Perhaps Dave's presentation could have been a bit "safer" if it had looked at just more recent times, or covered more than just commit rates, but presentation time is limited and, really, any information on how your community works and is put together is invaluable to its health and improvement. If I were part of the GNOME community, I'd be looking for ways to embrace Dave's hard worked for information in positive ways.
Dave's intentions were undoubtedly good and he put an obvious amount of time and effort into his presentation, but was repaid with a very public and unflattering flame war about something rather tangential to his goals with that presentation. Ouch.
Tribalism
Why does this happen? That's a great question, and I'm not sure we can ever have all the answers with perfect accuracy. Maybe we can summarize and approximate, though, and discover useful things as a result. Mark Shuttleworth offers that the problem is tribalism, and that tribalism in the form of fanboyism is Bad(tm). I think Mark hit the heart of the matter.
Here's an unfortunate part of the truth, though: while Mark rightfully comes out against tribalism, Canonical has, in my experience, been as much a part of fostering tribalism in F/OSS as anyone else. In fact, I'd say they are right there among the leaders in doing so: it's a side effect of their immense drive to build a rabidly loyal community around their brand and their propensity to try tell other communities how to do things (e.g. how to schedule their releases).
After all, it's pretty meaningless to be a self appointed dictator for life if you don't have a kingdom to dictate, right? (That's said with my tongue placed firmly in my cheek. :)
Those are rather tribalistic concepts, though, and it is reflected in choices such as Canonical's decision to use launchpad rather than upstream repositories that already exist or how we see Ubuntu LoCo's displacing more diverse Linux interest groups at the local level. It isn't zero-sum, though: Canonical has their reasons and there are benefits that come along with the challenges. I even believe that Canonical's motivations are not conspiratorial in nature, but are similar to those that drive rest of us: making F/OSS awesome. I also recognize that mistakes get made, in spite of those good intentions. Most importantly: Canonical isn't alone in this set of interactions. We are all part of this thing.
If you are an Ubuntu or Canonical fan (or Mark :) and you read that, it might sting a bit (or maybe even a lot) and the instinct might be to react quickly, negatively and loudly. After all, who the hell am I to say something like that, right? :) Instead, maybe we can step back for a moment, turn off the flamethrowers for a little while (there's lots of time and opportunity to use them later if we wish to ;) and really think about the root causes of our tribalism. Much of it is going to turn out to be innocent, but all of it will show where we have room for improvement.
On Being Able To Admit Failure
One thing I've learned in my travels as someone who dabbles from time to time in providing leadership is that in doing so your faults will be put on display for everyone to see. We are each imperfect, we all screw up from time to time and being front-and-center means our screw ups get put front-and-center, too. It is humbling. It can be important to recognize when it happens and (even if it takes a while) come back and go "yep, I screwed up, let's see how we can improve on that going forward..." At that point we all grow and become better people for it. If we do that within our Free software communities, our communities will also become better for it. Linus' ability to do that makes up for many other faults he may exhibit from time to time.
Someone asked me the other day on the kde-promo list how KDE people can expect to get the KDE branding terms "right" when even I don't always get it right! I responded with the most honest answer I had: I still, even now, make mistakes when it comes to the branding terms, in large part because I've been doing the "KDE thing" for so long that it's like an old dog with new tricks. I asked them to continue to point out when I get it wrong so I can improve. It's often hard to say things like that without hedging, especially for those of us with hard heads and big hearts.
I've also discovered that, sadly, I'm going to offend or let down those I love dearly from time to time even though I really don't mean to and don't want to. When that happens, it's often more important to just say I'm sorry without worrying about defending what I did, even if I think it was a misunderstanding or justifiable. I have been working for many years on being able to prioritize the well being of those I care about more than I do about being "right". Let me be honest: it doesn't come naturally to me, and I still fail at times. But ... I also do manage to say "I'm sorry", to look for root causes without looking for blame to attach to it, and most importantly to me: to try and work on improvements that address root issues. I keep trying to remind myself: "I am an imperfect man reaching for the unattainable goal of perfection; and I am inching closer to never getting there every day."
Ok, so what's my point, already? Well ...
When Mark wrote about tribalism, Máirín dredged up in the comments section an unfortunate and regrettable public gaffe on Mark's part from the past and asked him if he'd apologized for that yet. Maybe Mark should consider doing just that, even if he doesn't consider what happened to be wrong in his own mind. It could help drain away some of the poison out there that is used to fuel some of those tribal fires. It certainly can't hurt.
In fact, all of those who have pointed fingers or defended themselves loudly, including (but certainly not limited to) Greg, could maybe try to step aside from their own correctness and ask what are the shared root causes that lead to this state of affairs. Can we instead create discussions with ourselves and with each other that reach for understand but don't include statements of blame or accusation? It is possible to discover the mechanisms of failure in a relationship and come up with new possible solutions to try in blame-neutral ways.
That's just another way of saying that others may be responsible for (a large or small) part of the current dynamic, but we don't need to use that as an excuse to sidestep responsibility for the roles we play in it or as a way to avoid addressing the issues altogether. After all, what's more important: the moral high ground in our own little kingdoms of "Me, Myself and I" or forging a stronger and unstoppable thing together?
On Being Part Of The Problem Solution
The good news is that when we are one of the people caught up in a problem, intentionally or not, we can be part of the solution. Yes, being part of the problem is an opportunity. To illustrate: we may not have invented proprietary software ourselves, but we are/were caught in the midst of the consequences of a world that was dominated by proprietary software; by writing Free software, we are creating part of the solution to the negative effects of that situation.
In the questioning of Canonical's contribution, right now I see a lot of people trying to make the case that they aren't a part of the problem or that others are more a part of the problem than they are. Quite clearly they axiomatically are all shareholders in whatever failure is happening (the flamefest itself is a failure, imho). It is axiomatic because the problem is being driven by how communities are interacting, and the people pointing fingers and making defenses are part of those communities. Some are even responsible for leading the relationship components of those communities. They could be identifying what the challenges are and being part of the solution, regardless of who is contributing what to those challenges in the first place.
If each of the parties (GNOME, Canonical, Red Hat, whoever else) involved took internal stock of the situation they might identify all kinds of things they can each do to improve. How much better than writing witty blog posts that won't alter the status quo that would be! Leadership will be self-evident when people start describing and implementing such improvements, regardless of whether others do so first, later or never.
On Alignment
Starting with the alignment of priorities and agreeing on the context for the conversation would be a reasonable place to start, perhaps. To illustrate what I mean by that: Jono Bacon
used the term "upstream" in his response to the issue in a way that is very different from what the people leveling the complaints at Canonical are. Jono used upstream in terms of Canonical's own efforts: their software developers are upstream of their packagers. However, it seems evident to me that Greg and others are using the term in the context of the global F/OSS economy, where in this case GNOME is the upstream of Canonical. It's the difference between looking at the supply chain within one particular company's factory, and looking at the role of that factory in the greater economy in which it operates.
Due to this difference in context, people are engaged in a conversation about upstream contribution in which both are 'right' in terms of the context they have chosen to speak from. This also means, though, that neither party is really addressing the same issue together. As long as those kinds of context and priority differences are not addressed so that a common conversation can be had, it will be a very long, hard, painful and probably unfruitful conversation.
I've been caught in many such conversations in the past with others in F/OSS. It happens; it's also fixable.
Why Care?
I believe it to be important that we care about these things because they are doing large amounts of unintended damage to F/OSS. But as my step-father used to tell me, "When you point a finger at someone else, you are pointing three fingers back at your own self." (Try it: point at something with your index finger, arm extended. :)
So let me address those three-fingers-pointing-at-myself. To be honest: the relationship between KDE and Canonical has not always been fruitful or friendly, ditto for KDE and Red Hat or KDE and GNOME. Even within KDE we have our moments of discord. It's not easy, it's not simple and I do not want to come off like I'm pretending it is or that my or KDE's track record is perfect either. KDE has managed to improve many of these things, some of them immensely though certainly not to perfection, but you know what is really unfortunate and sad when I reflect up on that? The root causes, tribalism and selfish misalignment of priorities relative to each other, were / are the same as those at the heart of today's tempest in a teapot over Canonical's upstream contribution and/or lack thereof. F/OSS has yet to truly learn the lessons we need to. We keep repeating the same unhealthy behaviors, we keep enabling each other in doing so.
I have to say that it was really tempting to delve into an analysis of what, in my opinion, the specific behaviors are that led to this particular blog storm, but when I thought about it I realized that it's not really my place to do so. After all, I'm not a direct stakeholder in this particular scenario and have not been invited to enter into the middle of what amounts to other people's relationship. So instead, let me get a little philosophical about what it might take to step away from our feudalistic ways:
We ought to be looking for F/OSS communities who can lead in demonstrating positive and useful ways of dealing with these somewhat inevitable moments of conflict. We need to encourage those who aren't leading in this way to improve their game; we need to give each other the opportunity to improve our game by avoiding blame games. We need to support each other in our hard times and our moments of brilliant alignment. For those who insist on tribalism, the rest of us need to move past them and minimize their impact and importance in the F/OSS ecosystem, so as to limit the harm they perpetuate.
We need to learn how to accept that someone is going to be a fan of $DISTRO or $PROJECT without using that against them. We need to learn how to be a fan of $DISTRO or $PROJECT without looking for ways to push for its advantage at the expense of F/OSS in general. We need to learn to recognize each others strengths, as well as to stop claiming that we're strong where we aren't. We need to learn to disagree without sabotaging each other. We need to learn how to cooperate, even sometimes by making local compromises to achieve a higher level of global win. We should be looking at how to put together what we are each doing well into a larger whole, even when we are also competing elsewhere. We can both compete and cooperate without dragging each other down in the process.
The path beyond tribalism is, in my humble opinion, to realize that despite our love for KDE, GNOME, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Suse and/or fluffy bunnies we must each hold aloft a common goal that trumps all else: F/OSS must succeed. The world is depending on us to do that, because the world needs Freedom, and Free software is an important part of that.
That is the challenge we have before us. Sort of puts things into perspective, doesn't it?
But Before I go ..
Kids are smart. They will learn that when you do something bad you get attention even if it is negative. If they don't get the attention all children need in the course of growing up, they put this together in their head and start to look for ways to break "the rules" to get that attention. To be fair, some adults do that too. :) As an adult who plays a role in the child's life (a parent, especially), that pattern can be prevented by (among other things) paying attention to the things they do that are positive.
In that spirit, I'd like to end this blog post by giving a shout out to a few of the communities out there that are doing good things. Good work deserves attention and recognition, and you shouldn't have to be in the middle of a controversy to get it.
I'm thinking of OpenSuse, for instance: they make hard decisions and are pretty open about how difficult things can be internally at times, but they've consistently been a pleasure to work with, even through difficult times.
I'm thinking of Pardus, a small but hardworking group of people making an awesome distribution aimed primarily at their own region, but who are also doing all kinds of wonderful things technology wise both in their project and upstream.
I'm thinking of Red Flag who, despite other possible negatives, have also been contributing more and more upstream over time.
I'm thinking of Mandriva who, despite their financial bumps over time, have not only never caused grief for us as an upstream project but have contributed significantly.
I'm thinking of the numerous small and medium size businesses who aren't distributions but who are as important as many of the distros in making sure upstream keeps ticking. I'm also thinking about you, reading this blog entry because you care enough about these issues to do so with an open mind.
p.s. I'm concerned, having re-read it (and edited it several times), that this blog entry could come across as preachy. I really hope it doesn't, but I do recognize that my communication skills have limits to them and some may choose to read it that way. It feels rather unsafe to push the "Publish Post" button, and honestly I am hesitant to do so. It seems, however, that these are things that need to be said, and I can only hope that some of it is useful and gets through to those who will make things better than they are now. Deep breath time!
Love and with hope for all the best things in life, Aaron.
55 comments:
Very nice post Aaron. It did not sound as prieching. Far from it. More like a other children parent telling own learnings.
Personally I must say that I can not understand so well what this fuzzy is about now.
But what I understand (what I have seen, feeled and noticed around) is that Canonica as company itself is not bad. But many of it actions are. Or the mentality of the Ubuntu community where smaller (I hope so) group keep so big noise about Ubuntu that it gets reflected to other new users (you can notice it from forums or news sites when they always suggest Ubuntu as best or as only option) and the snow ball effect is ready to roll down the hill.
The problem what I have noticed, exist in the Canonicals marketing. It is falsefied, it is not technically correct or correct about the whole F/OSS community.
I can easily forgive to you the problem to say KDE when you meant to say KDE SC or KDE Plasma. Same thing happends for most old users/developers very easily. But I can not understand those who just deny to use the correct branding because the "KDE SC" is just too "long" for them instead the "KDE" and how they protect their opinion many times by saying "but others will understand what I mean".
The Canonical and Ubuntu community has made few critical problems and all because marketing.
1) Pretending that they are the #1 (this is very hard to get metered but I think we all know that Ubuntu is the child in the eyes of the media)
2) Giving assumptions that they are making all the software by themselfs with support of the community (they should say that they are distributing the software what the community is doing)
3) Saying that they are making OS named "Ubuntu". They can not even say that the Linux kernel is the OS and that Ubuntu is just a distriution of it. It is not a blame to be one distribution, among hundreds of distributions using one and the same OS.
4) They copied (I would like to say "steal") the philosophy of the GNU to their own. Yes, the Ubuntu saying has own meaning. But it does not say anything about freedom for the software or similar. That is the philosphy of the GNU. A great one but...
5) The Ubuntu community should focus to understand the whole F/OSS community. By the way that who developes and what and how the whole software system works and how the community using, developing and supporting it works. And they should teach all the basics (that Linux kernel is the OS, GNOME is the desktop environment, what is package manager and how software gets packaged and distriuted and so on) for new users and especially for the Media. If media gets it all wrong (as they have). They should point out the mistakes.
It does not matter have Canonical commited 1% or 30% of the code. If they really want to maintain a fantasy that they are the #1 who leads the F/OSS etc. They are just demanding this kind problems to come up.
I think you make a lot of good points here, but you also try a bit too hard to be even handed.
Yes, Greg and Jono use different definitions of 'upstream', but this isn't some sort of value-equal difference of opinion. Greg talked about a specific problem with Canonical in that it doesn't contribute to upstream projects, per Greg's definition. The effect of Jono's use of a completely different definition of 'upstream' is to make his response to Greg's criticism, in fact, a complete non-response. When you're trying to respond to a person's argument, redefining the terms they used to make their argument go away is not a valid stratagem (as Bill Clinton famously demonstrated...)
To put it in a very vulgar way, if someone accuses you of murder, you can't say 'Well, I define murder as 'eating moldy cheese', and I've never done that, so clearly I'm not guilty of murder!'. It just doesn't work. You haven't actually engaged with the argument at all.
There's a fundamental issue here which is not some sort of difference of opinion or communication breakdown. Ubuntu is probably the first well-funded and (quite intentionally) very prominent Linux distributor to make as few contributions to upstream as it does. This is a genuine problem for the entire F/OSS ecosystem. What Greg and I and others are arguing is that it is important for Ubuntu/Canonical to recognize and rectify this deficiency. It's not thoughtless tribalism. We're not trying to get people to stop using or liking or contributing to Ubuntu. We're trying to get Canonical/Ubuntu to engage with the wider ecosystem in the same way every other significant distribution does/has. This isn't something that can really be done by everyone having a good old talk about it.
It does seem that Canonical devs have made some moves towards genuine upstream contribution which haven't been immediately accepted, so clearly there's room for both Canonical and upstream to work on those, and I hope everyone would agree the optimal result would be for Canonical to make the submissions acceptable and for upstream to accept them. That would be a good springboard for further involvement.
Without going into the topic, let me just say that I am very thankful that KDE is being managed by people like you, Mr. Seigo.
>If you are an Ubuntu or Canonical >fan (or Mark :) and you read that, >it might sting a bit (or maybe >even a lot) and the instinct might >be to react quickly, negatively >and loudly. After all, who the >hell am I to say something like >that, right? :) Instead, maybe we >can step back for a moment, turn >off the flamethrowers for a little >while
In other words, now that I've flamed you a bit, let's call a truce and have tea. :)
>On Being Able To Admit Failure
I don't recall you ever admitting any fault or failure in regard to the 4.0 release.
Ugh. Sorry about the f'ed up quoting. I'll admit failure on that one.
@adamwill: "The effect of Jono's use of a completely different definition of 'upstream' is to make his response to Greg's criticism, in fact, a complete non-response."
i agree. in fact, jono and i had a nice discussion, in public via identi.ca, about this yesterday.
"What Greg and I and others are arguing is that it is important for Ubuntu/Canonical to recognize and rectify this deficiency."
yes, i understand, and again, i agree with the intentions.
but the problem is that people are going about it all wrong. Greg will never get Canonical to shift that way. trying to get Jono to say that he's being evasive (esp intentionally so) ain't gonna happen either.
sometimes to get what you need or want you have to step beyond issues of correctness and start thinking about how to achieve the goal.
if Canonical starts contributing upstream and begins to change their way, does it matter if they ever admit they were wrong in the past? do we need to hit them over the head with it?
i'm reminded of when RMS said KDE should apologize for using Qt after Qt was GPL'd. it's the same kind of "not going to get you what you want" approach.
and to be fair, let's put the shoe on the other foot: for Canonical to chide others for engaging in tribalism is a little ironic. they need to rise above that as well, because going around telling people things like that isn't going to get them what they need or want either.
and that's the whole point, really: i think we all have the right (or near-right, anyways :) motivations. we're just not letting them move us in ways that will allow us to achieve the goals we all have.
"This isn't something that can really be done by everyone having a good old talk about it."
not alone, no. but it also won't happen by bitch slapping each other in public on the Internet either.
the collateral damage such displays do to our shared reputation is not good, either.
"That would be a good springboard for further involvement. "
agreed, again. :) but both parties need to feel safe and comfortable to repair those bridges.
it's amazing how people will cut off their nose to spite their face.
@hugeboobfan: "In other words, now that I've flamed you a bit, let's call a truce and have tea."
there is a difference between a flame and sharing an honest and accurate observation about one of your peers that is delivered without emotion or blame attached.
while flaming often sucks, only being "allowed" to say how pretty things are is unrealistic. we need to be able to be realistic, fair and honest with each other.
and you may have noticed that i don't think most of the people involved in this spat have been so far.
"I don't recall you ever admitting any fault or failure in regard to the 4.0 release. "
then you you've missed some of my blog entries, since i have talked a fair amount in the past about things we could have done better. or perhaps you want me to apologize for aspects of the 4.0 release that i don't think were wrong, in which case we will have to respect that we disagree on some points from history.
either way, to bring up a 2.5 year old complaint that is not only inaccurate but unrelated to the topic at hand is just an excuse to fling monkey poo at people for no purpose whatsoever. that is, in my world, the very definition of poor form.
given that i even noted in this blog entry that KDE hasn't been perfect in various ways, it's doubly disturbing you felt the need to say such a thing as "i don't admit fault".
now personally, i'd rather be working on 4.6 while we anticipate the imminent release of 4.5 than dealing with that kind of rubbish. :)
"or perhaps you want me to apologize for aspects of the 4.0 release that i don't think were wrong, in which case we will have to respect that we disagree on some points from history."
I'm rather sure that is the case. You may dismiss it as baseless trolling, but there's a reason you are regularly responding to 2.5 year old complaints, and it can't all be blamed on poor internet etiquette.
In general, I think your flame-repellent armor could be a bit more flame-absorbent, but I respect that you do make an effort to respond to a lot of concerns/criticisms.
I love Ubuntu and the way is doing things, it has put Linux on the desktop map, just remember the state of Linux distros before Ubuntu started, I was there and it wasn't pleasend. Ubuntu raised the bar in many areas and that's why I use it today.
Thank you Mark and thank you Ubuntu community.
"In other words, now that I've flamed you a bit, let's call a truce and have tea. :)"
People are so conditioned to take sides that a balanced analysis looks to them like hatred.
-Scott Adams
"but the problem is that people are going about it all wrong. Greg will never get Canonical to shift that way. trying to get Jono to say that he's being evasive (esp intentionally so) ain't gonna happen either."
So how do we go about fixing this? It seems there seems to be a general agreement, outside of canonical and their fans of course, that this is a problem. You have told us what we shouldn't do to rectify the situation. So what should we do? Just calmly chatting about it doesn't seem to be getting the job done. This has been an issue for years. It is no secret. So what do people do when this sort of problem arises and the only group actually capable of improving the situation does not seem interested in doing so (or even admitting the issue exists in the first place)?
It is easy to say that we should be calm and friendly and chat about it and if we don't ruffle any feathers everything will work out in the end, but it isn't. Nothing is going to change as long as the side of the discussion that can actually cause a change won't even admit the situation exists. When one side is willing to blatantly misrepresent the arguments of the other side in order to deny there is a problem at all, then by definition they are not interested in a calm discussion.
Now I am not saying that yelling at each other is the proper solution. But just calmly laying out the issues to canonical obviously is not working either or else we wouldn't be having this discussion. So my question is, do you have any specific suggestions on how to resolve the current impasse?
@hugeboobfan: "there's a reason you are regularly responding to 2.5 year old complaints"
indeed there is. it isn't, however, the reasons you are implying. some people choose to be incapable of letting go and moving on, of trying to consider with an open mind what the other person (or people, in this case) were trying to do (and, this case, succeeded).
btw, a pet peeve of mine: people who try to be clever by responding with implication rather than just stating with sound fact and reason what they are thinking. it's a weasel tactic, as it prevents one from having a real conversation where people actually share their thoughts and discuss them.
this is second only to my pet peeve of people who don't have a sense of when it is and isn't useful and/or appropriate to dredge up a topic that's been dealt with.
that will be, btw, your last comment on my blog on this matter.
@Ramsees: i'm glad you appreciate Ubuntu. what do you think they can do to improve the situation we find ourselves (F/OSS contributors) in as a result of the social situation?
and btw, KDE has put Linux on the desktop map at least as much as Canonical. we have several times their user base (though some of our larger installations are pondering a move to Kubuntu away from pure debian).
may i suggest to you that it is precisely the kind of pointless and inaccurate grandstanding evidenced by comments such as "Ubuntu put Linux on the desktop map" that raise the ire of others and help created this mess.
"Ubuntu raised the bar in many areas"
yes, it did indeed.
and so has Red Hat over the last few years with their immense contributions of engineering, which Ubuntu has benefited from.
until we, fans or not, can recognize everyone's contributions and understand how the pieces fit together, we are bound to repeat the darker aspects of our history again and again.
@toddrme2178: "do you have any specific suggestions on how to resolve the current impasse?"
that is the $64,000 question isn't it?
as i noted in the blog entry, i believe that those who refuse to cooperate need to be sidelined by the rest of us.
we should start by trying to negotiate with good faith and without giving the other side excuses to not cooperate. (yelling at someone or laying blame is one way of doing exactly that.)
but when negotiation breaks down, then we need to be able and willing to back up our negotiation position with consequences. it's the idea of consequences; and i mean real consequences, not "i totally ripped you on my blog!"
we need to route around those who obstinately choose their short term over our shared long term. we need to diminish their position within F/OSS by removing our support fromr them. the result of gaming the system should be becoming trivialized within that system.
today we can find any number of examples of "villainous behaviour" in F/OSS. it's not because we are rife with villains, but because we don't hold people accountable for their behaviour. sure, we bitch about it, but that's just bitching. as a result, too often it pays out better in the short term to do what is worse for F/OSS overall.
and why don't we do this? well, maybe because we're too used to bitching about things (perhaps because that used to work, even?). maybe it's because we're too afraid that if we turned our backs on people who are dangerous to us that we'd lose their input and contributions and that would be an even bigger loss. to which i'd just point to this excellent presentation: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4216011961522818645
as a thought exercise: imagine if gplviolations.org took a similar viewpoint and didn't want to rock the boat with legal response if the companies in question didn't respond to negotiation?
that seems obvious, but we often don't hold people in our community to the same level of responsibility or meet exhibitions of bad behavior with the same level of commitment we show gpl violators. note that gplviolations.org doesn't argue with the violating entity publicly, either. they start with a reasoned interaction and negotiation, and if that fails moves to holding them accountable for their actions.
of course, the response needs to be fitting. e.g. until Mark comes clean on his inappropriate (as measured by Ubuntu's own code of conduct) comments made during that keynote presentation, he should be boycotted at F/OSS events as a speaker. cut people out from where they are evidently not ready to be a proper participant and it protects F/OSS while simultaneously giving people a very good reason to play nicely with others.
of course, one might ask how to deal with code contribution leaching, which is at the center of today's hot topic issue.
in this particular case, i'd suggest that picking on Canonical for their upstream contribution or lack thereof is missing the point. i say: who cares, as long as they aren't allowed to take credit for it. an appropriate response in this case might be to work with the various F/OSS news outlets to ensure that there is a higher degree of vetting of all such claims made, that "How To Use Gimp On Ubuntu" articles are no longer picked with such misleading titles (since it has nothing to do with Ubuntu, really). because if Ubuntu is no longer the F/OSS media darling for all the things they aren't actually responsible for, then they will quite quickly, i believe, come around. and if they don't, that's fine too. they'll become less and less relevant.
instead, thanks to the bitching, we have LinuxToday's editor siding (understandably, given her editorial) with Ubuntu even though she states she's hesitant about their community and media approach.
@ Adamwill
"It does seem that Canonical devs have made some moves towards genuine upstream contribution which haven't been immediately accepted, so clearly there's room for both Canonical and upstream to work on those, and I hope everyone would agree the optimal result would be for Canonical to make the submissions acceptable and for upstream to accept them. That would be a good springboard for further involvement."
I could say that if Canonical would start follow the upstream guidelines (usability, testing and so on) and contribute the code then. It would come there more easily.
But I can not see the reason why upstream should take code what is against the guidelines or why they should be even offered to end users in the first place?
There is good difference to take experimental code from upstream and offer it to end users.
Than generating experimental code what is against upstream guidelines (/code) and offer it to end users.
Or even try to use own userbase as leverage to get wanted functions to upstream. Like the syncronized release dates or (the misunderstanded) Client window decorations (I dont now remember correct, but the misunderstanded idea to have application to draw the decoration itself).
Then if there are the OSD ideas or other directions what should come and are against usability testings and so on. Why should upstream take such code or why should the distributor even offer such code to end users in the first place? If it is just to get a something fancy, it is done by wrong reasons.
Personally I can always understand that there is development version what experienced users can test aside of the stable version. And the can say does it work or not and then move it to the stable version.
More like what is going in KDE SC development of trunk, review and so on branches.
@ASeigo, Wel, that's because I still can't see anything wrong with what Canonical is doing. but I see a lot of envy from everywhere, If Fedora, OpenSuse or Mandrake aren't as succesful as Ubuntu is because they didn't take the Linux thesktop in the beginning as serious as Ubuntu.
And yes, KDE also has helped to the linux desktop adoptions, there are some goverment deployments, etc. But the difference I see is that those deployments are pushed tp the users by someone in the end. Ubuntu is different because is not being pushed to the users, the users are looking for Ubuntu and that is pissing off some people. If that's wrong I don't see how.
@ Aaron J. Seigo: I was thinking about it after I made the post and came to a similar conclusion. Other possible steps would be block Canonical and its employees from decision-making bodies, refusing to use Cananocial-developed software in other distributions, strongly discouraging its use in the large-scale deployments you mentioned, and someone elses' suggestions to time releases to be immediately after Ubuntu's so Ubuntu is always a release behind in terms of stable software.
Your post, although cast in a positive light, was really pretty much all about problems with how people are current doing things. I think it would be worthwhile to make a follow-up post to expand on the solutions you just highlighted. These are steps that the Linux community has been slow to take, possibly because they may see anyone who makes even a small contribution as beneficial, but I think a serious case for Canonical's net contribution to the Linux landscape to be negative (although I can't say that with any certainty because I have not researched the issue nor am I an expert on the Linux landscape to begin with).
So I think it is very important that you highlight in detail the steps that you think need to be taken when the community at large feels that one part of that community it not behaving in the community's best interest. I think it is very important that the community starts thinking about what sorts of behavior are detrimental and should be discouraged, and how they should discourage them. I think the brief mention in your existing post will not do that, I think it deserves a much more in-depth discussion.
Now for others I should emphasize that I do not think Canonical lacks the right to behave as they do. They have every right to. They are not breaking the law. However, other groups have rights as well, and their rights include the right respond to Canonical's behavior in any way they feel appropriate within the constraints of the law. If Canonical does things the others Linux distributions do not like, as is their right, then the other distributions have the right to not include Canonical in any of their collaborations. Canonical has a right to advertise in any way the law allows, but other distributions have the right to run counter-advertisements as well. No one is trampling on Ubuntu's rights merely by exercising their own rights. If you think about free speech, free speech is not just the ability for someone to say what he or she likes in public, it is the freedom of others to publicly express their disagreement with that person. Freedom is not just the freedom to act, but the freedom of others to respond to those actions.
@ Ramsees: Have you not read what anyone has written here? Do you have any specific disagreements with the specific problems people have highlighted with Canonical's behavior? Can you explain why there is no problem with leeching off the hard work of others and then passing it off as your own?
And what grounds does Aaron have for being jealous? He does not work for a distribution
@ Aaron: I thought about it last night after I made the post, and I came to a similar conclusion. Other actions could include barring Canonical and its employees from decision-making bodies, refusing to use, accept bug reports, or send fixes for canonical software or forking it if necessary, and someone elses' suggestion of timing distribution and upstream project releases to always be shortly after Ubuntu's release.
I think your comment deserves a post of its own. Your post, even though it was written in a positive manner, at its core was all about problems with current behavior. I think it is critical that as a community we start thinking about solutions, and I do not think the brief mention in this post will do that. The community has not been willing to take serious steps to discourage behaviors it sees as detrimental within its own midst, but it really needs to be able to. If not now, there will certainly come the time when there will be an even more flagrant case. Putting our foot down now will send a clear message to others tempted to go further that such behavior will not be accepted by the community.
I want to emphasize to others reading that I am fully aware that Canonical has every right to behave in any way they want within the limits of the law. I am not denying that. But others distributions and upstream projects have rights too, and those rights include opposing what Canonical is doing. Canonical has a right to now work with upstream project, but similarly upstream projects have the right to not include Canonical when making decisions. Canonical is not obligated to send their patches upstream, but likewise upstream is not obligated to listen to what Canonical has to say. Canonical has a right to advertise in any legally-acceptable manner, including denigrating other distributions, but other distributions have the right to counter-protest, including denigrating Ubuntu. If you think about free speech, free speech is not just someones' ability to say what they want in public, it is the ability of others to disagree with those statements in public. Freedom is not just the freedom to act, but the freedom of others to respond to those actions. Disagreeing someone elses' statements is never limiting their free speech, opposing someone actions (without the threat of violence or legal action) is never limiting their freedom to act. Freedom is disagreement, protection from dissent is the very opposite of freedom.
Sorry for the double post, I got an error so I assumed it didn't go through, and I ended up rewriting it. I should have checked.
@toddrme2178: I've read all the coments and all I see is envy, Ubuntu is not yaking anything as their own, if it has, please, point me to an example.
@Fri13: "I could say that if Canonical would start follow the upstream guidelines (usability, testing and so on) and contribute the code then. It would come there more easily."
agreed. i've run into similar issues with their code contributions.
however:
"But I can not see the reason why upstream should take code what is against the guidelines or why they should be even offered to end users in the first place?"
because it is upstream's best interest to do so.
instead of looking at someone from afar while holding one's nose and saying, "your code isn't good enough, go away." perhaps it would be wiser to realize that there is development effort there for the "taking".
we've had some issues with some of Canonical's earlier attempts to upstream code. there were several issues about how it was gone about: they didn't communicate early enough (day zero communication isn't needed, but sometime prior to trying a code drop on upstream is a good idea :), it didn't follow design principles we have and they kept pestering us with repeated requests to get it upstreamed without showing any interest in changes.
but we realized that here was developer time: the most valuable resource in free software! :)
so we worked with them. i had some strong words in private with one or two people there when they were pretending nothing was wrong, which jolted them upright a bit. and then we worked on how to get what they were looking for upstream.
today, we have a pretty decent rate of code upstreaming as well as design downstreaming. the app indicators originally come out of KDE Plasma work and was adopted by Canonical for their GNOME implementation and they have continued to run with it, including contributing useful improvements upstream to KDE (dbusmenu for status notifier items, soon hopefully the global menu bar stuff too).
GNOME would do well to take the app indicator work that Canonical has done as it would help cross-desktop behaviour. if it isn't exactly in the form upstream wants, then work with them, realizing that it's an opportunity to take advantage of Canonical's $s turned into code.
so it shouldn't be a one-way street. then you say this:
"Or even try to use own userbase as leverage to get wanted functions to upstream."
and i completely agree, along with the rest of that paragraph and the next. but Canonical can both be tamed to an extent and we can cherry pick the good stuff.
it's not all or nothing.
and when we start upstreaming the good stuff, our downstreams are more likely to create more of the good stuff. it's mostly when upstream turns a cold shoulder to downstream that downstreams start to behave their worst.
@Ramsees: "that's because I still can't see anything wrong with what Canonical is doing."
can you try at least to understand the various issues other have? even if you don't agree that they are real issues, try to understand how they appear to be issues to others and how they affect those other people's efforts.
without such applied empathy, it becomes very difficult to get everyone talking, let alone working, together productively.
we may disagree, but we should understand what we are disagreeing on and most importantly: why. i don't see that happening much in your comments. am i wrong?
"But the difference I see is that those deployments are pushed tp the users by someone in the end."
then explain the >1,000,000 / year retail sales of machines with KDE on them in Brazil?
yes, there are large top-down deployments, but you know what? those deployments came to us. we support them, and meet with them and even sometimes develop software with them in mind.
"Ubuntu is different because is not being pushed to the users, the users are looking for Ubuntu and that is pissing off some people."
you are assigning motivations to other people that you are not in a place to call. sinister motivations, at that. no wonder we don't have good conversations with each other in f/oss: we're constantly behaving like the other guy wants to kill us or something.
what if we stepped back for a moment and asked ourselves, "Why do they come at it from the perspective of code contributions?"
see, when we paint people as villains, we are almost always wrong. i've known real villains in my life, and most people, even when behaving villainously, are not villains. they are acting out often because they feel disenfranchised, powerless, unheard, etc.
it doesn't excuse the behavior, but if we wish to resolve such behavior we need to stop treating such people as if they are villains. we need to find the root causes and treat those.
calling someone "jealous" trivializes what someone like Greg is experiencing by making it sound like a character flaw on his part. that doesn't address at all what he's actually experienced, it just dismisses it. no wonder he's pissed!
so, if you want to see these f/oss sabotaging wars continues, please, keep treating people like caricatures from a comic book, as shallow-souled villains.
if we want to find a way to draw strength from all our numbers, we need to try empathy and understanding, combined with the resolve to hold people responsible with consequences when necessary.
@ASeigo: That's the problem, I see the people talking and talking but please, give me and example of Ubuntu's missbehavior. Can I atleast have one?
@ Ramsees: For one thing, look at the ubuntu project page. See any mention of Debian there?
@Ramsees: "Ubuntu is not yaking anything as their own, if it has, please, point me to an example."
they regularly do this, though i don't think its out of spite on Canonical's part. Canonical is so focused on good marketing that they forget they have partners, and in the process of marketing they piss off their partners accidentally and needlessly.
contrast: you may notice that in my blogs where i talk about things KDE is doing, i often name other people by name. here's a little secret: even when i've done a lot of the work that went into that feature or improvement, unless i'm the only one who worked on it i don't make much a deal of it. instead, i highlight those who i worked with on it. as the person on the soapbox, it is better to take that limelight (which is a form of power) and share it with those who were also involved. by highlighting others who contributed as well, it gives them encouragement, recognition they have certainly earned and prevents them from disliking me because "i'm always the one talking about all the great shit i do."
this is something i learned back when i just getting into positions of business leadership in the 90s. one of my mentors passed on this nugget (over scotch in a cigar room, iirc; ridiculously cliche! :) i'm surprised that the people who run Canonical are apparently oblivious to this dynamic.
when Canonical says that they have "new feature Foo in the Fanny Flapjack release!" and feature Foo was not only developed by another distro, they should think about offering some credit for that. particularly if they release it before that other distro does.
now, Canonical doesn't have to do this. no, not at all. it's not in the license requirements after all, right?
but it's in their BEST INTERESTS to do so! not doing so disenfranchises their technology partners (which is what everyone contributing to an open source project becomes to each other) who are providing the bulk of their features.
Canonical should realize that keeping their technology partners happy is a key to keeping not only this kind of criticism at bay but also a way to increase further contribution that benefits Canonical.
Canonical can ride the tail-coats of Red Hat as they give oodles of technology, and Red Hat can ride the tail-coats of Canonical in fair exchange if only Canonical would offer credit where it is due.
now, either Canonical is making a mistake here and doing this without realizing what they are doing, or they are indeed purposefully trying to snuff out those partners who supply the bulk of the engineering they rely on to function.
either way it makes one wonder.
@toddrme2178: On Ubuntu's ofitial web pages exist a link that says: "Ubuntu and Debian", here is the link to that page: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntu-and-debian, let me quote part of that page "
Ubuntu and Debian are closely related.
Ubuntu builds on the foundations of Debian's architecture and infrastructure, but has a different community and release process.", I can clearly see a missinformation from your part there, is there anything else?
@ASeigo: If the problem is "lack" of recognition, then I see a weak excuse. Now, lets supose it is, has anyone from the "offended" part talked or mailed to Mark instead of writed it in a blog? If that's the only problem then is something easy to resolve. And why does Canonical has to market what Redhat or Novell is doing? they can do that by them selves, can't they?, is there another miss behavior cause honestly I don't see the one you just provided as a big deal
@Ramsees: ah, and the example you asked for: it's happened a few times for things like networkmanager, which is developed by Red Hat people and has made it first into an Ubuntu release due to release schedules. Canonical has then noted the improvements it brings to Ubuntu while not mentioning their technology partner in it. this amounts to eating the publicity cake that Red Hat put the investment into baking.
seeing as they compete for users, it's easy to see why some then cry foul.
Canonical is in a place to completely avoid that from happening, too. they simply don't do so. it's unfortunate.
@ASeigo, we already touched the "recognition point" and you dind't answer the quistions I did.I repeat if recognition is the case it is easy to resolve, even from the RedHat part, a simple "We deliver from our labs the network manager that is used in the popular Ubuntu distribution", and even talk to Mark, but do it offitialy, not in a blog. is there anything else?
@Ramsees: "then I see a weak excuse."
you have no future as a diplomat :)
(whether that's a bad thing or not is arguable ;)
"Now, lets supose it is, has anyone from the "offended" part talked or mailed to Mark instead of writed it in a blog?"
yes.
"And why does Canonical has to market what Redhat or Novell is doing?"
they don't _have_ to, but they should be wary about giving credit where due. you seem to have skipped right past everything i wrote about that.
you are looking for "things Canonical must do" when that's not how reality works. reality is that one ought to do what is their own best interests. and when someone isn't serving your best interests, you should probably walk away from them.
"they can do that by them selves, can't they?"
not when Ubuntu is released first. time is a bitch that way: it is highly ordered in one direction.
"is there another miss behavior cause honestly I don't see the one you just provided as a big deal"
yes, several. they are touched in extensively in the comments here and in the blog entry (though sometimes between the lines). they include sexist remarks that are never apologized for, in direct violation of Ubuntu's own code of conduct; difficulties with working with their own upstreams (which is also a fault of the upstream to a certain extent); grandstanding as #1 when they aren't the #1 they try to claim they are (that's called "false representation", and in advertising (which isn't where it is happening, thankfully for Canonical) it is actually against the law!)
but you know what? there are also issues outside of Canonical, too. things other groups are doing. the misbehavior is spread out around the f/oss landscape. we could look at things various groups and companies have done or are doing and scratch our heads over that as well. and i do.
which is why in my blog entry i was pretty careful about not turning it into another Canonical bitchfest. yes, Canonical has issues that they ought to address. but they aren't the only ones.
it's much bigger than just one actor in the play.
@Ramsees: "you dind't answer the quistions I did"
i did, but it seems you posted quicker than i did :) that said, i don't think your questions are particularly interesting in terms of getting to the core of what needs fixing in f/oss. it's just more asking for people to point fingers at others.
and while we can enumerate sins, i think we should be enumerating the causal factors of those sins.
some of it is pride, some of it is the allowance of safety, some of it is honorably acknowledging partners in public, some of it is the grinding of gears when capitalism meets collaborative commons, some of it is bad blood from past years that not everyone has moved beyond yet.
your questions don't delve into those matters. and until we do, we will just see new sins arise for us to point fingers at. i don't know if that's fun or tragic or both, but i do know it won't solve much.
fight fires or create a world without fires to fight. it's our choice.
@Ramsees
"because they didn't take the Linux thesktop in the beginning as serious as Ubuntu."
They did not? How do you justify that?
Mandriva and S.U.S.E were those who focused to desktop in the first place. Same did RedHat (it actually was ahead others even then).
Canonical has not done anything what others would not have done.
Others had
1) Custome theme (usually green/red/blue)
2) graphical and simple installation (as less as three mouse clicks!!)
3) LiveCD's
4) Small one-app-for-one-tasks idea (you had only basic apps for main tasks).
Canonical did not invent anything new or fancy for desktops. Nothing.
I have used Linux since -98. Mainly for desktops. In the start, I skipped gentoo, slackware and debian and so on. But used a lot S.U.S.E, RedHat, Mandriva and so on.
Even now I have installation medias in my cabin and I have them installed as well in my virtualbox. About 6 months ago my friend argued that Ubuntu broug simpleness to desktops and installation. And Canonical invented the LiveCD and packaged thousands of packagages for easy to install.
I asked him to visit my place. I gave a few old installation medias from 2001, when Windows XP was released and suggested him to test them to virtualbox, after he first would have installed the first Ubuntu (4.10) release. So he could compare the results. Quess what? He turned his opinions totally around. He started to understand that Ubuntu really was not invented anything innovative what others would not being used partially or all features.
The main thing what actually means something to the end user is the desktop environment. And Ubuntu always have used GNOME. I believe we all could understand the statement that Ubuntu "brought the Linux to desktops" if Ubuntu would have own, unique desktop environment what would be so far ahead of GNOME and KDE that it would have affect.
Ubuntu just happened to be in right time at right place (new in town) with good kick start promotion (Mark Shuttleworth, multimillionare, founder of new distribution) so it got good start. Same GNOME, same application programs, same Linux OS etc as any other distribution of the Linux. Marketing just was so great that people started to live in RDF. And today, the field is even bigger and stronger than ever.
Jelous? Hah. Why to be jelous about "credit stealer" or for distribution what wants to be more closed source than open source!
The whole problem is that Ubuntu fans believe that Ubuntu is something very very special, so unique that no other distribution come close to it. And they believe all the things what Canonical and Community is saying how canonical and Ubuntu is driving the Linux to desktops, to servers and how it drives the F/OSS development.
Ubuntu 4.10 http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1390/838174657_0775b5c39d_o.jpg
RedHat at same time http://www.actsofvolition.com/images/screenshots/gnome-desktop-dec2004.png
Mandrake 10.0 at same time http://www.pcc-services.com/articles/images/mandrake_gnome.jpg
Do you remember what was GNOME default? 2.8/figures/figure-glider-theme.png.en / http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.8/
It is just so funny how people can pretend that Ubuntu has done something wonderfull for Linux or desktop environments. (We all should remember KDE SC and GNOME (and many others) can be used with other OS than just Linux. No matter do you use HURD, SunOS, FreeBSD (etc)... You have same desktop environments available if just ported.
@Aseigo, Fri13: If the problem is credit, that's fixable and at least to me is not a big deal, maybe Ubuntu haven't given the credit but It hasn't take it eather, they say "We ship now with feature X" no with "We ship now we feature X than we made our selves".
Wnat to see the credits? Click the about button on the application, can't be any easier.
The "don't give credit" point is just a weak excuse IMHO, but I see a lot of envy around.
So I repat since you guys keep on the same "Credit" stuff over an over, is there anyting else?
@Ramsees: "So I repat since you guys keep on the same "Credit" stuff over an over"
are you actually reading what i'm writing? that's a serious question, because i'm not sure how you can say this after everything i've written here.
"It hasn't take it eather, they say "We ship now with feature X" no with "We ship now we feature X than we made our selves"."
it's implied. go out and ask Ubuntu users who invented "app indicators".
"Wnat to see the credits? Click the about button on the application, can't be any easier."
we're talking about public communication, not About Dialogs. and that doesn't work for things without about dialogs, such as infrastructure and design.
you are sounding like an aplogist, but i don't think you are. you are defending something you really like. and as i said already, i'm glad you like the Ubuntu products. that's great. but step away from the idea here that the best response to someone observing there is a problem is to try and argue that it doesn't exist.
ask what is the root cause and go after that instead.
look, when some of our users got pissed about KDE 4.0, i spent a lot of time looking into what led to that. i accepted that they were unhappy and started looking for causes. we found a number of them, and few of them were actually immediately obvious.
so when someone says something about a product you are evidently very much personally invested in, try the same thing.
don't tell Red Hat people "you have no reason to be concerned about lack of recognition given and upstream contribution", ask yourself why it is they feel that way and what has created that environment.
then instead of arguments back and forth like we've seen this last week in the blogosphere, we might get actual solutions to the causal factors being created.
@Fri13: i think Canonical did a number of things that were new and useful.
they made a distro with rapid, consistent release cycles. they found a way to include multimedia codecs so that more things "just worked" without fiddling. they created the most streamlined installer to date at that point. (yes, it removed lots of options, but turns out nobody really needed them in that case.) they found a way to build out community around the distribution in a way others handn't, which isn't a technical thing but it is a thing.
so ... nothing ground breaking technologically, perhaps, but certainly valuable to the end user.
everyone ought to recognize that. because if we can't recognize what they have done well and contributed to the ecosystem, can we expect them to do any better?
we need to elevate the discourse.
@Ramsees
"Wnat to see the credits? Click the about button on the application, can't be any easier."
Do you expect normal guy to install application and read the changelog to get know who did and what? Dont be silly.
Normal people (read, Ubuntu fans and those who see Ubuntu everywhere by Ubuntu fans) understand that Ubuntu (/Canonical) did all that. That is the very basic marketing tactic to say "we ship this feature" and normal people believe that they invented the feature because they are shipping it.
Same thing is Apple doing and PC/Nokia fans are laughing "Apple is saying that they invented MMS". While they do not understand that when Apple say "We got new feature" or "iPhone can now do this because this feature what did not exist before", they mean that it did not exist before in Apple products, while it can have been somewhere else. And Apple say accurated when they do something what competitors have not done.
Normal people believe that "we ship with this feature" means that shipper have developed it first timer in the whole world. If you would want to be correct, you would say "We added feature X in Z what is familiar from the product Y". But as you notice, the marketing power has much smaller effect because EVERYONE can see that they copied the feature or someone else is ahead of them.
Canonical is company what main purpose is to make $$$. It main purpose is to get lots of users to Ubuntu, not for other distributions.
"The "don't give credit" point is just a weak excuse IMHO, but I see a lot of envy around."
Weak excuse? It is weak excuse by saying that people envy Ubuntu.
"So I repat since you guys keep on the same "Credit" stuff over an over, is there anyting else?"
Credit, marketing, misinformation... Not small things in community
It does not matter does Ubuntu or Canonical contribute 1% or 50% to upstream. If they take (and they do) credit of that and they ALLOW their fans to spread misbelieves that Ubuntu is #1 because it makes everyhing, they are credit stealer.
Unless you can say that you are happy if someone else takes credit from your work and presents it as their own and gets promotion because that and you do not get angry about it but you just stand back and you are happy that so hard working guy got promotion!
GPL is about credit. F/OSS is about community and community is always build around credit. That you notice others work and you give your small part for the community as well and other respect you from that. Working with the community is not taking the credit from the work what others have done. Even if is "faceless" community like GNOME.
Main point is, Canonical steals credit, it does not give it for who it belongs and it does not contribute to community as it say it does. So Canonical is a lier.
If Canonical would be truthfully, it would say that Ubuntu is not a OS but it is a distribution using Linux OS (=kernel).
It would say that they use the software what the other communities are developing and it just distributes it.
It would have CoC saying that they can not market others work as their own.
They would not give promotions for press how they are the driving force of innovations for F/OSS.
If they would be honest, they would step back to the community and say "F/OSS community has done all this. We just are marketing and using it by ourselfs. You can use any other distribution to get all if wanted. So you are not locked to us to get these!".
No, Canonical would never do it because it would rip off their base for userbase.
I have no idea what “rip off their base for userbase” means, but the claim that “Ubuntu is not a OS” is simply mistaken. Ubuntu is just as much an operating system as Android, Opensuse, Jolicloud, Mandriva, or Palm webOS. All of those operating systems use the Linux kernel, but that’s irrelevant to most of their users, as it should be.
@ Aaron, regarding the topic KDE 4.0 mistakes:
> either way, to bring up a 2.5 year old complaint that is not only
> inaccurate but unrelated to the topic at hand is just an excuse
> to fling monkey poo at people for no purpose whatsoever. that is,
> in my world, the very definition of poor form.
Please note that the reason some of us KDE users are still concerned about the state in which 4.0 was released 2.5 years ago is not because we're resentful about the past or enjoy to "fling monkey poo at people", but because we're concerned that if nothing (or at least not much) has been learned from those mistakes, we could find ourselves in a similar situation again with any major KDE release in the future.
All we're looking for is some assurance that the relevant lessons have been learned and the above-mentioned concerns are therefore unfounded... ;-)
@Fri13: to try and take this discussion in a slightly different direction: can you try to explain why, to you, "credit stealing" is so important? what does it represent or result in that makes you consider it a bad thing? is it mostly an abstract issue of morals / ethics? does it have actual consequences? why does it matter to you?
i ask those questions because i'm not sure everyone has, well, though about it. i think some reactions are reflexive, not particularly based in reason. which doesn't make them wrong, just hard to communicate to people with a different viewpoint. and it is this chasm of understanding between different groups that continues to drive the inability for us to make progress on these matters.
@ Aaron: I don't think it is an abstract moral/ethical issue at all. The credit for work directly affects how users perceive the various distributions.
If users think the distribution is responsible for the stuff that is in it, then they will think more highly of the distribution and that will likely make them more prone to use it. On other hand if people think the distribution is just piggy-backing off the work of others without contributing back, they will think less of the distribution and that will probably make them less prone to use it.
Humans are a social species and the evidence is pretty strong that we (and chimpanzees, I might add) are hard-wired to reward and interact with those who share and cooperate and punish and ostracize those who cheat and steal. If we think someone is working hard to help them for free, we will be more accepting of that person than someone who they think is skirting his or her duty and piggybacking off the hard work of others without giving anything in return, even at the expense of our own best interests.
So yes, I think there are direct, tangible consequences to misleading users about who was responsible for developing various pieces of software, and the role a group plays in the linux community.
@uetsah: "Please note that the reason some of us KDE users are still concerned about the state in which 4.0 [..] we could find ourselves in a similar situation again with any major KDE release in the future."
context is important. let's pretend i'm on a lifestyle / fashion show on T.V. and the topic of the show is cooking. if i'm repeatedly pestered by the audience about what color shirts i prefer, i'd say they were talking out of turn, a distraction and would probably ask them to save their comments for some other time.
bringing up the 4.0 topic in a blog entry about working together across lines, an entirely different topic of great importance, is no different. it shows no respect for the conversation being had and those having it. in fact, it betrays an ultimately selfish way of interacting with the world, namely: "only the topic i am thinking about is what matters, and i will project what i am thinking about onto everything and everyone at every moment." why should i abide that?
does that make sense to you?
so i'm not going to get into the topic here. i've done so repeatedly in the past on my blog. (do you or bigboobfan give any credit for that?) and i'm happy to discuss it elsewhere, as i've done in person with people many times over.
in fact, i'll tell you what: if you organize an online meeting about the topic that my schedule allows me to attend, i'll be happy to show up and discuss it. we can announce it on my blog and we can get out of the way in one long irc discussion. we could spend a whole saturday discussing it if we want.
but i refuse to continue this discussion where it isn't on topic. it's disrespectful to expect otherwise.
@toddrme2178: "I think there are direct, tangible consequences to misleading users about who was responsible for developing various pieces of software"
very lucid :)
if i may, however: problematic with your explanation of it is that it says, "well, we're just hardwired to punish people who don't help us." that comes across as an unenlightened viewpoint, that we are slaves to our hardwiring with no ability to adjust it. it's not unlike the arguments for why free software, as a gift culture, can not work: we are all Nashian beings driven inexorably by the always-on-compete mode at the heart of so much of game theory. it's what inspires people to say, "You're just jealous!"
ok, so let's flesh out the whole story here to see if that's the case. i do think the "natural tendency" issue explains why we easily fall into traps of attacking each other, and indeed will curb people's willingness to work with Canonical in general.
but there is also real risk here for each actor, isn't there? i mean, let's say Canonical is successful and everyone thinks they are doing the work and they become the undisputed dominant Linux distribution and Red Hat joins the ranks of the struggling distributions, who without exception contribute less and for the obvious reason of resource access.
then where do the contributions come from?
is that what Canonical wants? are they able to fill those shoes in a reasonable period of time? will there be people left willing to work with them to do so?
it becomes rapidly apparent that Canonical's best interests are aligned with helping those helping them.
there's also the issue that if Canonical is indeed trying to become The One True Linux OS, is that truly what _we_ want: one OS?
i was shocked to hear from an industry associate that Canonical reps were telling hardware companies at a convention in Taiwan that they were "the Microsoft of Linux". is that really what we want?
if it isn't, then we should do something about it.
and Canonical needs to realize that people will.
ergo, again, it's in their best interests to play better with others.
and just to repeat myself here so it doesn't get lost: the issue of giving credit is only one issue and only deals with one group in this (Canonical). there are many other issues and many other actors as well. :)
problematic with your explanation of it is that it says, "well, we're just hardwired to punish people who don't help us." that comes across as an unenlightened viewpoint, that we are slaves to our hardwiring with no ability to adjust it.
I am not saying that, what I am saying is that, on average, an organization that is seen as seen as helping people will be more attractive to consumers than one that doesn't, which on average will be seen as more attractive to consumers than one that is actively hurting people.
There is a reason huge corporations spend a lot of money on these feel-good ads explaining how much they help society, or the environment, and so. This isn't for bragging rights, it is because it affects peoples' buying habits. On average people are willing to pay considerably more for tuna that is labeled "dolphin safe" than for tuna that isn't, to such an extent that there isn't any non-dolphin-safe tuna in the U.S. anymore.
driven inexorably by the always-on-compete mode at the heart of so much of game theory.
Game theory assumes people act as perfectly rational players. However, as research on real humans has shown, we don't. Even chimpanzees and infants have a basic moral code and a sense of "fairness", and will punish those who are perceived as acting in an unfair manner.
This does not mean we always behave fairly, or that we always punish unfair behavior, it just means on average fair behavior is more likely to be rewarded and unfair behavior is more likely to be punished. In fact, chimpanzees may behave more fairly than humans.
I should add that this sort of behavior is much more pronounced for in-group interactions rather than out-of-group interactions. So whatever the people currently perceive as the groups in a particular context, they are much more likely to treat members of their group fairly than outsides. The implications of this for the current discussion should be obvious.
but there is also real risk here for each actor, isn't there? i mean, let's say Canonical is successful and everyone thinks they are doing the work and they become the undisputed dominant Linux distribution and Red Hat joins the ranks of the struggling distributions, who without exception contribute less and for the obvious reason of resource access.
then where do the contributions come from?
Well, as Canonical said, they are their own upstream. Would they mind being the only Linux major Linux distribution and developer, even if they don't necessarily have as good a product? I don't know. Their behavior is certainly consistent with such a goal, but it is also consistent with them having not thought through the potential repercussions of their actions, and with them not actually expecting to succeed at killing off the other distributions, and with them being more concerned with short-term gains than long-term sustainability.
if it isn't, then we should do something about it.
and Canonical needs to realize that people will.
ergo, again, it's in their best interests to play better with others.
Only if others do, in fact, do something about it. Up to this point no one has been doing anything about it, at least not anything that actually has a direct impact on Canonical. As long as people are unwilling to take substantial action then it is not in the best interests of canonical to change their behavior. That is why, as I said before, I think it would be very worthwhile if you made a post explaining exactly what the behaviors are we want to change and specifically how we can go about changing them.
the issue of giving credit is only one issue and only deals with one group in this (Canonical). there are many other issues and many other actors as well.
Indeed, but this is all a moot point so long as no one is actually willing to sit down and figure out which behaviors are bad for the community, and then actually do something to discourage them.
@toddrme2178: "Only if others do, in fact, do something about it."
agreed.
"I think it would be very worthwhile if you made a post explaining exactly what the behaviors are we want to change and specifically how we can go about changing them."
doing so is a very delicate matter. don't expect a blog like this in the near term (e.g. the next couple of weeks), but i do think it's a worthwhile thing to work on. i need to think about it, and i'll need to discuss things with some of the stakeholders in this, including people from Canonical.
(and thanks for going through this conversation here with me .. i think we were basically on the same page all along, but it's good to go through the full exercise, especially so that others can also see how certain ideas are arrived at.)
"to try and take this discussion in a slightly different direction: can you try to explain why, to you, "credit stealing" is so important? what does it represent or result in that makes you consider it a bad thing? is it mostly an abstract issue of morals / ethics? does it have actual consequences? why does it matter to you?"
(This post is sliced to 3-4 parts)
To take it from wider context to this topic:
We all live in the same planet (wide enough? ;)) and we must live together and we depend for each other. But we can not all do same things. Everone need to focus to different tasks. That is our species greatest "feature". We can work together with very complex ways for common goal.
The open source is as well great by ethics and by logic. It is same way logical as the basic working with people by trading goods. Like I give you a other fish and you give me a half of bread.
We need to respect each others skills and talents to get more together.
To get this basic "trade" thing in wider. We need two things. Respect and truth.
And currently Canonical is missing almost both. They do not have respect to community or its users when it is representing the software what it just distributes as it own. Neither there is truth for the users by doing that and saying otherwise.
The whole respect is what our whole community is based and "credit stealing" is something what weakens it and slows down.
It can be as daily thing as someone else taking credit from other work without blinking the eye, in front of them.
Or it can be big company giving a understanding to their clients or share-holders that they have done something amazing. (Without telling where the original idea came and who actually did it).
That can come from so small thing that one worker copies the idea from other worker and represents it before him to boss. And gets so on respect in they eye of bosses. Or the idea can come from other person or from product from other company.
"Good artists copy, great artists steal".
It comes from that when you copy something, others will know from whom you copied the idea. You get respect if you could add something new to the original idea. But the original maker gets the own share.
The great artists are the ones who lives in the history forever. Good artists just are in minds of a lifetime, in good way.
The great artists are those who can take others ideas and presents them as their own. While the community does not know who actually got the idea or did the artsis copy it or not.
The great artists steals the credit. He gets the cake and he can eat the cake alone. Even that cake needed a farmer, moller and baker. Three was left without the piece of cake, while the one got it all alone.
And what does that mean?
I am not sure how to translate this to english but I quess you get the idea: "a greed person has a shitty ending".
Sharing the credit for those who deserves it and not taking it when not deservering, helps all the people.
Even that the person who would otherwise steal the credit from others (aka "artists who steals") by presenting the results of joined efforts as own or giving immersion it is so, gets more by giving the credit to them who deservers them.
We all are jelous for someone, from something. And when we do not see each others and the communitation is virtual and we work with lots of people who do now know the whole situation. We can easily gain all kind things more easily by presenting others work as own or similar manners.
In the end we build up lots of social networks. We start trusting to other person what they say and that they would be honest. But as it is know about small lie, it easily grow bigger and there comes more lie after that and after that, until the whole picture is so big lie that it really crash when the truth comes out. And finally the truth comes out.
That is the one basic nature for media exist in the democratic and our different (german-roman and commong law) laws.
As we know the companies (or communities) are build in hierarchary model. Small group of people (or just one) leads bigger group, what leads largets group of people.
And all that must be build by trust and honesty. Smaller group what is lying, decieving or stealing credits, develops for some time a own barrier. A "border" what they can control who gets in and who does not. Those who gets over the border to small elite group, are gave a change to get something for themselfs. Was it wealth, fame, or power.
And as it is said "power corrupts". They really start protecting themselfs more and more. Only few can resists it and try to keep the objective mind of them. But they can be driven more alone from the "class", if not even away.
But when you give such group lots of power to control other peoples habbits, things starts being messy.
The needs of many, comes after the needs of few.The few will get the ideas trough what to do next.
And when time pass, the complex leadership structure is so difficult to understand, that not even media or single studiers can find easily the truth how it works.
And as we know, "history is wrote by the winners". And winners always leave away the reasons why lost side was right and winner side wrong. And they write the history that good won and bad lost.
(and some bad sides whines afterwards how good lost ;))
This "Hot" topic now. Is that when Canonical is just giving (not always saying) it clients and Ubuntu users to believe it is the leading software developer for Desktop systems. The whole case comes true.
The community starts developing high believes and hopes for that base. Business are started, new deals are made and companies and users believe that is a one great company who we all can trust.
For what such trust is build? An illusion and misunderstanding!
And now on. I we see there and here in the Internet questions like:
"I want to try something alternative to Windows. Which one is better, Ubuntu or Linux?"
"I think the Ubuntu _is_ much better desktop than Windows _has_ but GNOME sucks"
"I dont like GNOME, I think Ubuntu is better"
"I want to have Ubuntu compatible hardware. What store sells them"
"This device box say it has Linux compatible, but it does not say does it support Ubuntu".
And so on.
And all that is just very technical. But they all leads to situation where normal people who does not know the whole community, starts promoting by guidance of their misinformation the wrong ideas.
Like people have started to want that computer devices would have Ubuntu sticker on them. Because the Linux sticker would be too technical!
And you can as well notice this by the software that they are packaged for Ubuntu (and sometimes for Debian as well). But no LSB standard compatible binary or any other.
Even many themes are distributed as DEB package for the Ubuntu. What about other distributions? You need to open the deb and extract the files yourself.
The Ubuntu fame has grown already so big that it is threat to all other distributions. And that is the cause, not the reason. The reason is that people (users) believe that Canonical is the one who makes everything possible. Otherwise Linux would have been marginal (or even dead!) forever and hardware manufacturers would not support it. But that misunderstandings what people have about Ubuntu and Canonical, is the reason what is a threat to al other distributions.
They even believe that desktop would never evolve without the Canonicals (Ubuntu) support. That "Ubuntu is the force what leads the Linux desktop to success".
Sorry for long post. but the whole topic is really very wide and touch so many different subjects that just saying something short way is very difficult.
But the bottom line is. Canonical should start being truthfull for it users. Stop pretending being the no. 1 in contributions and development, and even if it would be. It should start being part of the community by saying that they are part the community and the community is everything and Ubuntu is just one distro next to all others. That just would be bad marketing them because people would not believe they would be special. But truth is in big run best intrest to community because we can build trust to it and give credit to them who contribute.
Maybe KDE should start showing a road and start making more speedruns about code contributions that who contribute to what. Hackers and coders always knows or can digg who did what. But normal users does not. There is no "hall of fame" as list. Or people would like to go Help menu and from there to About to check credits. It could be so that it must be as well a webpage. After all, the whole community is about credit that you get when you contribute and people respect you from that. It works that way in small scale but as well in big scale. But it is foroggen in big scale because faceless companies starts being the "key elements" because the brand effect. So the company/project leader easily gets the credit from the users. In this case example Canonical gets credit what Red Hat and many other companies does to improve the GNOME in big scale.
When watching KDE and GNOME community, they are honest. Credit is give to them who deserve it. And most mainstream distributions focus to respect that.
That is easily achieved by selling/giving KDE (SC) and GNOME stickers, T-shirts, Tee mucks and other stuff. The present people that "this" is what "our" community develops. People really can see that KDE develops KDE SC and other softare for it, but does not contribute to Linux or any other OS or any other system software. They are other communities. And that companies can belong to these communities but they are all made together.
When watching Ubuntu sites, the truth is hidden somewhere and bad way for the communities. Example you can not find even word "Linux" from front page. No mention about KDE SC, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE and so on. Canonical is pretending that THEY make a OS called Ubuntu and THEY are responsible for all that. They are giving that idea to new users minds.
And that can be the biggest problem because if new users gets familiar to Linux by taking first Ubuntu (without actually knowing it because they might think Ubuntu is not using Linux as OS). They can easily make totally wrong conclusions about the OSS and what Ubuntu really is. But Canonical is trying to get that because with it, it can push itself over other distros (what are its competitors!). Marketing is very powerfull weapon and you can easily crush your competitors with it. And in F/OSS, we need to hold the line. We need to work together. We can not allow someone to brake the line or start "attacking behind us" because then we all loose the change.
Aaron
"they made a distro with rapid, consistent release cycles. they found a way to include multimedia codecs so that more things "just worked" without fiddling."
There were few distributions already having consistent release schedule. So nothing new on that.
The codecs were easy to install by clicking just the media what needed them. And some distributions even had them preinstalled 2002 for much easier use.
"they created the most streamlined installer to date at that point. (yes, it removed lots of options, but turns out nobody really needed them in that case.)"
That would go for the Corel from 1999. It was as easy that you selected your language and your harddrive / empty space and it got installed. SOT Linux was that you selected do you want to use KDE or GNOME and it got installed. They were so easy to install that there were no problems.
RedHat was very easy as well, altought the installer was long (11 pages) but you could get it trought just by pressing Enter key. http://www.washington.edu/lst/help/computing_fundamentals/linux/img/installation_classes.png
Mandrake was almost as easy as Ubuntu is to install (screenshots does not show the simplicity).
http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/install92.html
And you could just place a floppy or USB stick to drive after the install what made all the configs ready there. So when your friend installed the Mandrake, she/he could have go so easily by just selectiing how to make partition (automatic if wanted) and typing root password and then own user name and password.
"they found a way to build out community around the distribution in a way others handn't, which isn't a technical thing but it is a thing."
RedHat had great community. Mandriva (then Mandrake) had almost all that done already what Ubuntu has done now in last year.
What Canonical really did, was launch itself to the media with very expensive PR trick. Otherwise they would not get so good start.
What was that trick some might ask?
It was free pressed CD's and free shipping for them!
People were so interested because all what you needed to do, was type your address, name and amount of CD's and what architecture and few weeks you got a package where all CD's were with nice covers. All without costs.
At that time, you could get many distributions with price of CD from many computer store. Like you bought Debian installation medias (6-9 CD's) just with $7.
Even at 2004 time, 56k and ISDN's were very popular. ADSL or Cable were availalbe but not for all. So downloading 1-2 CD's, neverthless speaking about 6-9 CD's (not all needed but many thought so) was trademous amount of time and effort (and possible money).
Mark Shuttleworth was media sexy, he knowledged that very fast. If he pulls then own distribution, the media would notice it fast.
Who would want to throw millions of own money to send people a CD's?
Free gifts works almost all the times so great way that you can fool almost anyone to get them to your side.
When comparing mainsteam distributions from 2004 to today, Ubuntu does not come up at all with any power. It is 2006/2007 when media started to notice even more Ubuntu because the Ubuntu marketing was started to effect well and Linux and all other open source softwares was gained lots of attention from other reasons, like OpenOffice.org challenging MS Office in companies and governments offices. There were Munchen case and so on.
THEY were the key to Ubuntu success. Not Ubuntu itself. All other communities were doing hard work and developed lots of features and ideas what pushed the "Linux" (Linux is just the OS, not the software system. But it was the name what many still use for the whole software system, what is wrong) to even higher again. And when Ubuntu just happened to be fresh and with young good media attention (Mark.S), it got all the attention.
It seems you missed the point. Canonical is a private company which aims to be profitable, and so it must create a strong brand. It'd be very unprofessional to see on ubuntu.com "thanks to J F Bar for ..." or "feature X from (RH|Novell)"
IMO the problem is that Canonical is a unique player in this world: it's the only one primarly focused on desktop market, whereas Fedora and openSuSE are community-driven projects because RH and Novell's core business is _NOT_ the desktop area. This leads to misunderstandings with developers who are not used to this and claim to be publicly credited.
We should look at the OS world like we do at "real" economic one: lots of pieces are researched and developed in team or mostly by others (think of Android or car engines or breakings) but the marketing focuses on the final result and forgets partners and nobody complains about it
I don't think Ubuntu is evil, but they gained a bad reputation in the early days and the conflict still goes on. Their behavior is not so different from other big firms one, so Mr Shuttleworth was right when he wrote about tribalism. But yes I know fame is really difficult to deal with, and if even a well trained and diplomat man like mr seigo speaks like that, there's no room for improvements
changed status: -> WON'T FIXED
It seems you missed the point. Canonical is a private company which aims to be profitable, and so it must create a strong brand. It'd be very unprofessional to see on ubuntu.com "thanks to J F Bar for ..." or "feature X from (RH|Novell)"
So other words, you are saying all others are very unprofessionals because they give credit to them who deserves it and does not lie to their customers or give them wrong impressions.
IMO the problem is that Canonical is a unique player in this world: it's the only one primarly focused on desktop market, whereas Fedora and openSuSE are community-driven projects because RH and Novell's core business is _NOT_ the desktop area.
Canonical has not done anything special to get that credit. RedHat has contributes more code to GNOME than canonical what EFFECTS DIRECTLY TO THE NORMAL USER. Even RedHat has done more work for Ubuntu user than Canonical ever!
Other distributions (and contributors) are doing same work for the same manner. Canonical is not the only one. And to be more accurate, the GNOME community and KDE are the communities what are the driven force to give users what they need. Canonical is not so great contributor for those communities. Still it gives illusion to Ubuntu fans that Canonical is the one what leads the desktop design.
We should look at the OS world like we do at "real" economic one: lots of pieces are researched and developed in team or mostly by others (think of Android or car engines or breakings) but the marketing focuses on the final result and forgets partners and nobody complains about it
OS has nothing to do with the end user desktop usage, like with GNOME or KDE SC. Without OS like Linux, HURD, SunOS, FreeBSD and so on, KDE SC, GNOME or other software would not work on the computer for the user.
Neither would user get their hardware work if OS like Linux kernel would be between the hardware and software operating them both.
Marketing is just selling. It is not polishing, it is not questioning what they need. That is communicating with clients, not marketing. Canonical is not doing anything such work what would give the end user the features what needs or finds problematic. It is the community what is doing the whole work. Not Canonical.
I don't think Ubuntu is evil, but they gained a bad reputation in the early days and the conflict still goes on.
Canonicals falsefied marketing should be stopped. They should add the "Linux" to their distribution brand so it would be "Ubuntu Linux" if they really would like to bring humanity to people. They should start speaking that community is the whole F/OSS community, not just Ubuntu community. That the software is developed by the F/OSS community to F/OSS community.
They should start speaking the truth how Ubuntu is distribution of Linux operating system what they use and what is licensed under GPLv2 license. They should tell that they use the GNOME as desktop and that GNOME community is the part what takes care that normal user gets the desktop what they want.
Do you remember, but Mark Shuttleworth said that he founded the Canonical because he wanted to market the open source softwares to the world behalf of the community. Now it is marketing what the F/OSS community developes as own product. Canonical really is the Microsoft of the Linux world. Trying to control everything and keep competitors away.
Even that KDE is smaller community and it does not have own distribution. Just for example, to KDE became as bad and evil as Ubuntu Community/Canonica, they would start promoting how they have developed Linux and how they invented the open source licenses and how Qt was their work and hardware manufacturers should design their devices for KDE SC and add to them a "KDE SC Compatible" stickers.
Bottom line is, you can be very profitable without being lier, credit stealer and compete without ethics (Canonical work against it CoC and "Ubuntu" meaning).
Fri13, you seem a bit too passionate. Take a breath :D
I'm not an Ubuntu fan. BTW, OS standed for Open Source, not Operating System, so you misunderstood me. I meant, when you ship a complex product like a distribution, you cannot thank each and every contributor publicly and must concentrate on your brand.
it's in the spirit of Open Source to let others benefit from your work and benefit from other's one
Sorry to seem upleasant, but you really act like a fanboy. What about calling it Ubuntu-GNU-Linux??? If you visit novell.com or redhat.com you cannot even find the word "community". I think sometimes flames go on without a real reason. For example many people goes around saying KDE is unstable, Vista is terrific, etc without event having tried them.
I'm not stating Canonical/Ubuntu/Shuttleworth being perfect, but hence the tribalism question arises.
doing so is a very delicate matter. don't expect a blog like this in the near term (e.g. the next couple of weeks), but i do think it's a worthwhile thing to work on. i need to think about it, and i'll need to discuss things with some of the stakeholders in this, including people from Canonical.
Fair enough.
i think we were basically on the same page all along, but it's good to go through the full exercise, especially so that others can also see how certain ideas are arrived at.
Agreed.
I meant, when you ship a complex product like a distribution, you cannot thank each and every contributor publicly and must concentrate on your brand.
None of the other major distributions seem to have a problem giving credit where it is due. This includes other commercial desktop distributions like Mandriva.
it's in the spirit of Open Source to let others benefit from your work and benefit from other's one
One of the major criticism of Canonical is that they don't "let others benefit from your work". That is one of the big issues we have been discussing all along: they do not contribute code back upstream nearly as much as other major distributions. That is, in fact, what got this whole conversation rolling in the first place, and was discussed extensively in the blog post these comments appear below.
Just for the record: Mark Shuttleworth has apologized. http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/439#comment-329657
@Aaron, "bringing up the 4.0 topic in a blog entry about working together across lines, an entirely different topic of great importance, is no different. it shows no respect for the conversation being had and those having it. in fact, it betrays an ultimately selfish way of interacting with the world [...]"
Yeah, I wouldn't have brought it up myself, I just intended to reply to your reply to hugeboobfan, which at the time sounded to me like you were dismissing him for being resentful/"living in the past", rather than for being off topic.
But after rereading the comments in question (including mine), I agree with you now, and I apologize for having added to the off-topic noise. Won't happen again... :-)
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