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| -rw-r--r-- | published/ubuntu-beta2-review.txt | 28 |
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diff --git a/published/open-source-insider.txt b/published/open-source-insider.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..384fad6 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/open-source-insider.txt @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +There's an old adage in the open source world -- if you don't like it, fork it. This advice, often given in a flippant manner, makes it seem like forking a piece of software is not a big deal. Indeed forking a small project you find on GitHub is not a big deal. There's even a handy button to make it easy to fork it. + +Unlike many things in programming though, that interaction model, that simplicity of forking, does not scale. There is no button next to Debian that says "Fork it!". The idea that all you need to do to make a project yours is to fork it is built on the belief that all a project is is the code it contains, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of what large free/open source projects actually are, namely communities. + +One does not simply walk into Debian and fork it. + +One can on the other hand walk *out* of a project, bring all the other core developers along and essentially leave the original an empty husk. This is what happened when LibreOffice forked away from the once mighty OpenOffice, it's what happened when MariaDB split from MySQL, and it's what happened more recently when the core developers behind ownCloud left the company and forked the code to start their own project, Nextcloud. They also, thankfully, dropped the silly lowercase first letter thing. + +Nextcloud consists of the core developers who built ownCloud, but who were not, and, judging by the very public way this happened, had not been, in control of the direction of the product for some time. + +That Nextcloud hit the ground running, with a new company structure, completely revamped licensing structure, working website and a release within two weeks of the split hints that this was not a quick decision, but a split that had been a long time coming. The steady stream of contributions and community work that has happened since show just how eager the ownCloud community was for change. + +The rift started early this year when ownCloud co-founder Frank Karlitschek left the project with a vague, but ominous, <a href="http://karlitschek.de/2016/04/big-changes-i-am-leaving-owncloud-inc-today/">post questioning the direction of ownCloud</a>: “without sharing too much, there are some moral questions popping up for me. Who owns the community? Who owns ownCloud itself? And what matters more, short term money or long term responsibility and growth? Is ownCloud just another company or do we also have to answer to the hundreds of volunteers who contribute and make it what it is today?” + +He also gave a hint of what was to come, writing, "there is tremendous potential in ownCloud and it is an open source product protected by the AGPL license." Fast forward a couple of months and almost all of the core developers also abandoned the project and Nextcloud was born. + +There are quite a few key differences between the ownCloud project, ownCloud Inc, and Nextcloud and Nextcloud Inc. The important ones for FOSS developers and users is that Nextcloud has removed ownCloud's contributor license agreement, there's no more dual-licensing and the trademark is now held by an independent foundation. More reassuring for both developers and users is that internal development planning will no longer happen behind closed doors. Everything at Nextcloud will happen in the open. + +The impact on ownCloud Inc was immediate. The company shut its doors in the U.S. shortly after Nextcloud announced what it was up to. It also published <a href="https://owncloud.org/blog/owncloud-statement-concerning-the-formation-of-nextcloud-by-frank-karlitschek/">a bitter letter</a> trying to blame Karlitschek and the others who'd left for the demise of the company. Open source sausage making at its finest. It also served as a strong hint at just how bad things were inside ownCloud Inc. + +It probably doesn't help that Nextcloud has already released a drop-in replacement for ownCloud, plans to honor ownCloud's enterprise customer contracts for any company that wants to make the switch the Nextcloud. Nextcloud even claims to be working on bringing the laid off ownCloud employees over to Nextcloud (assuming they want to go of course). + +In short, Nextcloud solved most of ownCloud's problems in the time it took ownCloud to write a bitter blog post, which should go a long way to showing why the Nextcloud fork will likely end up the successful fork in the long run -- community support. FOSS is more than just software, it's a way for people to write software and when the people and philosophy behind the project fall out of with its community, the project dies. Or gets forked. + +Nextcloud is just a few weeks old, but it's already got big plans. The first release is more or less just ownCloud in slightly new clothes, but don't expect that to last. If you'd like to check it out you can grab the first release of Nextcloud from the <a href="">Nextcloud site</a>. diff --git a/published/opensourceinsider.txt b/published/opensourceinsider.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4266d9e --- /dev/null +++ b/published/opensourceinsider.txt @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +In all the years I have been using FOSS software the most common complaint I've seen about FOSS software is that the "design" is "terrible", "laughable" or some witticism about forks and eyes. + +What's interesting about this criticism isn't its longevity, that's to be expected since for most of the people registering this complaint what they mean by "bad design" is "I don't like it." And, alas, no software can be everyone's ideal. + +This tends to sidetrack the underlying argument. Since design is not and never will be an objective thing, any argument about "good" or "bad" just spirals down a rabbit hole of personal preference. We all have our tastes. Every time I look at the default Unity desktop I feel like someone is sticking a fork in my eye. + +Taste aside though the Ubuntu desktop is very functional. It works quite well. So to say it's poorly designed is only true by the shallowest definition of the word "design" -- that design is "how it looks." But that's akin to judging personality by looks, books by covers or any number of other things that make no sense. + +It would be an over generalization to say that the people criticizing the "design" of open source software are all Apple users, but let's just say that good many of them appear to have a reverence for things with half eaten fruit emblazoned on them. That's why, in the middle of an article on open source I'm going to quote the patron saint of modern software "designers", Steve Jobs, in defense of open source design. + +In an article about the birth of the iPod, Steve Jobs told [Wired magazine](https://archive.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/10/71956), "most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." + +If that's true -- that design is not just how it looks, in other words, not just about the whims of taste, but how something works, that the totality of the experience is the "design" -- then open source software might be the best designed software in existence. + +After all, FOSS software is everywhere. It forms the backbone of most of the web, underlies most embedded devices in cars, ATMs, phones and cash registers to name but a few things. No one forced anyone to use it for all those things. In fact in many cases people argued very hard to use open source shen a vendor was pushing something else. Open source was simply, presumably, the best designed tool for the job. And today every where you turn open source software is there, which is pretty impressive for something that's supposedly very poorly designed. + +Of course as any user of open source software can tell you, it's not poorly designed at all (sure, there are poorly designed projects), in fact most of it is very functional software that does what people need it to do. + +On the other hand the world is increasingly awash in software that looks very "modern" and "well designed" but is inevitably a functional step backwards from the previous version. In these cases the software in question has typically reached a point of [diminishing returns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns) on innovation and turns instead to "design innovation". See Windows 10 for example. Or iOS 8 and beyond. In fact, it's become something of a joke that the shinier -- which is to say the more noticeable the surface design of something is -- the more likely it is that it works very poorly. + +To paraphrase John Gilmore, I would argue that well designed open source software is actively routing around the damage created by software made to the ideals of the shallower definition of "design" -- that design is how it looks. + +Perhaps the best example of this is on what might be the most over-designed thing in the history of humanity -- the web. Web designers have created a web that often looks great, but almost never works and changes interfaces every time you load a new page. Now there's something to be said for creative expression in UI. I don't know what it is, but I sure there's something. What's strikingly noticeable of a daily basis though is that all these highly designed websites make it increasingly harder to find the information I actually want and accomplish the tasks I'd like to get done. + +I increasingly turn to FOSS software that helps me route around this damage. Here's the thing web designers: I don't want your custom fonts, so I used some open source software ([uBlock Origin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin)) to block them. I don't want your pointless giant images wasting my bandwidth so I blocked them too, and since your layout is so convoluted and clogged with crap I used a "Reader Mode" tool in my open source web browser to simplify things down to the actual content. + +I've even find myself using text based browsers like [w3m](http://w3m.sourceforge.net/) more often. You would not believe how fast the entire internet is when you use w3m. Every page loads nearly instantaneously. The web is actually useful and fun again. There's even images if you want them. + +Deliberately regressing back to text-based browser is not for everyone, though it may become an increasingly popular solution if the "design" of the web continues on its current trajectory. Even if it's only a handful of us using it, the point is it's there: open source software once again routing around design damage. + +The problem isn't always that evil designers are out to ruin everything with [more flair](https://vimeo.com/102830089). Instead I think much of the problem is that the web, like proprietary desktop software, has reached a point of diminishing returns on innovation. It might even have drifted into negative returns. + +If you want to be optimistic you might say that it's a temporary slump of innovation, that something marvelous lies just over the horizon. It's certainly possible. In the mean time, at least there's open source there, well designed and capable of routing around the rest. diff --git a/published/ubuntu-1610b-desktop.jpg b/published/ubuntu-1610b-desktop.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2f3d170 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu-1610b-desktop.jpg diff --git a/published/ubuntu-1610b-software-2.jpg b/published/ubuntu-1610b-software-2.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9793be1 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu-1610b-software-2.jpg diff --git a/published/ubuntu-1610b-software.jpg b/published/ubuntu-1610b-software.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..579015b --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu-1610b-software.jpg diff --git a/published/ubuntu-beta2-review.txt b/published/ubuntu-beta2-review.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..645df29 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu-beta2-review.txt @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +Canonical has rolled out the second beta release of what will, in few short weeks, become Ubuntu 16.10, also known as Yakkety Yak. As as has been the case for the last few release cycles the main Ubuntu branch did not offer a beta one release, though many Ubuntu flavors did. + +Before I dive into what's new in Ubuntu 16.10 let's just get this sentence out of the way: Ubuntu 16.10 will not feature Unity 8 or the new Mir display server. + +I believe that's the seventh time I've written that since Unity 8 was announced. Maybe that's why they named it Unity 8. Whatever the case Unity 8 is available for testing if you'd like to try it. So far I haven't managed to get it working on any of the hardware I have access to, which goes a long way to explaining why it's not part of Ubuntu proper yet. + +Unfortunately without Unity 8 and the accompanying Mir display server, there's not much to get excited about in Ubuntu 16.10. At least the main Unity-based desktop version of Ubuntu. There are some great releases coming from various Ubuntu flavors, notably Ubuntu MATE which will feature the hot off the press MATE 1.6. + +The first things you'll notice if you decide to grab a copy of the 16.10 beta is that the installation disk is considerably larger than it used to be. It could be argued that keeping the ISO down to CD size is an arbitrary limit which, given that CD drives appear to be on their way out, is no longer necessary. But my internet connection has not become any faster since 16.04 and frankly the larger download makes getting Ubuntu that much more difficult -- particularly in places where download speeds are not what they are in the west. + +At the same time, most of the additional space is given over to language packs and the like, not necessarily bloat and additional apps, so perhaps it balances out (if you needed additional language packs anyway). + +Whatever the case, the change appears to be permanent, so chuck your CDs and brew an extra cup of coffee, downloading Ubuntu is going to take a bit longer than it used to. + +Once you get it downloaded and installed the first thing that jumps out at you is that Ubuntu 16.10... looks just like the last 7 releases. Unity 7 remains the default and it has only seen the barest of updates -- bug fixes and security patches only. To find something new in this release you'll have to go spelunking into Ubuntu's set of default applications. + +The most welcome improvements in the default applications come in the new Ubuntu Software app, which made its debut with this spring's Ubuntu 16.04 release. Among the improvements in 16.10 Software are better support for Snap packages as well as support for a variety of things that used to fall outside what Software handled. For example, Software will now track and install non-GUI apps, libraries and fonts alongside your "regular" applications. Software is also noticeably faster when browsing for applications. + +It's the Snap package improvements that are most exciting for users who want to keep up with the latest and greatest. For the uninitiated, Snap packages are self-contained packages that include all of their dependencies. This has two advantages over traditional packages, which pull their dependencies from the system. First it makes it easy to install two applications that depend on different versions of the same dependency since each Snap already contains everything it needs. This is huge win for Ubuntu given how out of date some of the its GNOME packages are. The second big advantage is that it's easier and safer to update your userland software. Which is to say, you can have your LTS release and get your latest and greatest application updates too. Because there's no danger of pulling upgrades that mess up the rest of your system, you can always have the latest software without having to run the bleeding edge of the actual system software. + +The problem with Snap packages in Ubuntu 16.04 is that there aren't very many of them and installing them is a bit of a pain. This release smooths over some of the rough edges and makes installation a bit easier. + +While the improved Software app is one of the main examples of new features in 16.10, most of what's new will also likely be backported to 16.04 LTS. In light of that it's tough to find reasons to recommend you upgrade to 16.10. If some application you rely on isn't working with 16.04, especially something with GNOME dependencies beyond the outdated versions of GNOME software that 16.04 offered, then 16.10 might be worth a look -- most applications in this release will be from GNOME 3.20. + +screenshots: +ubuntu-1610b-desktop.jpg "The default Ubuntu Desktop, looking just as it has in the previous half dozen releases" +ubuntu-1610b-software.jpg "The Ubuntu Software Center is faster and offers support for non-GUI apps." +ubuntu-1610b-software-2.jpg "Elements of Ubuntu on mobile now show up in the desktop, though the homegrown browser didn't actually work in my testing" |
