If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
31–40 of 139 posts
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct me if I am wrong, but to my understanding, both Unity and Mir are open source, and nothing stops other distros from adopting it.
They're open source, but they rely on so much ubuntu-specific infrastructure and patches that it's infeasible to get them running anywhere else. Cf. the effort necessary to get Unity running on Arch: https://github.com/chenxiaolong/Unity-for-Arch You have to rip out and replace a lot of software, all the way down to GTK itself, just to make it work.
Sounds like Redhat's systemd: "if you want to run it, you have to replace most everything."
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#33Travis-CI is open source, but it's impossible to host.
How so? All the bits seem to be on GitHub, it's probably super difficult to set up, though.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are open-source, but they only really work on Ubuntu. Upstart is another example, and it's part of why other Ubuntu-specific things won't work on other distros. Other distros could try to port Ubuntu projects, but why would Canonical accept their patches upstream?
Actually the systemd guys looked at upstart for redhat in the beginning, but choose to rewrite it anyway. That had nothing to do with the Canonical entanglement though. Though I dislike Unity and Mir, I think RedHats understanding of "Open" Source is a lot more disturbing.. https://lwn.net/Articles/432012
That had everything to do with Canonical entanglement. Canonical would only accept patches to upstart with a contributor agreement allowing Canonical relicensing rights.
This made it very difficult for outside contributors to work on upstart (especially redhat funded ones) and that led to resources being made available for investigating what would become systemd and friends.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's repeated all too often and it gets stuck into the mind of people. But is it actually true? Ubuntu is still heavily based on Debian and still reuses most of the packages. There has been a gradual move towards systemd and systemd is default in Ubuntu 15.10. To me, mjg59 comes out as a bitter person. He used to work for Canonical in the early days of Ubuntu. He shared the vision for a usable open-source desktop.…
I don't see it as a rant. He criticized Ubuntu for unwillingness to clarify the trademark issue. Correct me if I am wrong, but how I understood the article, what Canonical did was to take Debian sources licensed under GPL, created a product based on it, but now if anyone wants to do binary redistribution of their product [the right GPL license assures], they could be sued for trademark infringement. So in practice th…
The GPL says that the software is "as is", no warranty of any kind. Similarly, I could scream to have the developers to perform some testing and provide a bit of warranty.
With Ubuntu and any other software, you get the source and it is up to you to deal with the replacement of any trademark strings. What packages are included in Ubuntu, changes all the time and the code changes as well. How can a policy document be explicit when there is no infrastructure yet in place to deal with those code changes? CentOS was in this same position and they did the work without bitching to Redhat.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#36I agree: Canonical should make it easier for developers to strip the company's trademarks when forking their applications. Canonical's relationship with the rest of the FOSS community always seemed a bit screwed up to me. They try to make Ubuntu the best Linux distro while ignoring what all the other ones are doing. All other distros seem much more friendly towards integration between projects, to benefit from the sh…
That's repeated all too often and it gets stuck into the mind of people. But is it actually true? Ubuntu is still heavily based on Debian and still reuses most of the packages. There has been a gradual move towards systemd and systemd is default in Ubuntu 15.10. To me, mjg59 comes out as a bitter person. He used to work for Canonical in the early days of Ubuntu. He shared the vision for a usable open-source desktop.…
> Then came the new GNOME 3 and the particular way that GNOME development works. It was not workable to offer to the users a stable and distinct user experience. So, Unity was created and all hell broke loose.
I decided to take Ubuntu 15.04 out for a ride a few months ago. I haven't really used Ubuntu since 7.something (but I liked 4.10 a lot), but I did occasionally work with it (e.g. helping out colleagues who used it).
I desperately tried to like Unity, but nope: its development seems to be done pretty much the same way that Gnome development is done. A lot of effort goes into creating a distinct experience. Very little seems to go towards listening to users, and options are basically non-existant.
Changing the GTK theme, for instance, is no longer easy (you need unity-tweak-tool). Changing the buttons on the titlebar is outright impossible because now they're hardcoded.
This is... very much against the spirit of people who were involved in the open source movement a while ago. A lot of us switched to Linux because we wanted more control over our systems.
Free software that locks down your options is... missing the point a little.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's repeated all too often and it gets stuck into the mind of people. But is it actually true? Ubuntu is still heavily based on Debian and still reuses most of the packages. There has been a gradual move towards systemd and systemd is default in Ubuntu 15.10. To me, mjg59 comes out as a bitter person. He used to work for Canonical in the early days of Ubuntu. He shared the vision for a usable open-source desktop.…
> Then came the new GNOME 3 and the particular way that GNOME development works. It was not workable to offer to the users a stable and distinct user experience. So, Unity was created and all hell broke loose. I decided to take Ubuntu 15.04 out for a ride a few months ago. I haven't really used Ubuntu since 7.something (but I liked 4.10 a lot ), but I did occasionally work with it (e.g. helping out colleagues who use…
+1 I really don't understand the fights about GNOME3 and Unity UI. They both suck for me. KDE is okay-ish, but needs a lot of polish compared to Gnome 2.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#38I agree: Canonical should make it easier for developers to strip the company's trademarks when forking their applications. Canonical's relationship with the rest of the FOSS community always seemed a bit screwed up to me. They try to make Ubuntu the best Linux distro while ignoring what all the other ones are doing. All other distros seem much more friendly towards integration between projects, to benefit from the sh…
My first GNU/Linux experience was with Slackware 2.0 and I already knew Xenix, DG/UX and Aix by then. Since then I have tried all major distributions. SuSE before it went enterprise, Mandrake before it lost support were the only real alternatives to Ubuntu in terms of consumer desktop experience. Nowadays I only care it works as it is supposed to be, as I don't have the patience any longer to fiddle with configuratio…
When I read this it actually screamed OpenSUSE is a great alternative.
I seriously can't see any other Distro going out of its way to be easily distributed OS with the https://susestudio.com/ and https://build.opensuse.org for packages for SUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc...
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#39I'll add to understand and manipulate.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#40Travis-CI is open source, but it's impossible to host.
Open source != free