I can see how you would draw those conclusions, because yes, we have made mistakes, and we do have some products that are proprietary, and we have made some shitty software.
At the scale of hundreds of engineers working on tens of codebases, who hasn't?
That's my dispute with your position - it's flatly generalising and characterising ALL our work as if it was our least successful work. By all means, call us out on our mistakes. But if you think everything we have ever done was hopeless, then you must have some theory about why so much of what we do has in fact been widely adopted. Surely you can see how fragile your own arguments must be if they are at odds with some clear data.
I like challenges and criticism; it helps us get better. I know we have made mistakes, that helps us get better too. I respect people who have differences of opinion on what needs doing, or how it needs to be done. Why not take the opportunity to become a counterpart in a rich discussion, rather than a one-dimensional anti-everything-Canonical mouthpiece?
We killed Unity for three reasons. First, I ran out of money to fund it. That was rough. Second, we built some very shoddy pieces in that codebase (though we also had some teams that did amazing work). That was sad and taught me a hard lesson. Third, we were the fourth horse in a two horse race, and the telco and ISV ecosystems were clearly not going to engage.
I agree with you - the vision of Unity was and still is beautiful. It's probably right - convergence between phones and tablets and laptops is the future for laptops. I think it's fantastic that a small but feisty community continues to work with that code. I was therefor, like you, completely disappointed to fail.
But why hate on me, and Canonical, when we literally put everything we had on the line for that vision, but screwed up? Why be an ass to the sorts of people who are willing to put every ounce of strength they have into something that you really wanted to see succeed? We failed because we made mistakes, yes, but for heavens sake recognise an ally when you see one, even if they make mistakes.
First and foremost, thank you very much for taking the time to answer my comment.
>At the scale of hundreds of engineers working on tens of codebases, who hasn't?
It's not about the mistakes, but about the way you create new stuff. It always feels that canonical try's to copy other technologies but not to make them better but to own them (snaps).
>counterpart in a rich discussion, rather than a one-dimensional anti-everything-Canonical mouthpiece?
I am totally not against canonical, it's extremely important to have a professional alternative to rpm-based (RHEL,SLES) distribution's, i am just not happy how ubuntu/canonical changed in the past ~10 years, maybe you see it as hate, but for me it's a bit more like a friend who betrayed me, i know sound's stupid, but ubuntu was that friendly distro who send free disk's around the world and is now the most proprietary one who had a Amazon search function.
>But why hate on me, and Canonical, when we literally put everything we had on the line for that vision, but screwed up?
Wait, no one hates you...quite the opposite.
>Why be an ass to the sorts of people who are willing to put every ounce of strength they have into something that you really wanted to see succeed?
Then stop brewing always your own soup, or at least make it better then the rest. Linux already has a massive NIH-Syndrome, and here i have to admit that Ubuntu/Canonical made the right choice with ZFS, when others (SLES) use that terrible BTRFS.
that is the key insight here. All of Canonical's marquee software projects over the years have been attempts to single-handedly control a given space, and they have essentially all failed.
Canonical is good at integrating other peoples' software though, which isn't surprising since that's been the core function of the company since its inception.
At the scale of hundreds of engineers working on tens of codebases, who hasn't?
That's my dispute with your position - it's flatly generalising and characterising ALL our work as if it was our least successful work. By all means, call us out on our mistakes. But if you think everything we have ever done was hopeless, then you must have some theory about why so much of what we do has in fact been widely adopted. Surely you can see how fragile your own arguments must be if they are at odds with some clear data.
I like challenges and criticism; it helps us get better. I know we have made mistakes, that helps us get better too. I respect people who have differences of opinion on what needs doing, or how it needs to be done. Why not take the opportunity to become a counterpart in a rich discussion, rather than a one-dimensional anti-everything-Canonical mouthpiece?
We killed Unity for three reasons. First, I ran out of money to fund it. That was rough. Second, we built some very shoddy pieces in that codebase (though we also had some teams that did amazing work). That was sad and taught me a hard lesson. Third, we were the fourth horse in a two horse race, and the telco and ISV ecosystems were clearly not going to engage.
I agree with you - the vision of Unity was and still is beautiful. It's probably right - convergence between phones and tablets and laptops is the future for laptops. I think it's fantastic that a small but feisty community continues to work with that code. I was therefor, like you, completely disappointed to fail.
But why hate on me, and Canonical, when we literally put everything we had on the line for that vision, but screwed up? Why be an ass to the sorts of people who are willing to put every ounce of strength they have into something that you really wanted to see succeed? We failed because we made mistakes, yes, but for heavens sake recognise an ally when you see one, even if they make mistakes.