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0 pointsjzb3y ago0 comments

Upstart’s CLA was a non-starter.

Canonical has quite a history of the behavior you're dinging Red Hat for: Mir, Unity, LXD, Juju/Charms, Launchpad, and I'm sure I'm forgetting several.

Also it’s Orwellianly named “Harmony” effort to popularize CLAs because Canonical has long sought to control upstream technologies - and consistently failed because they do not play well with others.

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BossingAround3y ago

Just to add to those wondering, CLA = Contributor License Agreement.

jzbOP3y ago

Ah, yes. Thank you - sorry for assuming on that one. I tend to get lazy when replying on my phone...

necovek3y ago

Sure, I have acknowledged there are plenty of missteps by Canonical too.

Though I don't think CLAs are a problem (FSF requires them for GNU projects too), but lack of committment not to switch to a non-free license.

Unity happened as GNOME 3.0 already went in an entirely different direction (mostly led by RH engineers) from 2.x series and as Canonical simply couldn't influence GNOME design. With a paradigm shift one way or another, it was a sensible move.

Launchpad was created as a tool to develop Ubuntu and free software: there was nothing else (and there still isn't) quite like it. Sure, it took a while to get it open sourced, but lack of contributions afterwards kinda proved the point that that wasn't really important (I mean, GitHub wasn't and still isn't).

Mir/LXD/Juju were attempts to improve on the incumbents (Wayland/Docker mostly).

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