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| Ubuntu asks for donations |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-10-10 22:37:21 |
| Donating to software projects - or, more accurately, open source projects. It's hardly new, it's hardly rare, and I'm sure most of us have donated at some point. That's probably why Canonical has opened Ubuntu up for donations - but with a twist. |
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| Humble Ubuntu Bundle |
| By rklrkl on 2012-10-10 22:46:00 |
|
Hmmm, well it's worse than Fedora and I pay nothing for that, so can I slide the amounts to -$2 each and get them to pay me $16 for running it? :-) One of the options should be "put back the GNOME 2 desktop as it was" - I might have even chipped in to do that! |
 - Score: 8 |
| Comment by joekiser |
| By joekiser on 2012-10-10 23:10:42 |
|
Interesting strategy. Since Canonical is a private company, there is currently no way for Ubuntu stakeholders (users) to control the path of their operating system. Currently, people who have strong relationships with Ubuntu as a product have only two options: 1) rant/rave about changes to the OS in blogs or forums or 2) fork Ubuntu. The problem with the first choice is that it is passive-aggressive; it does not have enough sway to ultimately change the OS in one way or the other, and there is no way to differentiate between genuine user concerns and Ubuntu-hating trolls. The problem with the second choice (forking) is that it is very resource-intensive (actually duplicates resources), and does not guarantee that the entire user base will follow suit (see: Linux Mint). Accepting donations and allowing the users to funnel them into different projects allows Canonical to objectively see what users really want the end product to look like. I think it's a brilliant strategy. The FreeBSD foundation does something similar, although it is more along the lines of "give us suggestions" rather than "this is where your money is going to go". When I donated two years ago, I wanted to see the money go to the KMS project, for example, but I have no idea if that really happened that way or if the $$$ just went into a general fund. |
| - Score: 7 |
| Hmm... |
| By gan17 on 2012-10-10 23:14:43 |
|
Haven't used Ubuntu in a few years. I'd probably donate a small amount if they had a "Isle of Man TT hospitality" option, though. Edited 2012-10-10 23:15 UTC |
| - Score: 4 |
| Comment by Luminair |
| By Luminair on 2012-10-10 23:24:38 |
| voting for things you want? is this real democracy? |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Comment by joekiser |
| By woegjiub on 2012-10-10 23:27:28 |
|
I feel that it is very much a good thing that users do not have a direct say in what canonical does, as if they did, they would probably still be running gmome2 or cinnamon, and I *despised* gnome2. Unity is what made me finally swap to Linux, after years of going back and forth, drooling over KDE features.Nowadays, I refuse to use a desktop without searchable menus instead of the old heirachical model. Point is, those who yell the loudest are not necessarily always representative of every user, and if they had their say, I wouldn't be using this lovely, keyboard-based UI, but would be stuck waving a dammed mouse around every time I wanted to open a file or application, or access a non-hotkeyed menu item, like opening a VPN connection. |
| - Score: 5 |
| Stop Amazon Advertisments... |
| By jello on 2012-10-10 23:32:16 |
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If my money would actually reverse some decisions they already made... Even in the future they will make decisions/implementations without putting them on a voting list. |
| - Score: 4 |
| But why Ubuntu? |
| By Morgan on 2012-10-10 23:36:46 |
|
Ubuntu is, as the article suggests, a project with several revenue streams to begin with. And let's face it: One of the biggest reasons people run F/OSS software is not because of the philosophy but because it is freely available. Given that a few other distros have done almost as much as Ubuntu to push GNU/Linux forward without a steady revenue stream makes me think we should be "donating" elsewhere. Take Slackware, for example. The oldest surviving distro, barely more than a one-man operation the entire time, and yet Pat has managed to not only survive but make a modest living doing nothing but maintaining Slackware. It is perhaps the most stable and unchanging distro out there; it is often said that you can leave the project in version 9 or 10 and pick it back up at -current with barely a hiccup. I'm living proof of that: I recently went back to Slackware with the release of 14, and I'm immediately at home. Even more, for once I actually like KDE enough now to use it daily. Will I be buying a box set from Slackware.com? You bet your ass I will! And I will be donating to the KDE SC project as well, since I now get a hell of a lot of work done in it. But I don't expect Pat or the KDE maintainers to make changes just because I paid for their beer this week. I'm content to trust them to continue the great work they do. I think this is a bad idea for Ubuntu, and while it may just be an attempt to "keep it real" to the F/OSS users out there who do value openness above price, it also seems just a bit disingenuous. I have to wonder how much of my money would really go towards the area of improvement I want it to. I'm guessing it's more of a slightly underhanded way to gauge which areas of the OS people want improved the most, and the money is just one more revenue stream for the project. And don't get me wrong: I don't think really big, successful projects like Ubuntu should go without funding. After all, for it to be as good a project as it is (and let's be honest, it's the most forked/expanded upon modern distro for good reason), it must have the money to pay for support and development. I'm just saying I'd love to see the donated money instead go to Debian. After all, Ubuntu owes its very existence to that particular project. |
| - Score: 11 |
| Comment by shmerl |
| By shmerl on 2012-10-10 23:53:21 |
|
Better collaboration with Debian definitely. > Phone and tablet versions of Ubuntu This is important too, if by that they also mean pushing hardware manufacturers to make Linux drivers since it benefits all mobile distros, not just Ubuntu. Edited 2012-10-10 23:54 UTC |
| - Score: 3 |
| Ubuntu.. nope |
| By _xmv on 2012-10-11 00:54:30 |
|
"there are loads of distributions and software projects that do more with less. " So yeah. The only thing it seems to have brought the Linux world with would be... - making people release software that compile only on ubuntu by default - making people release software that only works on ubuntu (incl. proprietary software) - making unity All of which are terrible things. Fuck you, Ubuntu :) I'd donate to projects which provide BETTER stuff with zero financial backing. Like ArchLinux. I'm donating right now. Thank you Ubuntu.: http://www.archlinux.org/donate/ |
| - Score: 7 |
| Unity |
| By Lorin on 2012-10-11 01:05:37 |
| It had some value but since they put that monstrosity called Unity in, they should pay me to use. |
| - Score: 5 |
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