Canonical Announces Mir Back-End For Mainline Mesa

[onicsis]

It's not about a Hate or Love game, it's upper layer implications with multiple API/ABI to maintain for drivers and user aplications and tools.

[pingufunkybeat]

This is best picture of so-called "FOSS Community". Hate, jealous, hypocrisy and IBC (Invented By Canonical) syndrome. If Mir will be successful, then it is only GOOD for everyone.

The two main problems with Mir:

1) It is reduplication of work, since it sets out to do exactly the same thing as Wayland. Supporting the Wayland process would have been better.
2) It is completely and totally owned and controlled by one company. Wayland and X as developed by many companies, and none of them has complete control.

So even if Mir turns out to be technically much better, these two arguments will still stand. Canonical's track record on other projects is a cause for some skepticism, but we'll have to wait and see.

[Siekacz]

The two main problems with Mir:

1) It is reduplication of work, since it sets out to do exactly the same thing as Wayland. Supporting the Wayland process would have been better.
2) It is completely and totally owned and controlled by one company. Wayland and X as developed by many companies, and none of them has complete control.

So even if Mir turns out to be technically much better, these two arguments will still stand. Canonical's track record on other projects is a cause for some skepticism, but we'll have to wait and see.

For me, if Canonical makes Mir better supported by drivers and gives better overall quality, these two arguments are insignificant. They've always done patching and used someone else's code. And it doesn't work. Why? Because they just couldn't make something that is consistent with design. They had to patch and apply workarounds, which stop working when someone from upstream decides to change something significant. With Wayland it could be again the same problem.

[smitty3268]

They've always done patching and used someone else's code. And it doesn't work. Why? Because they just couldn't make something that is consistent with design. They had to patch and apply workarounds, which stop working when someone from upstream decides to change something significant. With Wayland it could be again the same problem.

That's certainly an ... interesting ... interpretation of events.

[entropy]

The two main problems with Mir:

1) It is reduplication of work, since it sets out to do exactly the same thing as Wayland. Supporting the Wayland process would have been better.
2) It is completely and totally owned and controlled by one company. Wayland and X as developed by many companies, and none of them has complete control.

3) Canonical played seriously foul by dropping many false statements about Wayland on the project page (those have been removed lately, AFAIK). No trivial offense, if you ask me.
4) They used exactly these statements to justify the decision not to use Wayland and go for a new display manager instead (which they developed in a private repository since mid 2012).
5) At the same time, they never approached the Wayland/X.org devs to discuss these "potential" issues, although Wayland has been said to be the DS of choice before.

As Kristian said in the IRC channel http://pastebin.com/KjRm3be1

00:02 <krh> RAOF: or just do that, but don't go out and tell the whole world how wayland is broken and has all X's input problems
00:02 <krh> that's what pisses me off
00:02 <krh> you can do whatever you want and you don't need my permission
00:02 <krh> but don't piss on wayland in the process

As for 3) :

00:06 <krh> I'll have fun explaining how that's not the case to everybody for the next few months

Although they took it back on the project page, it's all over in the wild now.
For instance, take this tabloid page:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03..._announcement/

It goes on to explain that while Canonical had been investigating Wayland as a possible replacement for X in future versions of Ubuntu,
it found that the Wayland protocol "suffers from multiple problems," not least of which was mimicking too much of X.

Seems like there is a bunch of irresponsible people at Canonical.

Those are the issue with Mir (and Canonical)!

[ninez]

For me, if Canonical makes Mir better supported by drivers and gives better overall quality, these two arguments are insignificant. They've always done patching and used someone else's code. And it doesn't work. Why? Because they just couldn't make something that is consistent with design. They had to patch and apply workarounds, which stop working when someone from upstream decides to change something significant. With Wayland it could be again the same problem.

That is a silly rationale, that you have. If Canonical actually worked with upstream and wrote code that was *worthwhile*, not poorly written hacks - they could've been upstreaming code and working with upstream developers to meet their goals. But instead, generally, Canonical just pisses on other people's work are low-contributors (if at all), yet claim credit for so much that happens in FOSS projects from with they rely on, rather than practicing what they preach; FOSS, community, etc.

...and while you don't see one company having control as a problem, it is. and if they are trying to create some form of vendor-lock-in, that is also problematic...

I think MESA-developers should outright reject Canonical patches for Mir, Qt and GTK+ should do the same... If Canonical, is going to spread FUD about Wayland, be low-contributors to FOSS projects which they rely on (and yet try to monetize from them, without some significant investment into those projects) then i think those projects should ignore Canonical and force them to do everything out of tree. The upstream developers can have fun continuing to break Ubuntu's patches / compatibility time and time again - since that is essentially Canonical's own Karma.

[Delgarde]

Canonical is very good at marketing. They are timing their press releases so people keep talking about this new and exciting display server which is vapourware at this moment. There is a buzz as if something important were happening, and so far it isn't

Hardly vapourware, given that this thread is about them pushing real code upstream, right now. But yeah - this is still some way off having a workable system...

[Delgarde]

3) Canonical played seriously foul by dropping many false statements about Wayland on the project page (those have been removed lately, AFAIK). No trivial offense, if you ask me.
4) They used exactly these statements to justify the decision not to use Wayland and go for a new display manager instead (which they developed in a private repository since mid 2012).
5) At the same time, they never approached the Wayland/X.org devs to discuss these "potential" issues, although Wayland has been said to be the DS of choice before.

Quite aside from the offensiveness of their misplaced criticism, it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that the Mir developers have any clue what they're talking about. That they claim to have started their own project because of supposed faults in Wayland, which they now admit to not knowing all that much about? Doesn't bode well...

[asdx]

I hope Mesa or the toolkits won't merge any of Canonical patches, or will make their lifes as hard as possible.

Canonical deserves to go down here.

Fuck them, I hate them so much now.

[Siekacz]

So Android should die too. And kernel developers should reject all patches. Just because they are not consistent with Linux "ecosystem".