Mark Shuttleworth lashes out at irrational free software folks

Posted on Monday, April 10 2017 @ 13:41 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
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Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth unleashed a fight in the free software community as he made several bitter comments in response to all the hate he's seeing, in particular about the past debate about Ubuntu's controversial Mir display server. Very colorful remarks you don't often see from high-level executives.
“The whole Mir hate-fest boggled my mind,” he wrote,” it's free software that does something invisible really well. It became a political topic as irrational as climate change or gun control, where being on one side or the other was a sign of tribal allegiance.”

Shuttleworth thinks that was bad because “We have a problem in the community when people choose to hate free software instead of loving that someone cares enough to take their life's work and make it freely available.”

“I came to be disgusted with the hate on Mir. Really, it changed my opinion of the free software community.”

“I used to think that it was a privilege to serve people who also loved the idea of service, but now I think many members of the free software community are just deeply anti-social types who love to hate on whatever is mainstream.”

“When Windows was mainstream they hated on it. Rationally, Windows does many things well and deserves respect for those. And when Canonical went mainstream, it became the focus of irrational hatred too. The very same muppets would write about how terrible it was that IOS/Android had no competition and then how terrible it was that Canonical was investing in (free software!<) compositing and convergence.”

The comment concludes with three words of profane and terse criticism: “Fuck that shit.”
Via: The Register


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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