Greg DeKoenigsberg set off what would become a firestorm of debate in the Linux community last week when he posted rant against Canonical for their low ranking on number of commits to GNOME, based on a recent census study. Over the weekend, DeKoenigsberg apologized for the rant and explained in a more measured tone why he lashed out in anger at the findings of the GNOME Census, then again later at Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth’s response to the debate, a broader argument against tribalism.
I don’t think one can measure the contribution to a project just looking at where and how much commits come from.
For example, just by choosing Gnome, Ubuntu is really boosting it’s development. Exposure, I mean. Get it? Someone has to develop, another has to put “on the user desk”.
It makes you wonder if this Greg DeKoenigsberg guy and others like him really see anything past the end of their own noses and self interests.
I wonder if Gnome’s refusal to include features has anything to do with anyone not submitting patches?
Or the fact that it takes them years to fix anything or include patches they receive. I remember distinctly this was a huge gripe amongst many contributors for a while there, it’s also the reason I don’t use it anymore.
I wonder if this is coming back to bite them now?
It’s also ironical that someone is griping about someone else using their code that they gave away for free under a license that allows Ubuntu to do exactly what they’re doing. What’s his problem?
If Canonical is driving the Linux Desktop mindshare ridding on RedHat’s (and others) code, they are doing something right that RedHat isn’t (and yes, that would be marketing).
And anyway, considering that Canonical is marketing first and development second (or even further down the stack), 1 to 16 is not so dismal.
Canonical and Ubuntu are riding on every bodies coattails, especially Debian’s. It’s based on Debian Sid for crying out loud.
I can’t believe that in all this moaning and bitching by Ubuntu and RedHat fans, this single fact was forgotten. I use Ubuntu(Kubuntu, actually), but it’s built on Debian, and wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is without it.