[esoterae]

Well, if nothing else hopefully someone else notices this witness statement exposing the above-linked revisionist history for what it is--a fabrication.

On the topic of Unity: I, a linux user since the mid 90s, worked an actual linux job through the forced deprecation of GNOME 2.. I don't have much anything constructive to say about it. I even used fvwm2 for a while after gnome2 got yoinked.. it was a nice reminder of my halcyon days writing perl in xemacs, running fvwm on my sparc 2. It wasn't too long after that I landed on xfce. I still wonder what gnome2 could've been.

All I ever wanted was a compositing, focus-follows-mouse, raise/lower window manager with a full-featured keyboard shortcut config. I still feel as though we were sold out. I don't think my mental representation of Canonical will ever recover. It just felt so blatantly anti-user during that period, and that impression has not been tempered with the passage of time.

[lproven]

I wrote the article. The legal threats I cited were not and are not a fabrication.

I did not write these other articles covering it:

https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007...

https://www.mercurynews.com/2007/05/15/microsoft-says-linux-...

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2566211/study--linux-m...

[ndhlms]

The problem is you're still failing to demonstrate a causal link between threats of legal action and GNOME3 or Unity.

I was around during this time and early adopter of GNOME Shell (i.e. 2.31.x); there was and is zero evidence indicating that legal issues were even a consideration.

There is, on the other hand, mountain ranges of evidence indicating this was driven by everything but legal issues[1][2][3].

[1]: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell/FAQ#What_problems...

[2]: http://wingolog.org/archives/2008/06/07/gnome-in-the-age-of-...

[3]: https://wiki.gnome.org/Events/Summit/2008/GUIHackfest