Was it something I said?

Leave it to Ubuntu/Canonical’s Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life Mark Shuttleworth to completely ruin a perfectly good release day for Ubuntu 12.10 and its arguably superior derivatives like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Edubuntu.

Don’t take my word for it. I’ll let this article from TechCrunch with the headline “Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth Tires Of Critics, Moves Key Ubuntu Developments Out Of Public Eye” tell the tale.

Was it something I said?

Of course, there’s something both fundamentally and tragically wrong — bordering on criminally wrong — about any Free/Open Source Software project moving their “developments out of the public eye.” But let’s put that aside for a moment, because Shuttleworth writes in his blog that ” . . . we thought we would extend the invitation to people who trust us and in whom we have reason to trust, to work together on some sexy 13.04 surprises.”

So, not only is Shuttleworth throwing out the FOSS baby with the bath water, he also wants to provide a caste system that either patterns itself after the Inner Party/Outer Party in George Orwell’s “1984,” or takes a page from Orwell’s “Animal Farm” where, to paraphrase, “All developers are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

If you’re an Ubuntu contributor, how can you be sure you’ll be one of “the chosen ones,” and if you’re not, then why not?

To take a step back, the more fundamental question is this: Is this really how a Free/Open Source Software project should conduct itself?

I would say the answer to this question is an unequivocal “no,” and I would also add that, at this point, the direction that Mark Shuttleworth has taken Ubuntu is light-years off course from its original mission.

This goes beyond burying “Linux” on a second- or third-tier page on the Ubuntu site. This clearly goes beyond Shuttleworth’s treating current Ubuntu users as second class citizens while he chases the elusive Holy Grail of converting “the new users.”

This is betrayal.

So while the Ubuntu Apocalypse lines up to march, zombie-like, to take their shots below in the comments, I’d like to ask them to first look in a mirror and ask themselves if this is truly what they bought into when getting involved with FOSS. And while admiring what you see in the mirror, I’d like to offer a solution to right this ship that’s listing under the weight of gross misdirection.

To right this ship, the principled and noble thing to do would be for Mark Shuttleworth to turn over the keys to Ubuntu to Jono Bacon, the Community Manager for Ubuntu, and make Jono the Ubuntu Project Leader. Mark should resign from all Ubuntu community-related posts and concentrate on the corporate side of things, where he excels.

I don’t always agree with Jono, but his commitment to FOSS is nothing short of impeccable, and his commitment to these principles is completely unimpeachable. He has the wisdom and experience to bring Ubuntu back to where it should be.

Though this wouldn’t happen in either Mark’s, Jono’s or my lifetime, it would be a step that would go a long way in restoring my faith in Ubuntu’s commitment to FOSS.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to install Xubuntu 12.10 and put it through its paces.

This blog, and all other blogs by Larry the Free Software Guy and Larry Cafiero, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND license. In short, this license allows others to download this work and share it with others as long as they credit me as the author, but others can’t change it in any way or use it commercially.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and develops business software at Redwood Digital Research, a consultancy that provides FOSS solutions in the small business and home office environment.)

Paul Venezia and Etienne Perot nail it

Well, I didn’t write this, but it bears repeating. In an InfoWorld blog item, Paul Venezia pretty much explains why the Amazon thing is not Ubuntu’s biggest problem. Rather than paraphrase, I’ll let you read it on your own:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/ubuntu-has-bigger-problem-its-amazon-blunder-203467

Best quote: “But the biggest problem I have with the Amazon debacle is another comment by Shuttleworth: “Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already.” That level of hubris from the founder of Ubuntu, in the face of what is clearly a bad idea badly implemented, should leave everyone with a bad taste in their mouth. If this idea can make it to the next Ubuntu release, then what other bad ideas are floating around? What’s next? Why should we maintain that trust?”

Indeed.

Further, and quoted in the blog above, Etienne Perot outlines what a mess this is — and how to get out of it — in a post from a few weeks ago here:

https://perot.me/ubuntu-privacy-blunder-over-amazon-ads-continues

One of the solutions: See “Step 3: Make it opt-in, rather than opt-out”.

Canonical, white courtesy phone . . .

On the radar

Without going into minute detail, the last several days have been busy ones where I have been unable to get to a blog post. While this may be refreshing news to some, the proverbial deck has been cleared — almost — and I have a few items upcoming this week and a couple that, to be honest, I’ve been chomping at the bit to talk about.

Like . . .

What the hell, Dell? One of the many bad things about being so busy this weekend and earlier this week is that I missed the bus on giving Dell the slicing-and-dicing and drop-kicking they deserved, and still deserve.

Don’t take my word for it: This is what happens at a Dell conference, attended by Michael Dell, in Copenhagen: “Damn! I did not know the dress code was blue tie and male. I am at Dell’s big summit with Michael Dell in Copenhagen. Here we learn how to say ‘shut up bitch’ and that women don’t belong in tech.” Which, as an aside, prompted this excellent commentary by Molly Wood on C-Net.

Michael Dell, apparently you did nothing here, and you missed a great opportunity. This is what you should have done: a.) taken the Dell employee responsible for organizing this event, slap him on the back of the head and then tell him he has 20 minutes to clean out his office and leave the Dell corporate premises; b.) if the person in charge of Dell Denmark is not the same person as the one involved in the previous step, repeat process on him as well with the same instructions; c.) apologize to the women staff at Dell, women programmers in general, and women everywhere in general for such an arrogant display of misogyny sponsored by your company.

But no. Instead, here’s what we get as a lukewarm apology from Dell via Google+ — not exactly the best outlet for this, by the way. This apology is lacking in several ways: a.) the ratio of “we’re sorry” to “we’re so awesome” should be completely flipped in this apology; b.) Michael Dell was in the room at the time and heard it for himself, lending every reason that c.) the person responsible for arranging for this speaker should be fired, to say nothing of d.) that this apology had to be dragged out of Dell as opposed to them being proactive about it.

Whew. Glad I got that off my chest, so I can continue with . . .

Watch for CrunchBang Waldorf: The CrunchBang Waldorf development builds have been out for a couple of weeks now and I have it running on a ThinkPad T30 — as ancient as it is dependable — and the build is running flawlessly. I can’t imagine that there’s much wrong with it at this point. At least I haven’t been able to break anything on it . . . yet. Philip Newborough has done a great job on the Debian Wheezy-based version of the distro and I’m hoping there’s going to be a new release soon.

Fuduntu, too: As promised in the last blog item where I apologized to Fuduntu project leader Andrew Wyatt (and not to Ubuntu’s self-appointed etc. Mark Shuttleworth, just to quell the rumor spawned by those who didn’t actually read the last blog item), I’m currently running Fuduntu on another laptop, and I’ll be talking about it later this week as well. So far, so good.

The Alto 3880 Honeymoon: A few months ago, I did a review of the ZaReason Alto 3880 laptop and I liked it so much, I got one of my own to use on a daily basis. Over the past few months, I’ve grown to really like the machine to the point where I use it daily (which I’m sure annoys some of the desktops in the lab). I will write about using the Alto over the last few months, and how much I like this machine. And the keyboard thing I mentioned? Not a concern — it’s just as tough as the ThinkPad’s.

Oh, and one more thing: I’m officially changing the acronym SaaS to Sarcasm as a Service and opening for business.

This blog, and all other blogs by Larry the Free Software Guy and Larry Cafiero, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND license. In short, this license allows others to download this work and share it with others as long as they credit me as the author, but others can’t change it in any way or use it commercially.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and develops business software at Redwood Digital Research, a consultancy that provides FOSS solutions in the small business and home office environment.)