[tinco]

What an awful move. Note that they are deliberately hurting open source software by restricting contributions for a purely political reason.

Obviously it will result in an Ubuntu fork of the intel drivers, which will eventually lead to a situation where the only consequence is a more painful workflow for Ubuntu core contributers and early adopters looking for up to date drivers.

[mayhew]

Ubuntu is creating Mir for political reasons. There's no reason for upstream projects to maintain code that only benefits a single distribution.

[damien]

Yep, all of their technical reasons have pretty much been debunked. The reason for Mir's existence is mainly about project control. As Matthew Garrett mentions[1], they likely need that control for Ubuntu Phone to be able to relicense the code to keep their hardware partners happy.

[1] http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html

[bad_user]

This is why I think licenses such as AGPL and GPLv3 are hurting open-source (and Free Software). The intentions behind them are good, but in practice they are used in parallel with commercial licenses that have nothing to do with open-source.

[jlgreco]

There is nothing wrong with dual licensing, even RMS has said:

"I've considered selling exceptions acceptable since the 1990s, and on occasion I've suggested it to companies. Sometimes this approach has made it possible for important programs to become free software."

His reasoning is that selling proprietary licenses to otherwise GPL'd code is reasonable since it enables companies to do the same thing that they would be able to do if a project was dual licensed with GPL/MIT. Since he does not consider MIT/X11 style licenses wrong, merely inferior, he concludes that selling GPL exceptions is reasonable:

"When I first heard of the practice of selling exceptions, I asked myself whether the practice is ethical. If someone buys an exception to embed a program in a larger proprietary program, he's doing something wrong (namely, making proprietary software). Does it follow that the developer that sold the exception is doing something wrong too?

If that implication is valid, it would also apply to releasing the same program under a noncopyleft free software license, such as the X11 license. That also permits such embedding. So either we have to conclude that it's wrong to release anything under the X11 license -- a conclusion I find unacceptably extreme -- or reject this implication. Using a noncopyleft license is weak, and usually an inferior choice, but it's not wrong."

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions

[bad_user]

Well, I think RMS is wrong. The fact that these licenses cannot be used in certain contexts, such that commercial licensing is justified, does hint to them not being really open.

Here's a quote by Linus Tolvards, when discussing GPLv2 versus GPLv3:

GPLv2 in no way limits your use of the software. If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers.

[belorn]

> does hint to them not being really open.

And what does "really open" mean?

Software licenses exist to define situation the author can live with, and which ones he would be unhappy about. Some authors:

Do not care at all (WTFLicense).

Demands attributions, and would be unhappy if someone else falsely claim authorship of the authors software (MIT/BSD).

Demands that companies not go and backstab customers and sue them over patents for code they themselves have redistributed (Apache).

Demands the same as all above, but also that users get the source code of the program that they have bought/received. (GPLv2)

Demands the same as all above, but that users can actually use modified version of the source code. (GPLv3)

Demands the same as all above, but adds a clause about users of web services are equivalent to customers who buys software in the store? (AGPL)

So I must then ask, which one is the "really open"? Only WTFlicense? Only BSD/MIT and above?

[streptomycin]

It's more direct and clear to state the real problem. The real problem isn't the AGPL or the GPLv3, as both of those licenses can be very good in the right context. The real problem is copyright assignment to companies like Canonical, as in practice that is equivalent to dual licensing where the second license is "let this company do whatever the fuck they want".

[bad_user]

As I said, the intentions are good, but in practice these licenses are used as an actual incentive for companies to purchase the commercial alternative for redistribution.

[streptomycin]

But that's only true for a small minority of GPLv3 software. The exact same small minority that requires copyright assignment to a for-profit corporation.

Saying "licenses such as AGPL and GPLv3 are hurting open-source" is complete and utter FUD. A non-FUD way of saying it would be something like, "copyright assignment to for-profit corporations hurts the free software movement".

If there is no copyright assignment to a mischievous corporation, then GPLv3 is practically strictly superior to GPLv2 in terms of software freedom.

[bkor]

Wayland is not under such licences. It uses the MIT license.

[profquail]

I think bad_user is talking about Mir: it's licensed under GPLv3 [1].

[bkor]

My point was more that license was no reason, Wayland already has a good license. Mir is first under a different license to then require a special CLA to be able to license it differently. In Wayland everyone has the same rights.

[tjdetwiler]

This is something Canonical should have considered before developing they're own display server. The community attitude from the start seems to generally be "we won't carry support upstream", so this doesn't seem unreasonable.

[tinco]

Who's saying Canonical hasn't considered this? If this truly reflects the community attitude towards a new open source project than that is an awful thing.

No one is saying it, but Wayland is just a display server, and worse, it's just a display server that's been developed on by just one guy in what is clearly his spare time. For years, and it's still not something we can readily use.

If instead of Canonical this was just a random dude with a kickstarter project, promising that if he built this something new he would get NVidia and AMD in on it we'd all be cheering them on.

We want a replacement for X. Wether it's Wayland or Mir, the community shouldn't care. If both of them grow up to be great display servers, then the projects can have their choice. Why make that choice now, when Mir isn't anything yet, and Wayland looks like an infinite road to nowhere?

So there you have it, a bad comment about Wayland. Why? Because I'm frustrated. X has been a pain in our collective asses for so many years, and the project that was going to change that receives almost no support. It's just this one guy going at it. No vendor support, no distro support. No one wants to touch it, so it takes 5 years to get to this point where it seems like it's almost ready for adoption, but still no one builds a desktop environment for it or any vendor interest.

Then a company just goes for it, allocates significant resources to it, and even uses its connections and leverage to get vendors in on it, and makes sure there's going to be a desktop environment for it. And the whole community just goes 'boo!'? what is that about?

What's the community got to lose? Why is it hurt? What has it invested in wayland?

I'll say it. Nothing. Just some code some dude made that's possibly going to be obsolete if Canonical succeeds. And if not, then Canonical made some obsolete code, which is their business risk, not ours to judge over.

If you ask me, the community should be positive. What have we got to gain? A possible X successor that's got multi-vendor support and a desktop environment that works. It's going to have a nice interface, takes up a lot of design clues from wayland and generally is going to kick ass if it works out.

[cookiecaper]

I'm not sure why, but you seem unaware of the massive community effort that has already been plowed into Wayland and the massive loss of credibility the community suffers when it's wishy-washy about display infrastructure without Very Good Reasons. Qt and GTK have already been mostly ported, driver code has been contributed in various projects over the last 2-3 years, and other major efforts have been invested into Wayland to break the iron hand of X11, and then Canonical ignorantly struts along with Mir and jeopardizes the whole thing.

If we want big hardware players like nvidia and intel to take us seriously, we must behave in a professional manner, and one of the biggest players in the space creating an incompatible fork on such a fundamental piece of architecture five years after a similar project began making inroads, basically because "We don't have anyone smart enough to understand Wayland", is _not_ professional.

Maybe this would've been justified after Wayland support went mainstream, but all Canonical has accomplished by the release and announcement of Mir is the further entrenchment of X11 by accentuating what a horrendous wreck it is to attempt to remove it.

[adamors]

What are you even talking about? Most of the Wayland developers work at Intel.

Also, not even other *buntu maintainers are going with Mir, so unless you are equating Canonical with open source, you must be a tad lost.

[tinco]

Oh yeah, all of those Wayland developers:

https://github.com/nobled/wayland/graphs/contributors

I'm not equating Canonical with open source, I'm equating what they're making with open source. Because it is. What are you even talking about?

[forgottenpass]

I don't know how github generates that data, but if you page through this:

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/log/?qt=author&q...

It paints a very different picture about the distribution of authorship.

[tinco]

Hmm, you are right. That's a bit awkward, git doesn't actually track authors, it just tracks committers. So there's actually a bunch of authors, and krh is just committing for them. Woops, sorry about that :) Would like to see a graph that shows authorship though, very interested in how large and active the wayland dev team actually is.

[damien]

I don't see how it's political to let Canonical keep the burden of maintaining code that only they care about...

[azakai]

Is that what is happening here? Intel's explanation of "The Management" handing down orders doesn't imply technical reasons were the motivation. It's unclear.

If there are technical reasons - like the one you mentioned - let's hear them, they might be valid.

[damien]

I don't think I mentioned any technical reason? Allocating developer time is generally a management decision.

If anything, Intel has already put their resources into Wayland and the lack of any good technical reasons for Mir's existence probably played a large role in their decision.

I don't see why this is so shocking really, many other projects in the Linux graphics stack have already said that they won't be supporting Mir upstream any time soon. At this point, I'd be more surprised of hearing a project supporting Mir than the other way around.

[asveikau]

Does anyone else see the "-The Management" comment as having more than a tinge of sarcasm? I think people are taking it a little too seriously.

[nknighthb]

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/com...

Note "Ordered-by:" line, clearly intended to communicate Chris Wilson was ordered to do this, rather than doing it of his own accord.

[asveikau]

You still see no attempt at humor or lightheartedness in this? May I remind you that his email ends in .co.uk, so many people may need to apply a "British humour filter". Most of his commits have "Signed-off-by:" with a name; he replaced "signed-off" with "ordered" and the name with a vague reference to "The Management".

The further context I was thinking of was this:

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/com...

[nknighthb]

I'm obviously aware of both commits, and of much, much further context beyond the commits. No, I see no humor or lightheartedness. Signed-off-by is not just something Chris made up, it's a pseudo-standardized line for git commit messages.

Further context I'm aware of is that Chris explicitly accepted and applied the patch after working with the developers to get it right, along with other signs of cooperation.

Yet more context I'm aware of is much of the political bullshit surrounding Mir, Wayland, Canonical, Red Hat, Intel and really the entire FOSS community at this point.

This isn't a joke. This is Intel's management intervening.

[krschultz]

Canonical wrote the initial patches. It stands to reason they will also be fairly heavily involved in maintaining them. That's a fairly thin argument against incorporating patches upstream.

Almost by definition, most of the patches I've committed to upstream are things that I was the first person to care enough about to write a patch. It's nice to see other people use them, but the idea that "why should upstream carry your patch when you are the only one that cares about it" is a bit counter to what has made FOSS get this far. Especially when "only they care about it" still represents one of the largest blocks of users.

[mayhew]

I'm sure upstream would be more willing to work with Mir if there was technical reasons for its existence. As it stands, Mir provides no benefit to anyone but Canonical, who simply want control. That control comes at the cost of fragmenting a fragile part of the ecosystem. You can't expect the rest of the community to be okay with that.

[mmgutz]

Ubuntu is the one that decided to go their own way. Why does Intel have to support them?

[bkor]

The reason for starting Mir is still unclear to me. The is a very real cost of maintaining Mir. If you're not Canonical, why would you spend money, time and complexity for an unclear benefit? Better have it stay Canonical-only.

[thomasjames]

You are of course assuming Ubuntu can maintain Intel drivers, which given their upstream contribution track record might be a tall order.

[krschultz]

This is a great comment in that it shows the cognitive dissonance of slamming Canonical for trying to commit upstream while also slamming them for their past lack of upstream commits, in a handy Twitter length package.

[mayhew]

Sorry, but sending code upstream for their distribution-specific display server (which has no technical reasons for existing) isn't benefiting the rest of the community.

[chrismsnz]

Given the size and content of the patches under discussion here, I think they'll be fine maintaining that level of Mir integration with the Intel drivers themselves.

[snogglethorpe]

Sure, Intel's actions are more symbolic than anything else.

Ubuntu has received a lot of flack for their aggressively NIH attitude, but being able to point to support for their NIH-motivated products in other widely-used software would signify some amount of acceptance of their actions in the wider community.

I think their are many people who don't want to send that signal.

[pjmlp]

Does not surprise me.

Many guys in FOSS tend to like Intel, but not all Intel departments are FOSS friendly.

Even the graphics division, tends to put more resources into DirectX tooling and processors like the PowerVR family, than what they contribute to X.

[thomasjames]

This is not about FOSS, it is about one man's vision to circumvent the mainstream developer community. Ubuntu chose to make the transition from pre-configuring Debian and making compiz themes for Gnome to trying its hand at systems-level programming. It would be somewhat self-assured of them to assume that all hardware vendors, who are already heavily invested in Linux, as a platform, would necessarily pick up the slack, especially when those investments did not foresee a move like Mir.

[pjmlp]

I don't say otherwise, just that Intel as a company is a corporation like any other, with contributions to FOSS also driven by internal politics.

[kbuck]

I don't think it's entirely a corporate move here. Free software contributions aren't infinite; if you have $N developers working on integrating support for display servers, then it's simple math that having to support two display servers means that you'll have $N/2 developers working on each, and will therefore get half the work done (and, since they'll probably still have to support X11 for a while, make that $N/3). Ubuntu selfishly forked Mir instead of choosing to try to use Wayland (especially when they had originally committed to using Wayland[1]), so the burden is on them here. It also doesn't help that Canonical employees were using the inclusion of XMir support as political fodder[2].

[1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 [2] https://twitter.com/olliries/status/375704285083738112