On Wednesday kernel developer and Novell fellow Greg KH opened the first annual Linux Plumbers Conference with a keynote aimed squarely at the team behind Ubuntu, Canonical. I think Greg could have used the opportunity to inspire more than attack, but Greg obviously feels strongly about the necessity for upstream development. It’s also Greg being Greg: I believe he carries around a spoon just in case he encounters a hornets’ nest.
Does he have a point?
Greg’s contention is that Canonical is a passive member of the Linux community since they do not contribute code upstream. The operative point, that Greg left out, is they do not contribute much to the projects that Greg defines as “Linux” (namely the kernel, GCC, binutils, etc.) I found his focus solely on this projects, at the exclusion of such key upstream projects as Gnome, mis-leading. The kernel is the core of a Linux distribution, so I understand why Greg feels kernel patches are the most valuable, but you can’t discount Canonical’s support of Gnome and other desktop projects.
Why Pick on Canonical?
Perhaps Greg likes to pick on Canonical because they are so successful. A lot of people use Ubuntu (me included.) This isn’t sour grapes. As Greg pointed out it’s precisely because Ubuntu has so many users that their lack of upstream support is so important. The patches/bugs those users report to Ubuntu could be extremely useful to all Linux users, if they were contributed upstream. Greg’s contention is that because Ubuntu merely consumes the kernel and other elements of Debian, (effectively pushing it even farther removed from upstream development) they are not fully participating in Linux. His point is that if you are a developer you should use your skills with those companies who actively support upstream development. By all reasonable estimates, this is a lost opportunity.
But I also wonder why Greg doesn’t pick on other “free riders?” For instance, could Amazon have built their Kindle business without the $1 billion in free software in the Linux kernel? I don’t see them on the list in Greg’s presentation or the paper we did earlier this year. Why Canonical and Ubuntu? Is it because they much more actively market “Linux” as powering their product? They highlight it much more than Amazon, or Google with Android, or Tivo, or Motorola. Should they be punished for choosing to do something I consider to be a huge service to the Linux community?
So do I think Greg should go after Amazon in a similar fashion? Not at all. Linux is free (as in freedom.) That means you can use it without giving back. That means you are free to become a free rider if you want to. Companies who give a lot back upstream should be rewarded. These are companies like IBM, Intel, Red Hat, Oracle and Novell, among others. But if we get into endless bickering about free riders, this makes the Linux community appear vindictive and petty. Just using Linux makes the ecosystem so much bigger for the rest of us. This is why it’s so important that anyone can use it as they wish. Vote with your dollars, vote with your technology choices, vote by sending letters to companies. Reward good behavior.
So What Constitutes a Contribution?
In open source communities “code talks” and rightfully so. Canonical saw a need for a software project/company to contribute to Linux in a unique way. They focus on building a usable, more polished, more designed, better branded and better supported Linux distribution for the consumer market. By any one’s measure they have been successful in that endeavor. By my measure that is a very valuable contribution to the greater Linux movement.
Does that mean they shouldn’t contribute upstream? Absolutely not. If they can push more code/bug fixes upstream all users, not just Ubuntu users, will benefit. But Linux is also all about choice, and they have decided to fit in where they saw a need not being addressed. That is their choice. Do I agree with all of their choices? No. For instance I think including closed modules with their distribution is the wrong decision yet understand their reasons for doing so.
Ubuntu founder (and benefactor) Mark Shuttleworth recently addressed Greg’s criticism in his blog:
In Ubuntu we have in general considered upstream to be “our ROCK”, by which we mean that we want upstream to be happy with the way we express their ideas and their work. More than happy - we want upstream to be delighted! We focus most of our effort on integration. Our competitors turn that into “Canonical doesn’t contribute” but it’s more accurate to say we measure our contribution in the effectiveness with which we get the latest stable work of upstream, with security maintenance, to the widest possible audience for testing and love. To my mind, that’s a huge contribution.
I happen to agree. Open source is all about “scratching your itch.” About 200 companies contributed to the last kernel release. Mark saw a need for integration and distribution, which builds on the contributions of those 200 companies (and countless others outside the kernel.) It’s also interesting to note that Ubuntu itself is a “victim” of free riders. Many of the new Mobile Internet Devices gaining in popularity take Ubuntu and customize it to fit those machines. They slap a new brand on it and it’s no longer Ubuntu. This is the way Linux works.
I think it’s unfortunate when we get into such public Linux community “us vs. us” debates. (I feel conflicted about adding my voice to it.) Greg’s points do have merit, but they are too simplified. While I find Greg to be a very effective and strategic communicator about kernel issues, I wish he would use those considerable skills to inspire rather than castigate. Then again, he’s very good at stirring up those hornets’ nests.
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September 25, 2008 at 11:43 am
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November 12, 2008 at 8:33 am
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September 20, 2008 at 12:49 am
Tom
IMNSHO Greg presented a novell sponsored rant against their main competitor and disguised it as a keynote. And a lot of people in the community feel the same way too.
So I agree things like that should be avoided and it would be cool if the LF could have a informal code of conduct that keeps conferences free of such things.
On the topic: He point was that the morally right thing for canonical to do is to contribute more patches. Patches is all he looked at.
Canonical contribution to the “linux ecosystem” is worth a lot more than just patches. Most new users use Ubuntu _period_. So Ubuntu is the most important tool to get new users.
Google has _lots_ of patches they don’t push upstream and they even have no intention to. Which is fine. There are hundreds of other examples. Greg just choose Ubuntu cause they are really successful on the deskop.( Mainly because it is effectively a charity organisation at the moment. )
And IMHO Novell should not talk about moral obligations. In that regard they have a lot more problems with free software than Canonical does. I won’t mention all of them, but the elephant in the room should be clearly visible to anyone.
Whole websites are dedicated to the various issues Novell has with the community.
One other example: Novell products have EULAs. So they were totally OK with shipping one for Firefox. Canonical worked with Mozilla and now Firefox will have no EULA anymore ( Fedora/Red hat seem to have helped too .. Jef would certainly point that out if I wouldn’t mention it ;).
I just wanna say contribution cannot be measured in kernel patches. Greg is mistaken and all the negativity his talk generated should have been avoided.
September 20, 2008 at 2:29 am
Roy Schestowitz
Good post. It’s a shame that people still allow this to happen.
Why not refer to the whole system as GNU/Linux to distinguish then? it’s convenient to resolve ambiguities. While it’s true that Canonical does not do much for Linux (kernel), it does a lot to the Free desktop.
September 20, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Arthur Pemberton
Greg KH just voiced an opinion that very many people outside of Ubuntu share. Rather than dismiss this opinion, or trivialize it, it should be addressed.
September 20, 2008 at 4:24 pm
apokryphos
Greg picks on Canonical because too many people have the impression and misguided idea that Canonical are among the main, biggest contributors to code in the Linux distribution. This is just completely false. Also, Ubuntu users appear to frequently erroneously attribute contributions to Ubuntu/Canonical — I have personally been in a situation where a lot of Ubuntu users were under the impression that Ubuntu created Compiz.
Furthermore, it’s hardly the case that once you consider projects like GNOME that you get an entirely different conclusion. Companies like Red Hat and Novell contribute significantly more to GNOME than Canonical do (I believe they only employ two developers there, if I’m correct). They are the companies contributing day-in-day-out to the Linux desktop to make it a competitive alternative. Unfortunately on the other hand Canonical’s flaghsip product, Launchpad, is completely proprietary.
The same points of Greg’s talk seem to still stand for me.
September 20, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Brandon Fouts
Why not pick on Kindle? Don’t you think it is very doubtful Kindle has useful bug reports?
I don’t think Amazon “claims” (as in advertises) to be open source Linux contributors.
Ubuntu - on the other hand - promotes as if they are the next RedHat. I think Greg showed the facts - and Ubuntu attacked Greg first when they cried about Greg not appreciating all the contributions Ubuntu was making to Linux (which is technically just the kernel and specifically the area Greg works in).
Mark Shuttleworth want to brag about (see above)
“we measure our contribution in the effectiveness with which we get the latest stable work of upstream, with security maintenance, to the widest possible audience for testing and love [what ever love is supposed to mean]. To my mind, that’s a huge contribution.”
Greg simply points out just how small that contribution actually is AND the missed opportunity as Canonical could simply actually contribute to the kernel just as Mark wants to brag.
Is it true Ubuntu has “special license agreements” that prevent open source contributions back to the kernel? OK, that is a business plan, just don’t claim to be a good open source developer if you are not. Novell has a similar business plan, but Novell/SUSE actually hire and pay people to contribute to the Linux kernel (and many other projects - check it out).
So who is better? Ubuntu or openSUSE? We shall each decide on our own, and we have many choices. And I think all this competition improves everyone. Even some RedHat developers commented that Oracle support competition caused RedHat support to improve and the over RedHat support market (size of the pie) seemed to have grown, as RedHat didn’t notice any declines in increasing sales.
PS- Novell has survived Microsoft for 20 years, and I just hope the current management of Novell/SUSE remember the history of just how ruthless Microsoft really is. This complex world isn’t getting any simpler - internet access, patents, privacy, elections, economy …. I also think infighting is a waste of time. BUT criticism can be very helpful, if you listen and try to understand.
September 21, 2008 at 2:41 am
Zac
I been using Linux for a long time, and been using Ubuntu for the last two years. I’m sorry but I am not forgiving here, Greg being Greg is no excuse for this. Greg is being irresponsible, he is hurting Linux with behaviour like this. If I was his boss at Novell I would tell him so. Doesn’t he know that most people who use Ubuntu are your average Joe’s who cannot contribute anything technical? Doesn’t he know that Novell has a much larger staff and has been around for much longer and is a profitable public company and is getting help from Microsoft? Doesn’t he know that his behaviour pushes people away? I agree with you that he should use his skills to inspire not castigate. What Mark is doing for Linux is brilliant and I wish that Linux zealots will stop fighting and do more promoting. You see, I want a competitor to Windows for your average Joe, and this king of behaviour from people such as Greg doe not help.
September 21, 2008 at 11:47 am
satish
Firstly i think what Greg has mentioned is true to some extent . Distributions as a whole must maintain a stream of connection between the upstream and the users . It goes like this Upstream Distribution Users . Though this scenario is in its simplest form . This is how i think work should go on. Ubuntu is doing a great lot for the users by making it really simple , but why be behind in giving back to the upstream ? . Ubuntu if it worked it out , would actually become the largest upstream contributor( if it ‘wished’ ) looking at the user base it has ( going my the “many eyes approach” ) .
Secondly i don see any harm to the GNU/Linux ecosystem by these statements , after all it is all about choice , the ecosystem in itself consists of the Upstream and the Distros and the Users , so something which is not maintaining the general flow will hurt the ecosystem more ( Ubuntu ).
September 23, 2008 at 2:28 am
Miguel
I’m very sorry, but to me it looks like if there is someone that is picking on someone else if Amanda on Greg. Greg presented it’s information and an obvious conclusion (Canonical is not doing anything low level). Yes Canonical made it easy for the common non hacker type to use Linux (opinion diverge here), but still they didn’t contribute nothing to the kernel and tools that are the core of Linux.
That was Greg point, founded on numbers, and as such very hard to counter attack. So instead of attacking the information (because it’s solid) you decide to attack Greg. Good for you.
And why, oh why, do you jump to defend Canonical? It’s only a company! In the end they are always there for the money.
They didn’t send patches to the kernel? Well, maybe they don’t even have the expertise to do so, maybe they do and lack the motivation. The thing is: Canonical doesn’t have to. But Greg point is still valid: they didn’t contribute.
September 23, 2008 at 4:44 am
Ian
There’s obviously a lot of emotion here, and it’s good to see the zeal of Ubuntu’s community in defending Canonical.
But the bottom line is that Linux only moves forward with community participation.
It’s surprising how few engineers Canonical have - the seem to excel at integration and packaging but not at actually delivering new code. The major features that make the Linux desktop usable : Network Manager, HAL and DBus for plug and play and hardware support. X itself are projects that canonical contribute little if at all to, yet it’s not uncommon to hear them take credit for them. Last LinuxWorld I saw a canonical employee showing these features and explaining how Canonical innovated here to make Linux usable for the masses!
What’s also interesting is how Canonical can go to the next level without making more contributions.
If canonical isn’t working upstream of the core of Linux, how can they possibly expect to support enterprise customers?
September 25, 2008 at 4:09 am
sika
Miguel:
But Greg point is still valid: they didn’t contribute.
me:
OK, they didn’t contribute on low level staff, so what? Please make conclusion.
September 30, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Luis Rodriguez
Great post. Sure, perhaps the number of patches by Canonical upstream on the kernel are low but I can also say that my mother, my grandmother and my cousin all use Ubuntu now. They found Fedora — just strange (don’t ask me why, I tried as an experiment).
October 16, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Rem
Good point. I believe freedom is still a difficult concept for all us.
Now if Greg likes the ecosystem metaphore so much why to pick up on upstream ? Nature is wonderful down and on any direction of the stream.
Please keep posting more like this, sheers
January 13, 2009 at 7:35 am
mint
sorry but ubuntu blows. they keep introducing changes that will only work on their platform. They have a whole new policy system that is very broken. If you run it as root it wont let you do anything. Launchpad is 100% proprietary. And they dont contribute. Cononical is trying to create a system that one-way compadible with every other system so they can lock their users in. They are the scum of the fre software world, they are trying to do a microsoft and give it away so they can rip people off with their lock in