Comments on: Define “Contributions”

By: tecosystems » Ubuntu, Drivers, and IHVs: Learning from Sierra

tecosystems » Ubuntu, Drivers, and IHVs: Learning from Sierra — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:23:39 +0000

[...] recent posts have triggered as much offline discussion as my recent piece discussing Greg Kroah-Hartman’s presentation calling out Canonical on their lack of [...]

By: Doug K

Doug K — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:20:10 +0000

I’m a minor geek, but did not use Linux, outside of Red Hat and Suse at work, until recently. I don’t have time to hack around with device support, and the pre-Ubuntu distributions defeated me.

Recently Vista drove me to despair with Windows, so installed Heron instead.
I notice:
- Vista tech support is delivered through edicts and fiats on microsoft.com, with real help to be found in the wild lands of forum postings;
- Ubuntu support is delivered through FAQs and forums; but the forums are well-tended gardens, in contrast to the jungles of the Windows world.

Which is a long way of saying I’m in full agreement with you..

By: Rambo Tribbler

Rambo Tribbler — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:21:19 +0000

Developers throwing hissy fits because their particular niche isn’t, in their particular evaluation, sufficiently respected is nothing new. KDE recently had a similar blow-up over comments that the project didn’t need users, as they made no contribution,(it should be noted that this attitude is in direct conflict with the tenets espoused by Eric Raymond in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”).

Of course, the press loves controversy and tends to milk such episodes mercilessly. The reality is that Canonical has successfully bridged the developer/user disconnect to produce a better product. Methinks the developer doth protest too much.

By: Rich Sharples

Rich Sharples — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:28:15 +0000

@Ryan, @James – but you’re still limiting contribution to something material (code, docs, JIRAs, etc.) – that’s wrong too.

I’ve been an active supporter of Linux for almost a decade but have never contributed anything material (code, docs, etc.). I believe I’m a valuable contributor because I care enough about Linux to use it exclusively.

Where would Linux be without the millions of Linux users ?

By: James Governor

James Governor — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:00:51 +0000

the only contribution is a kernel contribution? what terrible horseshit. he thinks documentation creates itself? I am with Ryan.

“It’s my firm belief that neither Fedora nor OpenSuSE would be remotely as usable as they are today absent Ubuntu” – blammo!

By: Ryan Tomayko

Ryan Tomayko — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:15:54 +0000

Feels all wrong to me. Judging folks based on kernel contributions, that is. There’s a lot going on in userland. Take all of GNU (coreutils, glib, gcc, awk, bash, etc.), X11 and window managers, Perl, Python, CUPS, etc. for instance. Maybe we should have started calling it something other than “Linux” a long time ago.