: of course Ubuntu’s about working with Debian and giving back to open source hackers and whatever else. But of course, even if it wasn’t, that’s what you’d get told anyway, because that’s what people want to hear. So, like a lot of other folks, I’ve been keeping my ears pricked to see just how Ubuntu does fit into the free software world, and work out what I think of it. Having spent a couple of days at their Ubuntu Down Under conference post LCA, and generally had a chance to follow what they’ve been doing for a little while now, I thought I might post my current thoughts.
Of course, as always, this is going to be long, so here’s the executive summary for people who don’t want to read past the fold. My take is that while Ubuntu’s based on Debian, it’s an independent project, and is currently planning on becoming more so. While Canonical produces an excellent free software distribution, it’s not a free software project, and is entirely happy to build a large proprietary system, viz LaunchPad, and rely on it. While Canonical strongly supports the free software community and backs up that thought with deeds throughout the company from highest level to lowest, they’re a somewhat cut-throat startup that’s happy to put “getting to where we’re going” above a Google-like policy of “don’t be evil”. More importantly though, they produce a great distribution, that’s bringing unencumbered free software to a huge number of people, and making them happier in the process. So a mixed bag, but either way, Ubuntu’s doing a chunk of good, and definitely here to stay for a fair while yet.
And now that fold.
Thu, 14 Apr 2005
A couple of days after Ubuntu released warty, I had a look at how warty and sarge compared at least so far as how current their packages were. With hoary freshly released, and some more discussion underway, it seems worthwhile doing another comparison.
Sat, 23 Oct 2004
Unsurprisingly, Ubuntu’s release has generated some discussion in Debian. Odds on it won’t create much else. Anyway, Scott (a Canonical employee and dpkg hacker, among other things) writes:
Release, release, my kingdom for a release!
[…]
I think he’s missed something major there, and that something major is the reason I think Debian finds releasing difficult.
Testing.
Clearly, this requires a response.