Ubuntu System Compositor: Wayland Plug-In, Not Fork

[89c51]

Also true, since GNU/Linux is all about openness and the ability to "borrow" from each other's work. Canonical has always focused on the packaging and the usability, which definitely has its value! And since it's a company, nobody can expect them to do anything else than try to turn a profit and be as successful as possible. But that's also where the difference is between Apple and a company with FOSS-based ethics. It's all in the eye of the beholder, how do they contribute the most (except to their own profit):
* Focus completely on making the best product they can without regards to the community, and by doing it create a GNU/Linux poster-boy for the world to see (never mind that they step on some toes in the process, because it's all for the good of the community in the end, just not in concrete code).
* Focus on making the best product, but in the process of doing it, they try to work together with the community and get as many developers as possible to work in the same direction instead of fragmenting the FOSS community even more. Not that that's always a bad thing, if an awesome new product comes out of it, having the guts (and mind) to think different and never care about what other people think.

Ok, this is now officially a rant. But the "ethics" discussion can be interesting, I'd just rather do it verbally in a bar with a beer instead of typing my hands off

well canonical knows where they want to take their OS so you can't blame them in a way for not working so much with the community. you usually don't share the same vision with many people so trying to push your ideas in a community becomes difficult. people might follow but you have to be ready to make most of the work yourself.

[Awesomeness]

canonicals job isn't to contribute back to the community. its job is to get whats best (or what they think is) out of the community, package it, polish it, make it easy and serve it to a wide audience.

you can see them as the advertising branch of linux based OSes.

You really need to take a lesson in Capitalism 101.
Canonical’s only job is to make money. If its job was Linux advertising, they'd do a poor job because on the main Ubuntu website Linux is hardly even mentioned.
It's an often repeated fact of life that upstream contributions make financial sense. It reduces workload, therefore the amount of required developers, therefore less money is spent.
Red Hat knows that. That's why Red Hat is the richest FOSS company in the world.

[89c51]

You really need to take a lesson in Capitalism 101.
Canonical’s only job is to make money.

yeah that also but afaik they are not so profitable thus far

they are trying though

[texaswriter1983]

umm, mint started cinnamon, so is not just ubuntu forking stuff.

As long as the experience is good, the code is open, clean and stable and they can maintain it then am ok.

but it would probably be a good idea to try the plugin route.

They are referring to the forking of PROGRAMS and COMPONENTS that they want to put into the operating system. So, if Ubuntu forks everything they include in their operating system, they are the only ones developing it and it will get stranded from the original developers.

When you fork the operating system, generally similar release cycle, similar (if not same) repository, etc. This could actually increase the attention on individual programs if patches get sent upstream.

Anyways, I think people are also getting excited about it because of the fact that Ubuntu, being the most popular Linux distribution that is MOST USED BY PEOPLE, contributes the least to anything upstream related to Linux (used generically).

[scaine]

Exactly what has Ubuntu "forked" so far?

It's an honest question. I can't think of one example personally. I think people commonly believe that Unity is a fork of Gnome Shell, but as far as I'm aware, Unity is its own project and didn't "start" from Gnome Shell.

So what, as a list of definable projects, has Canonical or Ubuntu forked so far, to make Ubuntu 12.04?

Because, unless it's a very fucking long list, comments like this : "Although with the natural habit of Canonical to just fork projects, this may be hard to just create a plug-in." are just annoying FUD that nudges me to never visit Phoronix again.

But maybe it is a long list. Anyone know for sure?

[EDIT : My own 15 minute research reveals that Ubuntu are going to fork the Gnome Control Centre in 12.10 so that they can keep a single-pane approach while using their custom python-based additions, such as Ubuntu One. But as far as having a "history of forks" - I can't find any evidence of a single instance. Happy hunting though.]

[uid313]

Exactly what has Ubuntu "forked" so far?

Debian. *ducks and takes cover*

[Spacefish]

Actually, they don´t have a long forking history, but they start it right now in my opinion.
Unity was a first step, it´s not really a fork, but they lag behind in integrating new GNOME-Packages which they use, because they have to customize them. I don´t believe that any other distro will include Unity, so they on their own. More and more packages they use will be customized to fit unity´s style / interfaces. I call this forking, because they add code that are not upstream and have to apply the changes for every new version... This can get pretty time intensive!

[Spacefish]

Debian. *ducks and takes cover*

well technically, why not, they repackage the packages and apply different rules / configs. So yeah they are forking debian in some way..

[Azpegath]

More and more packages they use will be customized to fit unity´s style / interfaces. I call this forking, because they add code that are not upstream and have to apply the changes for every new version.

You are completely correct in calling that forking, I would humbly state that it is the definition of a fork. Even though they also merge upstream changes (or more correctly: use new upstream versions) they still maintain their own patch tree, which would be the same as maintaining a fork and merging upstream changes.
But I guess there's nothing stopping upstream projects from merging Ubuntu-specific patches and fixes, even though Ubuntu devs don't actually do pull-requests.

[scaine]

You are completely correct in calling that forking, I would humbly state that it is the definition of a fork. Even though they also merge upstream changes (or more correctly: use new upstream versions) they still maintain their own patch tree, which would be the same as maintaining a fork and merging upstream changes.
But I guess there's nothing stopping upstream projects from merging Ubuntu-specific patches and fixes, even though Ubuntu devs don't actually do pull-requests.

That's just it though. That's NOT forking. That's maintaining a patchset against the upstream. The problem is that this upstream has stated that they won't now, nor ever will integrate that patchset into their app (gnome-control-center), so Ubuntu has three choices a)drop the patchset, and its functionality and admit defeat, b)maintain an ever increasing patchset at ever increasing cost or c)fork the project. In this case "project" might even be making a mountain out of a molehill - it's one small part of the massive Gnome whole, the rest of which (sans Shell) is fully intended to be the core of 12.10.

As for "forking Debian", that's nonsense (as I think you know), since Ubuntu is a derivative, not a fork. That means that every 6 months, a perfectly clean version of Debian unstable is the starting point for the Ubuntu patchset to be applied. If it were a fork, it would be off and running 6 years ago and never the twain would meet.

Still not seeing this "history of forking everything" bullshit that was claimed in the article though. I never got the impression that Larabel liked Ubuntu much, but this is the first FUD I've ever seen him spread. He's usually pretty fair.