Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really see why Ubuntu is getting bent out of shape about this. Maybe this is just a media/blogger generated grudge. Many very popular open source packages are maintained out of stream before getting pushed upstream. DRBD [1] was a very popular package which, after years of patches, finally got accepted into the kernel. I think there is a burden of proof required before asking someone to maintain your patch se…
I think you're mistaking what is probably largely a political issue for a technical one. The sense I get here is that there is nothing technically wrong with the patch, it's not like Intel went back to Ubuntu and said you have to fix X Y & Z to get this merged. They initially accepted the patch and only after having accepted it on technical grounds they've come back and rejected it because Mir isn't the horse they're…
Linux is not about choice[0]. It's 2013, and the hard lesson that choice is death to a reliable platform should have been well-learned by now, if by nothing else than by the sheer fact that Apple steamrolled the Unix workstation market into oblivion. Mac OS -- which provides comparatively little choice -- grows YoY, whereas non-Mac desktop Unix, including Linux, has faded into statistical noise.
If non-Android Linux is going to claw its way back into relevance, then the community needs to decide on one framework for graphics, one for sound, etc. and back them wholeheartedly. It is a technical issue because focusing all developer effort on one good thing produces better technical results than splintering it among a dozen mediocre things. Apostasy needs to be punished, and that's what Intel has done.
[0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list/2008-January/m...