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  • Canonical Reportedly Slashing Jobs, Seeking Outside Investment

    Phoronix: Canonical Reportedly Slashing Jobs, Seeking Outside Investment

    Following news of Ubuntu abandoning Unity 8 there are now reports of headcount reductions happening at Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth eyeing outside investments into the company...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Making money out of Free Software means building added value on top of existing bricks, not trying to build competing (Free) bricks, especially when resources are limited.

    Canonical did well when they built Ubuntu on top on Debian, adding more polish and user-friendly-ness. They didn't do well when they tried to build an init system competing with systemd, a graphic server competing with Wayland, and a desktop environment competing with Gnome/KDE, instead of using those to make an awesome OS.
    Last edited by wagaf; 06 April 2017, 09:49 AM.

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    • #3
      Oh I can just see the advertisement posters now.....

      In the background you see a savanna, wild bush and grazing herds. In the foreground a white woman dressed in a suit skirt posing as a MS exec, grasping the hands of a malnourished and emaciated african child, swinging around like a "ring around the rosy". The woman happy and gay, the child frightened and screaming and the message scrolled across the banner, "MS Ubuntu, We come in Peace".


      jk

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      • #4
        Originally posted by wagaf View Post
        Making money out of Free Software means building added value on top of existing bricks, not trying to build competing (Free) bricks, especially when resources are limited.

        Canonical did well when they built Ubuntu on top on Debian, adding more polish and user-friendly-ness. They didn't do well when they tried to build an init system competing with systemd, a graphic server competing with Wayland, and a desktop environment competing with Gnome/KDE, instead of using those to make an awesome OS.
        Agreed, except Upstart did come before systemd. I think I even read that part of the reason systemd exists is because they liked the goal of Upstart but didn't like the actual innards so they made a competing product.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by SpyroRyder View Post

          Agreed, except Upstart did come before systemd. I think I even read that part of the reason systemd exists is because they liked the goal of Upstart but didn't like the actual innards so they made a competing product.
          Exactly. Let's not underestimate the positive disruptive nature of the competition and innovation they've actually brought to the table.
          Boot times were disgusting before Upstart made people wake up to the fact that 50+ second boot times were neither inevitable nor acceptable.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by wagaf View Post
            Making money out of Free Software means building added value on top of existing bricks, not trying to build competing (Free) bricks, especially when resources are limited.

            Canonical did well when they built Ubuntu on top on Debian, adding more polish and user-friendly-ness. They didn't do well when they tried to build an init system competing with systemd, a graphic server competing with Wayland, and a desktop environment competing with Gnome/KDE, instead of using those to make an awesome OS.
            I generally agree, but Unity was designed with a specific purpose - a consistent interface for both phones and desktops. It wasn't the best for either one, but it was the best with the 2 merged, which was important considering their goal was to have phones that could switch to desktop use by just plugging it into a dock.

            As for Upstart, that was probably one of the only applications Canonical made that was better than the alternatives. It was very lean, easy to configure, modern, I don't think it was limited to strictly Linux (I could be wrong about that), and it was pretty stable early on. I think systemd is pretty good but IMO it's a bit overkill. It reminds me a lot of the US government:
            * Is set up in a way that is supposed to be compliant for the needs of the greatest number of people possible
            * Fundamentally adopted by many, with a few adamant outliers
            * Run by someone many people hate
            * Has an unnecessary amount of power/control over things nobody asked it to do or approves of
            * Has a tendency to complicate things for allied forces (FreeBSD vs NATO)
            Anyway I'm just going on a tangent at this point...
            Last edited by schmidtbag; 06 April 2017, 10:14 AM.

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            • #7
              Last I heard, which was a few years ago, there was ~500+ employees working for Canonical globally.
              The register article guessed 700

              It's not clear how many staff have gone, but Canonical is believed to have a headcount of 700.
              Shuttleworth wouldn't comment on the 30 and 60 per cent figures but admitted there were "adjustments" outside Unity.

              "No part of the business had sacred cows," he told The Reg.
              Which in worst case scenario would end as about 300 non-cows

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              • #8
                Originally posted by [B
                lunarcloud][/B]Boot times were disgusting before Upstart made people wake up to the fact that 50+ second boot times were neither inevitable nor acceptable.
                Arch linux BSD-style rc.conf on top of sysv-init (it was abandoned in favor of systemd) had already shown that boot times of <30 seconds were easily achievable without needing a new init-system.

                I do feel that upstart was a great idea, but had a bad implementation .

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                • #9
                  Will be interesting to see what comes of this and surely in no time will be the next round of rumors again about Microsoft and Canonical...
                  .
                  As usual Michael, you are being a needless shitstirrer.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by dh04000 View Post
                    . As usual Michael, you are being a needless shitstirrer.
                    Well, these "outside investors" could be Microsoft also and Michael have right to guess

                    Going from bug 1 to being sold to bug 1 happend in business... "Employee your enemy" method, you know
                    Last edited by dungeon; 06 April 2017, 10:32 AM.

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