Let me come out and say: I support Mark’s post. I think everyone making a huge deal of this needs to take a step back and relax. You guys are just drama queening (yes I just made that a verb). Every word said isn’t life or death, and as mature individuals we all need to let certain things just roll off. I believe most OpenSuSE developers are rational people with independent thought, and no doubt if it said something to offend them, could move past it just as easily.
People that are overreacting to this are just fostering a hyper-sensitive community, which in the end could never hope to achieve productivity, nor be competitive.
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#1 by apokryphos on November 25, 2006 - 11:38 pm
Are you serious? Do you genuinely think it’s appropriate to go into another project’s list, spam+quasi-troll on it, and tell the developers to leave their project and to come and join your’s? His blog post was cheeky enough, but to post on the opensuse list with such a tone, and such a pretense is completely unjustifiable.
It’s obviously not hypersensitivity when it’s obviously the consensus that it’s patently not “the done action”. For one, it’s completely wrong — trying to “win over” developers from another distribution in Linux is insane. We work together, we post things upstream, that’s how it works. See Andreas’ post.
#2 by sharms on November 25, 2006 - 11:51 pm
Mark was extending a hand to those who were disenfranchised by the whole novell / microsoft issue. Quick, everyone get upset! That is very rational. If SuSe is indeed fine, and not affected by the said deal, then there is no issue.
Sounds to me like some people are just very insecure.
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#3 by a7p on November 26, 2006 - 1:39 am
Full ACK – I think those feeling offended by Marks (very respectful) posting got are really afraid of losing money from their freshly bought Novell stocks – calm down relax (I don’t own any *g*). In my opinion the M$-Novell deal is clearly against the spirit of the GPL (but not against the word of version 2). So it is the right of the GNU-people to feel betrayed – Marks posting was really harmless.
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#4 by Turtle.net on November 26, 2006 - 4:07 am
And if you read carefuly the letter he wrote … i definetly never said anything shocking. Its just his point of view and he is proposing to people to go and see what Ubuntu is doing …
Are we becoming a community in which you are not allowed to say and write what you think ?
#5 by apokryphos on November 26, 2006 - 10:43 am
Nice one. You addressed………none of my points. SUSE guys ARE annoyed about this; Ubuntu guys ARE annoyed about this; in fact, most of the Linux community is annoyed by this. It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.
It is, in no way at all, justifiable to say that Novell did some uncalled for actions, so Mark’s entitled to act in this way. That’s silly.
Also — check your definition of insecure. How exactly do you make the non sequitur that those who are unhappy with this deal are insecure? Following a leader blindly is useless. There’s no problem with feeling some loyalty to a leader, but leaders only get worse when they’re not guided.
#6 by sharms on November 26, 2006 - 4:58 pm
For the sake of clarification, saying that I think people need to relax on the issue != blindly agreeing with what Mark says. I have no vested interest in seeing Mark succeed.
#7 by Adam Kruszewski on November 26, 2006 - 8:09 pm
Well said. People tend to overreact in many cases, but it would be better for them to spend that energy writing code or something other than writting those hundreads of mails/blog posts (or blog comments
).
cheers,
a.
#8 by Mike on November 27, 2006 - 1:50 am
Here, here!
#9 by Meneer R on November 27, 2006 - 5:14 am
Yes. The discussions of Mark’s post or the binary drivers sound most like a buch of fascist fundamentalistic muslims. Replace Alah with Mark, replace Scripture with Open Source, replace Jihad with the holy open source war and get same discussion.
People, grow up. When Mr. Shuttleworth says something you don’t like. Disagree with it, fine!. But when you go to discuss where and when Mr. Shuttleworth has the right to express his opinion. Go Play With Yourself.
He aint god and neither are you. You are not going to like everything he did in the past, and you are not going to like everything he will do in the future. I am not going to like everything you did in the past, nor everything you will do in the future. This is the way things should be.
Please, kill the priests to save the religion.
#10 by Ubuntu Tutorials on November 27, 2006 - 5:25 am
Although I understand how people could get upset over this matter I’m sure Mark’s post was not meant to be offensive at all. He’s a great guy and I am sure he didn’t mean to be malicious.
My thoughts on the matter? Let’s try to remember we’re all on the same team here. I see us as a widely spread community of developers. We ALL benefits from EVERYONE’s work. Really I see it as the definition of the word Ubuntu. “We are who we are because of all of us.” If we start blacklisting distributions or developers or teams we will ALL suffer.
If we continue to fight over things we’ll continue to grow divided and the M$-Novell deal will hold that much more power over us. If we put it behind us, work together and continue to build the most powerful operating system on the planet we have nothing to fear. We have to stay united though (and by united I mean a global FOSS community, not united distribution) or it will all be for naught.
#11 by jon on November 27, 2006 - 11:09 am
nicely said.
#12 by Nathan DBB on November 28, 2006 - 9:35 pm
A hyper-sensitive community is a problem in more then one open source project, and it can be crippling.
While Mark Shuttleworth was harsh in posting to their lists, he was right. When you help SUSE/OpenSUSE, you are helping Novell. OpenSUSE and Novell are not the same thing, but their fortunes are linked. If you make packages, write documentation, or help on forums with OpenSUSE, you are making Novell’s investment more valuable.
Drop SUSE now and drive the point home by taking down any HowTo’s, help pages, or packages you may have made. I hope this reaction is not hyper-sensitive, but how can we send Novell a painful message?