On the secrets, Ubuntu and Mark… the review.

Well this time I'm going to have to redo all the work, not in a bad way, but in a good way.

Many people wanted to correct me in the last article, several were right, and although after reading everything I read, analyzing it and realizing that yes, on several points I was wrong, my opinion remains the same.

Ok, starting with all of this I clarify to everyone that Canonical will not shut down Ubuntu development And that, the troll or hater comments are not going to go beyond the moderation grid, just so they don't come later and tell us that we are shit.

This cleared up, let's get started.

What does Mark Shuttleworth mean?

Well, nothing, one of the things that Mark asks in his blog article is that you do not have to be carried away by people's comments, and he is right on that point. Here I can touch on two important things:

• That paying attention to what everyone says without you making your own judgment is always a bad idea.

A perfect example of that is how badly many people talk about Unity without having tried it or having tried it half, that if a day or two and that's it. This has undoubtedly brought a lot of bad fame to the desktop environment that, although it has its cons (like all) it is not the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve.

• Haters gonna hate.

Ubuntu has both Fanboys and Haters, both sides cracked by what they think and there is no way to get the reason for their worship / hate out of their heads. Perhaps this is what Shuttleworth meant when he spoke of "Avoid criticism". certainly the fanatical criticisms (both from one side and the other) are, without a doubt, an error where you see it, it does not matter that they have valid points; bias does not fit into these discussions.

What do you really mean by keeping a secret?

We now fall into what creates the controversy, the phrase "Keep secret". The recently generated popular belief lies in: "They will close the code"; nothing is further from reality, they will not close anything.

The next trend is to think: "They will not show anything in the Betas or in the Alphas and when they release the final product it will be a disaster". It is partly true, apparently they are not going to put it in Betas and / or Alphas, but, apparently (this is not mentioned but in the comments of the post) they are going to work with PPA's, first they are going to offer closed tests of X module of the program and after being tested by several developers (both from Canonical and prominent from the community) they will release that code through PPA's so that whoever wants to, can put their hand.

Regarding this Mark says:

Every member of a community works on personal projects. Our competitors do so too. There are any number of changes thrust upon Gnome by Red Hat for example, that then get whitewashed as “maintainers discretion” or “designers design”. There are any number of reveals, prototypes, patents and other decisions that are taken in private, by all members of all communities. Even amongst volunteers its normal to see someone saying “I've been hacking on this for a while, now I want some feedback”.

What translated with my terrible English would be something like:

All members of any community work on personal projects. Our competitors do the same. There are a large number of changes imposed on Gnome by Red Hat, for example, which are later labeled well as "Discretion of maintainers" or as "Designers Design". There are many prototypes, patents and decisions that are made in secret in all communities, even voluntary community members happen to say "Hey, I've been working on this for a while and now I want some feedback."

Although there is a certain reason in what he says, since many times we who develop anything, first do something in secret and then we release it, it seems to me that they are two totally different contexts; or at least differentiated.

First of all, I, as a developer, have barely any capacity compared to Canonical, I don't have to be held accountable to anyone nor do I have really big projects used by hundreds of thousands on my hands. Neither can I, as an independent developer, come running like a moron warning that Hey! I'm starting to program something, and I get 100 lines that don't do anything, that don't work, but here they are = D »

Canonical for example, as a company, you can do two things:

Announcing the idea and showing it as a potential project without really committing to anything, kind "This is something that has occurred to us, what do you think?" or; do what they say, start in secret, then free up puzzle pieces. The second is not bad at all as long as it remains as mentioned with the PPA's, if not, I am sorry, it is not worth it.

Interesting comments

It should also be added that there are several really interesting comments in the post, both in favor and against and neutral.

For example, many are directed to what Makr says:

Canonical has been a standard when it comes to transparent development.

Or something like that, remember that my English is not masterful.

A couple of comments that he received regarding that (and that I will not translate, which is extended to me) are:

You seem to have forgot your roots, Debian people were the one that set the standard for transparency, not Ubuntu. Heck, even mandriva was transparent at that time, with people from the outside (me) being able to manage the build cluster (something that Canonical still doesn't provide, while Fedora, Mageia, Debian does).

And this one too:

Mr. Shuttleworth, how can you claim that Ubuntu set the standard for transparency when it is derived from Debian? Debian allows anyone to contribute and develops improvements entirely in the open in contrast to Canonical projects such as Ubuntu for Android. Gentoo is the same way.

If you are serious about transparency, why not develop Ubuntu for Android and any other projects that Canonical announces in a public repository? I think that the Cyanogenmod project would appreciate it.

There are also those who support it and who, in turn, raise reasonable doubts, like this one, with which I feel identified:

I think with this move Ubuntu actually is going to be more open that it was at least last 1 or 2 years where a lot of development was done in house (at Canonical) and made public only a couple of days before the features freeze.
In this way community (the ones that have shown commitment) will be involved.

My concerns (if I can call them concerns) here are:
Who decides which members of the community have shown commitment enough to participate on these projects.
And how community members can apply to work in this “secret projects” if they don't know what projects are there. (If they will know than the projects are not any more "secret")

Any how I sad it is a good move. At least better than it was last years.
In the end of the day I don't mind how does the development of the feature but more I care for the feature itself.

Where it is possible to rescue the concerns of this user, who raises:

• Who decides which community members apply as suitable to participate in these projects?
• How will the community be able to apply for these projects and / or use them if they are "Secrets" and they don't know anything about them?

There are quite a few comments to read but to be honest with you, I do not intend to break down the entire post by Mark Shuttleworth, far from it.

My opinion still does not change too much, I am not yet completely convinced nor do I feel comfortable with these decisions since, to be honest, for me there are still many loose ends that must be tied up. Time will tell if all this is a good or bad idea, beyond any comment that Canonical knows what it does or not, that problem has been theirs, and they will know what or who does or does not work in that company.

I believe that this is enough to calm the concerns of many and to dismiss any argument that I am not consulting the correct sources. From now on, I think that any comment or criticism should be about my interpretation of the sources, which is already something very personal.

Source: Mark Shuttleworth Blog