Posted on July 30, 2010 - by jono
Red Hat, Canonical and GNOME Contributions
Earlier this week at GUADEC, the always affable Dave Neary presented his GNOME Census work. Unfortunately, I was not there to see it, but I read his excellent post on the topic.
One of the reactions from the survey was that Red Hat are responsible for 16% of the contributions to GNOME whereas Canonical are responsible for a measly 1%.
Of course, this has generated some flame, such as a particularly angry post from Greg DeKoenigsberg and the rather pithy response from Jeffrey Stedfast. Greg is clearly pissed, and Jeffrey is clearly pissed at Greg being pissed, and I suspect Greg is going to get even more pissed at Jeffrey being pissed. The worse thing is that they are both going to be pissed at me for this blog post.
First I want to put these figures in perspective and then I want to talk about how we read the figures we do have.
I think the GNOME Census report is excellent, and it provides some excellent visibility into contributions in GNOME, but it only takes into account upstream contributions to GNOME itself. What the report doesn’t take into account are upstream contributions that are built on the GNOME platform but (a) not part of official GNOME modules, and (b) hosted and developed elsewhere, such as Launchpad. As such, while the report is accurate for showing code and contributions accepted into GNOME, there are also many projects built on GNOME technology that are not taken into account due to non-inclusion in GNOME modules or being developed outside of GNOME infrastructure.
As a general rule, Canonical staff develop inside Launchpad. The reason is simple; Launchpad and Bazaar provide a powerful development environment that was also built by Canonical and we therefore have lots of internal skills and best practice based on these tools. Launchpad is also a fundamental component in Ubuntu development and all the software we develop ultimately ships in Ubuntu, so using the same development forge makes sense. Finally, the site is a Free Software and Open Source project, so there really no philosophical reason to move, testified by the 18,000+ Free Software projects happily using Launchpad already.
Canonical is actively developing upstream desktop software, but doing it in Launchpad. Some examples include:
- notify-osd
- Messaging Menu
- Application Indicators
- Indicator Applet
- Indicator Date Time Applet
- Sound Indicator
- Me Menu
- Indicator Global Menu
- Unity
This is by no means the full list, and is other work such as Simple Scan, the Hardware Drivers tool, Computer Janitor, and more. Many of these contributions (such as Application Indicators and Simple Scan) could bring real value to GNOME, but they have not been accepted. I know that the Canonical engineers who work on them would be delighted if they were included in GNOME.
The above list also doesn’t include significant upstream investment in other areas such as Upstart, Bazaar, Launchpad, and a full team building Ubuntu. I don’t want to turn this into a “who contributed more” competition, but I think for some to suggest Canonical is a bad citizen who is not contributing upstream code is unreasonable. To suggest that Canonical has limited code inside approved GNOME modules is fair.
So that was the first thing I wanted to clarify; Canonical does invest heavily in upstream work, but GNOME is not the only home for upstream contributions.
If there is one thing that the GNOME Census has really outlined is that we should all be proud of Red Hat and their contributions to GNOME. You only have to take a look at all the red items on this image to get a feeling for the wonderful work that Red Hat is doing inside GNOME. Novell too. Look the green items in there; Novell has done a wonderful job maintaining many modules inside GNOME. In fact, there are many companies investing inside GNOME modules and inside GNOME infrastructure. I don’t believe it would be fair to undermine these contributions in any way; they are testament to the ethos of those companies and their commitment to GNOME. All of the people working at those companies are doing good work within the spirit of Free Software.
Likewise, I don’t think it is fair to undermine Canonical’s contributions just because many of them exist outside of GNOME. Our engineers are also doing good work within the spirit of Free Software. I have never claimed for a second that Canonical are equal to Red Hat and Novell in terms of our accepted contributions in GNOME; it is clear that there are far few contributions from Canonical staff inside accepted GNOME modules, but this does not for a second mean that Canonical is not (a) producing upstream contributions and (b) heavily invested in the GNOME platform. Ubuntu, our primary product is a GNOME desktop, and the vast majority of our engineers are GNOME users and developers and they work every day on a GNOME based product.
So in a nutshell, this is my take: both Red Hat and Canonical invest heavily in Open Source development, but they do it in different ways and different places. The GNOME Census clearly outlines that within GNOME modules, Red Hat are doing far more, but that doesn’t mean that Canonical are sitting on their thumbs and doing nothing, far from it.
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July 30, 2010
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I’m use Ubuntu on all our companies desktops + 80% of our servers. Redhat have 20% share of the servers and are on track to have 0% by the end of next year.
The reasons?
1) Redhat don’t give us their best work for free. Regardless of their fantastic Engineering talent, which has been built up over many years, I would have to get a free version of the distro through Centos or perhaps Fedora which is another level of complication I don’t need. We can’t afford support on any of our development servers but we can afford support on our live servers. However, we can’t have the test and live servers as a different distro. Why learn two seperate distros and run the risk of incompatabiliy? So, we now develop and launch on Ubuntu which has the same code in both the free and the paid version which is brilliant. Hence, we are phasing out Redhat.
2) As Ubuntu is so good on the desktop (they have ironed out loads of the all important user experience) all our developers use Ubuntu on their desktops at home and at work. So they have much more experience of working with this distro and are better skilled to manage the servers.
Yes, this isn’t code contribution and yes this is clever marketing. But it is good use of Ubuntu resources. They are a growing innovative business with a longterm future. I support them and will keep paying them money. Once they have 10x more engineers than Redhat and are able to build more code, it would be great to look back and laugh at this blog posting
Keep going Ubuntu, you are on the right track and don’t let one angry geek put you off sensible business strategy.
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July 30, 2010
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I know that this is entirely focused on GNOME, commit contributions and sharing the love all around- but there is one subjective (but ultimately IMPORTANT AND SIGNIFICANT) point that is somehow omitted.
If you are to distill the necessity and presence of Ubuntu into what it has done for the upstream- you can always look at it’s spread.
It is basically free marketing, by word of mouth, by excellent execution. It has done a lot for the community by spreading itself (And Linux) out to more people.
I applaud them. Their applets might be obsolete since Gnome 3.0 plans to make applets obsolete (AFAIK)- but is this such an issue in this case?
They tried to submit the applet upstream. Got rejected. On grounds of being useless in the chain of evolution to GNOME, methinks it’s not a problem. Ultimately, I think Canonical will make strides in contributing back as it gains momentum.
The spats people are having on here are fine so long as they don’t pass the ‘debate’ barrier into the ‘FLAME ON! /Fantastic 4′ territory. That’s just counterproductive.
(Note: Sorry. I ramble sometimes. Had a few drinks
)
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July 31, 2010
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And people ask me why I swear by Linux for servers but went back to OSX as my day to day OS……
The point is, as proven by this bickering, there is a huge amount of expectation and pressure on companies to pump resources into the nuts and bolts rather than doing what I actually need as an end user and polishing the front end.
The feeling I get is that it doesn’t matter if I or anyone else ever uses half these projects as long as some people get to sit on a mailing list and compare the size of their patches.
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July 31, 2010
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If all Canonical is going to get is grief about not kissing ass with the GNOME bureaucracy, then I think it’s high time for Ubuntu to shift away from GNOME altogether.
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July 31, 2010
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I’m used to Ubuntu now having switched from Windows XP. I couldn’t stand switching to vista/7, so I’ve finally settled down.
I took a peek at Gnome-Shell, and it looks terrible and noisy. I like one workspace.
I also like widgets, and I would say that feeling is shared by a lot of people with iphones/androids. Widgets make my phone a lot of fun and feels connected with my friends.
I don’t think Ubuntu/Canonical could maintain a fork of Gnome, and if they just fork and stick with a hacked version of Gnome 2.x would be disappointing too… but I wouldn’t use Gnome-Shell if it came with Ubuntu, and thus I wouldn’t use Ubuntu. I’ve used KDE in the past and I didn’t like that either.
I’ve only started reading on this topic today, so my apologizes if i’m sounding naive or misinformed on something.
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July 31, 2010
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Jono,
I applaud you for taking this problem head on.
If Canonical has a difficult time getting code accepted into Gnome, imagine how difficult it must be for those without privileged.
FOSS has for a long time excluded interface designers from making meaningful contributions because designers can’t write code. Only people who commit code get a say in design.
It’s time we move beyond defining contribution as lines of code. It creates a closed environment that promotes sexism and othering.
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August 1, 2010
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I’m saddened when I suggest a UI improvement (tomboy was the latest one) and I get the reponse “please submit patches”. Open Source sucks in that regard.
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August 7, 2010
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So if “Open Source sucks,” what proprietary software just took your designs and implemented them? When you last suggested a UI improvement in Windows, it just got implemented?
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July 31, 2010
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As someone who’s spent over 10 years being a selfish, good for nothing freeloading user who has never contributed a single line of code ( and maybe only 1 bug report) I have to say that this whole conversation seems very amusing. Please bear with my long winded drawl, and don’t take offense, as none is intended!
I’ve always thought that Open source is about solving problems. Generally someone notices something that makes them itch and they solve it and release it, with the idea that it might help someone else. No questions asked, just take it. If it doesn’t scratch your itch fine, modify it and contribute it back. Oh they don’t want it? Fine, we’ll host the changes ourselves (since somebody else may want it.)
So there are basically two kinds of itches to solve out there as the developer (or organization): Yours, and everyone elses’!
GNOME has made an excellent desktop. I’m sure they have a vision of where they want to go with it, and its their right to take it wherever they want to go…
…even if that means right over a cliff. If their organization has that collective itch, more power to them. We should be cheerleaders and express our undying support as they approach their goals. That’s their itch, and they are entitled to scratch it however they want to.
Ubuntu (which I have the WORST time spelling) has an excellent distribution which seems to be trying really hard to make as many end users and potential end users as happy as possible. We should be cheering them on as they strive to scratch their itch too.
Being the selfish, good for nothing, lazy, procrastinating user that I am, I can’t help but notice that one of these groups is actually putting money/time/effort directly into scratching alot of my itches. This group seems to have figured out that users like me don’t demand technical excellence… they just want stuff that works well and is intuitive.
I’m finding it awful hard to complain about someone who’s scratching all my itches.
And I’m certain that no matter what decisions anyone makes down the road, people (and developers) will gravitate to support whatever scratches their itches the most.
Now I know, this discussion seems to be about “who’s pulling their share for the greater good” and all that weighty serious business type stuff, but really… who is the interested party here? Who cares about this? My guess is that the only people who might are the folks putting time/money into Gnome and Ubuntu — which would probably scratch a few self induced itches, but probably doesn’t add any serious itch scratching power to the rest of the people who are “users.”
I think Gnome has alot to learn about what users want from Ubuntu, and I think Gnome needs Ubuntu more than Ubuntu needs Gnome.
It doesn’t matter how many lines of code Cannonical adds to Gnome. What matters is that Cannonical explores how the user interacts with the gnu/linux desktop environment and is willing to go places with it. Ubuntu tries new stuff (like the color purple… ugh) and sure their experiments sometimes dont pan out, but they learn from this, and provide excellent data which should be going to future designs/features. Cannonical’s greatest contribution to Open source is how they are putting the user first instead of the silly software engineer/developer (I include myself in that “silly” group.)
Sorry for the long winded comment, but I just couldn’t let this one go. I shall now go back to being another good for nothing, freeloading, lazy, procrastinating, user. Thanks Cannonical and GNOME.
PS: In the past I’ve always preferred KDE to Gnome when given a choice. Ubuntu is the first Distro to convince me that Gnome is worth using. I now use Ubuntu/Gnome everywhere I can.
I would never have switched to Gnome without Ubuntu.
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July 31, 2010
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Computer Janitor? you must be joking..
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August 1, 2010
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Does Canonical at least ensure the fixes for papercuts are upstreamed?
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August 1, 2010
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@Leif – from what I’ve seen (as an outsider), the papercut fixes are usually submitted upstream.
Though it seems to me that they’re rejected as often as they’re accepted, usually because they’re quick-and-dirty fixes that don’t address what upstream see as the real problem. For example, making minor tweaks to a dialog layout that’s too big for a netbook screen, which upstream reject because they think the whole layout needs work.
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August 1, 2010
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Come on people, look at what the stats are actually for! The stats are NOT showing that 16% of current contributions come from RedHat and 1% of contributions come from Canonical. They are for TOTAL contributions of the past 10 years. Even if it were for current contributions (which many people seem to be assuming), it means that Canonical contributes 1.5X as much as RedHat does, relative to company size.
If we were to assume a flat contribution rate from RedHat and Canonical, then in the past 5 years Canonical would have contributed 1/8th of what RedHat has contributed. This means that relative to the size of the company, Canonical contributes 3x as much as RedHat does.
Come on RedHat! Pick up your game. Be a team player.
In the end, the stats don’t tell us much other than how many commits have been made by various companies over the past 10 years. It’s ironic that those stats are being used for Canonical-bashing, when they actually imply the opposite.
Maybe that’s why they’re so bent out of shape about it? Maybe they’re uncomfortable with the fact that the small new-commer already has a 1% share in contributions, while the big old-timer who’s 25x bigger and been at it twice as long only has a 16% share?
NONE of this is to say that RedHat is not contributing enough or that Canonical is the model team player. I just wanted to show that the stats themselves are not showing Canonical in a bad light at all, but also, that the stats are WOEFULLY INADEQUATE in showing us anything really useful. For all the stats show us, Canonical contributed 100% 10 years ago, and RedHat has since contributed so much that Canoncial’s original 100% share now accounts for just 1%. Or maybe RedHat stopped contributing 5 years ago, and since then Canonical came into being, and only started contributing to GNOME last week. Obviously both scenarios are ridiculous, especially since Canonical didn’t even exist 10 years ago. However, according to the stats given, there’s no way to tell.
Give us some stats on current contribution rates, and we may have something to argue about. Until then, the stats given, put Canonical in a VERY positive light.
Note, the 25x is from Bills comment above. Those complaining about the lack of contributions to other projects, I really don’t understand your logic. Most of what Canonical does is on the user facing side, so naturally, most of their contributions would be to projects like GNOME. On top of that, the stats are practically meaningless unless they’re for current contributions.
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August 2, 2010
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Red Hat might have contributed the highest number of code commits to the GNOME project but Canonical is the one that has productized it and made a contending product in the market.
It is not just about coding. People write crappy code. We users test and report bugs. Only then it changes to a quality product.
I respect Ubuntu for doing an awesome job making GNU/Linux a acceptable item on the desktop/laptop.
Competition is always good. Does not have to be only about code commits. Packaging, Artwork, Integration, QA… a lot of these matter for a successful product.
I think (not just Red Hat) rivals are pissed off of Ubuntu for its blazing fast success rate. Canonical came from no where to the #1 Linux distribution in just 7-8 years. Jealousy is obvious.
Was Novell’s a similar case when they shipped SLES RTOS ?
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August 2, 2010
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It’s still a big fail because if I’m not mistaken, you’re required to have to sign the agreement: http://www.canonical.com/contributors
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August 4, 2010
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Yeah, that is a big fail indeed. Of the software patents, NOT of Canonical. Canonical uses that agreement to make sure no one makes a patent out of someone else’s idea. That happens a lot of times. So Canonical is doing a great job in that
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August 6, 2010
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I am a happy Ubuntu user and defend the very good work done by Canonical. Perhaps RedHat is just jealous of the popularity that has managed to get a distribution like Ubuntu over the years! Not see why there should be war between allies in a game where the enemies are others. Apart from that I do not think I’ll change my opinion ever. Ubuntu will always be my favorite Linux distribution
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August 17, 2010
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I love my Ubuntu, I have managed to get everyone in the house running Ubuntu. The project lead Mark is South African, Ubuntu is an African philosophy that I believe has a lot of value in this “me” world that we live in. For people to be pissed at Canonical for code seems useless if it weren’t for them Linux popularity would be less than what it is. And I have tried other distro’s but Ubuntu is it, really do a comparison test for ordinary end users that want something that just works. Maybe they should do away with KDE and GNOME and start afresh. We can do with a system built from the ground up by Canonical I like their style it works. I wouldn’t be here making this comment if it weren’t for Ubuntu, Open source does not need a “me” culture. Thanks to everyone that has empowered me to getting thus far, I applaud the community for all the hard work they put into this great software that we get to use on a daily basis but in the long run the end user is KING and we all have something to learn from companies that are able to champion this cause!
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August 23, 2010
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Well said Jono. This is why I am so proud of an Ubuntu user and in my small world brought along six others. Other OS’s will work fine on my desktop, however, it is for other reasons I use Ubuntu. It is these other reasons that are important to me. Jono, people like yourself, are part of that.