No Juju for you! Ubuntu's Not Invented Here syndrome

So Ubuntu as a brand is almost as strong as Linux and both have been in gradual decline in a period corresponding with the rise of post PC computing (mobile, tablets and the cloud) which is largely based on Linux under the hood. Interesting!

My take on this is that we're witnessing the increased centralization of technological power in an ever smaller priesthood. Linux use is now more widespread than ever, it's just that the people deciding to use it are not end-users but the priests that make the products.

I for one welcome our new technological overlords!

On second thought I take that back. I'm too afraid they'll turn into Morlocks. Eloi... delicious.

With regards to Mir, from what I've read up on the subject the same goals could have been better accomplished by collaborating with the rest of the community on Wayland. I'm pretty sure we'll eventually see a rehash of the upstart debacle with Shuttleworth backing down and realizing he doesn't really want to play alone in his sandbox.

Anyhow, I really loved the concept of the Ubuntu phone and would probably buy one myself if it became available, though I would prefer to run Debian on it rather than Ubuntu, mainly because I really like having security updates to all packages rather than a small subset of them.

On the other hand with competitors like Google the likelihood of Canonical/Ubuntu becoming a major player in the mobile space is next to zero. Remember that this is a space Microsoft is having trouble competing in. Long term I see even Apple shrinking to a small up-scale minority of the market just like it had in PCs until Steve Jobs came back.

So with regards to the Ubuntu Phone I think the best we can hope for is that this initiative gets enough adoption that Canonical will be able to sustain it as a niche option for power users. I'll support that.

Hi Brian, thanks for starting the discussion and for weighing in on it. I have to run out now for Friday dinner with the family so I won't be able to adequately respond to all of your comments in detail but I just want to point out again that my intention isn't to bash Ubuntu / Canonical but to "devolve" our personal email exchange into an open discussion. That can be a good thing. There's a reason they call it constructive criticism. Sadly I admit attempts to illuminate often produce more heat than light.

Note that my perspective is multi faceted. While I'm as tempted to oversimplify as much as the next guy, I make an effort to avoid false dichotomies (e.g., black and white, left and right, good and evil, right and wrong), and try to pay attention to the nuance and complexity. I know that doesn't prevent me from often being more wrong than right but I do try to seek contradicting opinions and information that will help balance out my prejudices.

Remember that none of us can fit the world into our heads. There's only room for a rough sketch. Hopefully the sketch hints at the subtleties rather than turning into a gross caricature.

For now I'll just address my main contention with your comment. I don't believe it is fair to characterize my view of Canonical / Ubuntu as "greedy ogres". That's a straw man:

Rereading the email I sent him it did come off as a bit more anti-Canonical / Ubuntu than I intended. But my main point wasn't that Canonical is a bad company or that Ubuntu sucks, just that what happens in Ubuntu stays in Ubuntu. Maybe that's great for Canonical in the Enterprise space, but it makes building on their work a shaky proposition.

And...

I'm not saying Canonical's focus on convenience and utility are bad. It's just not inspiring. And you need to be inspiring to lead.

Still, they do a lot of good work and have done much to popularize free software. We should congratulate them for that and be thankful that Shuttleworth decided to invest his millions to create the company. There's definitely a useful place for a company like Canonical in the ecosystem. Ubuntu provides a gentler introduction to the sometimes harsh world of free software. It's especially useful to the vast majority of "human beings" who aren't aware that free software has anything else to offer beyond the magic of getting stuff for free. Who knows, some of them may eventually pull back the curtain.

Brian, thanks for highlighting all the various ways Canonical and Ubuntu contribute to the ecosystem. We should congratulate them for that and we can show our support by giving them feedback, and something to think about. Diverse opinions can be useful in the same way diverse software is useful. You can pick and choose. You can mix and match.

I know there are some people out there that just hate Ubuntu for no good reason and perhaps you responded to that, but that was not my intention at all. I think we're all on the same side here. We're free software buddies, and buddies can give each other advice even when they might be wrong and even when that advice isn't something the other side wants to hear. Maybe they need to. Maybe it will do them some good. Or maybe they will just shrug it off for now but it'll stay in the back of their minds for a while and then click into place when the circumstances are right.

Who knows?

Should we self censor and not express ourselves when we think we might be able to add something to the discussion for fear of someone taking offense?

There's always room for improvement. Nobody's perfect. Criticizing Ubuntu / Canonical on certain things doesn't cancel out all the good they've done over the years or turn them into greedy ogres. Most of us have room in our heads for a more nuanced view.

You're right. As pure specimens of "not invented here" syndrome, some of these projects are not the best examples.

I actually changed the title of the post a few times before publishing it and settled on the one I did not because it perfectly represented everything I was trying to say but because it was the least worst.

It's true that Canonical have in fact proven that they are not so deeply entrenched in the Not Invented Here mentality that they can't recognize their mistakes. They have, at least on a couple of important occasions (e.g., UEC and systemd).

The critical thing in my mind is that Canonical has a tendency (intentionally or not) of alienating would-be stakeholders. IMHO, that reduces their impact and limits their success. The CLA is an example. The message it sends: you are under my roof and you will play by my rules.

If Canonical was better at winning over hearts and minds then the horses they breed would becoming the winning horse more often because more people from a broader range of interests and companies would get engaged and invest themselves in helping Canonical make their horse the best.

Also, if they were better at collaborating with the community they would get more mileage out of participating with existing projects (e.g., Wayland) to further their goals for Ubuntu. So they wouldn't feel compelled to go it alone as then have to backtrack later and lose their investment when everybody else decides not to follow.

I think that's what's going to happen with Mir as well. They'll work on it, and it will get better but Wayland will get better faster and they will eventually ditch Mir for Wayland just like they're ditching upstart for systemd. Most of the energy that goes into developing Mir will then go down the drain.

If Ubuntu/Canonical was better at playing nicely with others I think they would be better off for it as would the entire ecosystem.

I don't criticize Canonical because I'm against the company or don't like Ubuntu. Quite the contrary. I'd like to see them stick around and prosper. I criticize as a friend. I may be wrong of course and everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

I think putting more of an emphasis on values could help Canonical with hiring as well, though it would require them to believe the values to the core and that would probably require a serious reorg of the company to expel people who don't really buy into this value system. You can't just let the marketing team communicate a message that goes against your true values because if mediocre utility is uninspiring, hypocrisy is a downright turn off.

Either that or you go the other way and just decide you're a business like any other and then you have to focus on only the things you can be the best at while making a healthy profit. In any case, standing for making useful, but second/third-best software at a lower total cost of ownership doesn't inspire the best people to come and work for you and it's very hard to compete in high-speed cut-throat fields like mobile if you can't get the best people. Especially when you're already the underdog and networking effects are working against you.

The people issue is the most critical in deciding what areas your company can compete with.

A relatively small company like Canonical can't compete with goliaths like Google or Apple for the best people. The best people are like volunteers. They can work anywhere and receive competitive compensation. Once money is off the table as motivation, a higher sense of purpose and job satisfaction kick in. Whatever you care about. If you care about winning, then you want to work for a winning company. If you care about making the world a better place, then you want to work for a company that makes a big impact in that way. If you care about becoming the best at what you do then you want to work for a company that really takes you out of your comfort zone and gives you the resources to develop yourself. Probably for the best people it's a combination of factors.

I suspect this is the reason companies like Google for example particular will not only outbid smaller companies for the best people they also put in enormous efforts to make their employees happy. They pay a lot of attention to the culture and put a lot of resources into tracking and quantifying happiness. It's really hard to compete with that.

If you just try to pour money on the problem your overhead is going to be higher and you're going to have a selection bias for mercenaries rather than missionaries. Also, if you're really smart then presumably you already know that deciding where you want to work based on who bids the highest is probably not a good idea. According to research beyond $75K a year (better than average in most parts of the US), additional money won't make you any happier. Once you realize that money itself becomes less of an issue. You need to be paid enough to feel secure and to take money off the table.

There are multiple ways in which you can use the word standard. The one I meant: used or accepted as normal. It's one of the definitions that pops up if you Google "define:standard".

If you don't buy a computer from Apple, it usually doesn't come with Firewire. They're both standardized but only USB is a standard.

• Debian supports a much greater range of packages than Ubuntu with security updates.

• Debian is more likely to still be around in 5 years than Canonical as it is not dependent on success in a competitive marketplace.

• Debian officially doesn't have 5 year support like Ubuntu's LTS releases, though they have started experimenting with that for Squeeze.

  If that gets enough support and gets adopted officially by the Debian community for future releases it will be a huge win for Debian and less of a reason to use Ubuntu, especially if all Debian releases are supported for 5 years. Ubuntu only does LTS releases every so often.

I know it would be a hard sell due to the tragedy of the commons and all but I wish companies would wisen up and pool resources to help sponsor and support Debian. They could get better, higher quality support without having to bet on the success or failure of any single commercial Linux distribution.

Better to work together with the missionaries than with the mercenaries.

Thanks for weighing in. I can understand how some people would be confused and frustrated by the situation with Ubuntu/Debian but abandonding Debian altogether is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Not that I'm against other Linux distributions. The free software ecosystem is complex and rich. There are pros and cons to different distributions going in different directions, using different brands.

Like with natural ecosystems I don't think anybody out there fully understands all of the possible interactions. Without understanding how do you figure out if something is really good or bad in a universal sense. We can try to spot patterns and spin our own little theories (like I've done myself) but I wouldn't get too attached to them or worked up about how this all plays out. Most likely labeling something as good or bad is at best a crude approximation.