Has GNOME Rejected Canonical help? Shuttleworth Responds
"Unity is a shell for Gnome. Now Gnome leadership have to decide if they want the fruit or that competition to be an asset to Gnome, or not." ~Mark Shuttleworth founder of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Founder and former CEO of Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth, responds to Dave Neary's post entitled Has GNOME rejected Canonical help?
When Canonical made the decision to make Unity the default desktop, some people questioned the GNOME/Canonical relationship. Adding fuel to this fire was the recent distribution split of revenue generated by Banshee. These decisions caused Ubuntu, GNOME and even Fedora community members to ask why these things were done. In Neary's Has GNOME rejected Canonical help? post, he states that he has repeatedly read Canonical and Ubuntu people saying, “We offered our help to GNOME, and they didn’t want it."
Neary gives examples of what other people have said to back up the "they didn't want it" claim by Canonical and Ubuntu people.
Today Shuttleworth responds on his blog. "Competition is tough on the contestants, but it gets great results for everyone else," Shuttleworth writes. He talks about the challenge for the GNOME leadership and outlines what Canonical/Ubuntu tried to communicate about Unity to GNOME but to the open source community.
"When we articulated our vision for Unity, we were very clear that we wanted to deliver it under the umbrella of Gnome... We described Unity as 'a shell for Gnome' from the beginning, and we have been sincere in that view. We have worked successfully and happily with many, many Gnome projects to integrate Unity API’s into their codebase," Shuttleworth says.
Shuttleworth notes, "We’ve failed." He adds, "Much of the language, and much of the decision making I’ve observed within Gnome, is based on the idea that Unity is competition WITH Gnome, rather than WITHIN Gnome."
Shuttleworth goes on to analyze the rationale given for the rejection of Canonical’s indicator APIs.
Shuttleworth also points to Aaron Seigo's post about this decision being "as much a rejection of cross-desktop standards as it was a rejection of Canonical’s code."
Shuttleworth notes that it might be time to look at strengthening the Freedesktop.org forum and adds, "Gnome has failed to take that forum seriously, as evidenced by the frustrations expressed elsewhere. But perhaps if we had both Unity and KDE working well there, Gnome might take a different view. And that would be very good for the free software desktop."
Comments
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.
-
First Release Candidate for Linux Kernel 6.14 Now Available
Linus Torvalds has officially released the first release candidate for kernel 6.14 and it includes over 500,000 lines of modified code, making for a small release.
-
System76 Refreshes Meerkat Mini PC
If you're looking for a small form factor PC powered by Linux, System76 has exactly what you need in the Meerkat mini PC.
-
Gnome 48 Alpha Ready for Testing
The latest Gnome desktop alpha is now available with plenty of new features and improvements.
-
Wine 10 Includes Plenty to Excite Users
With its latest release, Wine has the usual crop of bug fixes and improvements, along with some exciting new features.
-
Linux Kernel 6.13 Offers Improvements for AMD/Apple Users
The latest Linux kernel is now available, and it includes plenty of improvements, especially for those who use AMD or Apple-based systems.
-
Gnome 48 Debuts New Audio Player
To date, the audio player found within the Gnome desktop has been meh at best, but with the upcoming release that all changes.
Mendacious at best
The brutal reality is that Canonical offered its code, without compromise, without cooperation, on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. There was no attempt to adhere to Gnome's procedures, and no attempt to adhere to community standards of behaviour.
The insertion of large segments of code which is in its effect proprietary (in that it excludes community cooperation) disadvantages all other contributors to Gnome, and puts Gnome's primary product at risk.
Shuttleworth is playing a dangerous game with the (free) goose.
time for change?
Cut GNOME loose and let them enjoy their sandpit. Then G devs just need to shed few users and they really will be able to do what they want in peace.