I’m here at UDS and I must say it’s a great atmosphere. I’m very much enjoying my time here and getting a chance to talk to some great minds about where ayatana is going and how it’ll be getting there. I’d really like to thank Mark, Jorge, David Barth and anyone else I haven’t mentioned who were involved in getting me here as it’s a great experience to meet people you’ve been working with face to face.
People ask, what are you doing for canonical?
?My current work involves improving the keyboard preferences and keyboard indicator, as well as getting involved in many of the other indicator bugs. Effectively, what we’re working on with keyboard is a merging of the current mess of preferences capplets. These include;
- Keyboard preferences
- Input Method Switcher
- Keyboard Input Methods
- Keyboard Shortcuts
Having 4 separate capplets is confusing, and it makes it difficult for users to figure out what they need to do just so they can type in their own language. The current path is based on the idea of having Keyboard Input Profiles, each profile consists of a Keyboard Layout, an optional Keyboard Input Method (using ibus) and the Input Method options. What we’re looking to do here is to provide a single place which is sensibly designed, has improvements to usability and utility, as well as reducing the number of capplets and the removal the separate ibus indicator which happens as a result of the merging of the preferences UI’s and the introduction of the Input Profiles.
There’s information on a wiki page detailing this work here. Including some mockups and a full explanation of what needs to be done. Feedback welcome.
We have a Keyboard Menu session tomorrow at 9am, and I’d like to appeal to any ibus users here to come, discuss, rant and rave so I can get a better understanding of what it is they want. Even if you’re not here, we’ve got IRC in each of the rooms so we can see your questions, and streaming audio so you can hear the discussion.
The elephant in the room
Ok, so unity as the default on the desktop? People have a problem with this? Why? For heavens sake, isn’t it time we stopped fighting amongst ourselves on items which can become religious issues? Really, it’s time this community got a grip and accepted competition rather than denouncing it.
In-fighting never helped any disruptive social group, for instance, ever wonder why animal rights protesters don’t really get much done? It’s simple, it’s because some of them think it’s OK to dig up human corpses, and others that it’s just not cool to wear fur. More extremist people try and force the less extremist people to follow their views (See numerous debates on GNU/Linux or, well, a hell of a lot of other subjects, but I’m sure you get the point).
There’s much much more I could say about the subject of extremism and how it works in society and how it becomes a force for bad rather than a force for good, if you’re religious about free software, you’ve already missed the point about disruptive technology. If you think you can change things by criticising a free software user because e.g. they own a Mac, then you’ve got the wrong idea entirely.
Something that’s really really hard to do
Building a free software desktop is something that is really really hard to do, this is something that lefty pointed out recently. He’s most certainly right in his overall analysis. However, to agree with him in one sense but disagree in another is to say, that what it takes to build a free software desktop is dedication, continuity and direction.
Ubuntu has all three of these things going for them, unity isn’t being created purely so they can compete with the GNOME shell, it’s being created so they can direct themselves without waiting any longer. So they can direct themselves toward a product not a simply linux distribution. So they can put Linux and GNOME in the hands of millions more people than is possible when you’re religious about software freedom, and won’t ship drivers, codecs and other bits and pieces that users actually NEED in order to do their work.
If you think it’s OK to substitute user satisfaction with a moral code then you’ll never be able to penetrate the market of the desktop operating system. If you realise that you have to make compromises on your own moral code in order to improve everyone’s experience with computing, then you’re on the right track.
The sum up
- Extremism = BAD, if you think digging up a dead person to prove a point about guinea pigs is OK, get your head looked at!
- Moral High Ground - Doesn’t convince ANYBODY, everybody lives in a glass house, stop throwing stones!
- Competition = GOOD, if you don’t like unity, make something better, get involved in competing projects and push things forward rather than back.
- If you want to change peoples perception about software, and show them a better way, don’t fight with the people who share the same views, fight with those who oppose you. I know it’s easy to avoid this because enemies are scary things when you only see them from afar, and it’s much easier to create enemies closer to home.
Hi,
as to keyboard indicator and this mockup: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KeyboardSettings?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=gsd-indicator.png
“About” is really not needed here. This indicator is/will be perceived as a part of desktop/shell. Not as standalone application – that is why user is a) not expecting “About” dialog here b) and also it is not needed here.
We will nevertheless remember that you improved this part of our desktop, really “about” dialog is not needed
btw. generally those mockups look really godd, congrats
It’s not “extremist” to point out that Canonical hasn’t even *attempted* a token effort at cooperation. There aren’t any actual disagreements because they never actually showed up to any design meetings with any intention other than observing. To have Mark suggest to the press that they approached the Shell community at all is a bald-faced lie. There has been from Canonical: no mention of performance concerns, no cooperation on design elements, no code, and no bug reports.
What I would like to see is a future where Mark and Canonical stop claiming credit for work they didn’t do and start being a good community member–showing up to hack-fests, for example, with a good-faith effort at trying to reach consensus.
Similar to what jdub said, it appears Mark is only interested in differentiation as a business strategy.
Hey Karl,
I wouldn’t have any trouble with Canonical using Unit if contributing to Unity didn’t require assignment of your copyright to Canonical.
When assigning individual contributions to Canonical, users give up their rights to their own contributions. Thus, there is nothing to prevent Canonical from relicensing the project under a proprietary license at a later time.
I don’t think Mark, Matt Asay, or whoever else would do this, but who’s to say where Ubuntu/Canonical will end up in 10-15 years. Canonical could be bought, and then the funders could do what they want with the code.
I see this as a practical concern. Also, bear in mind that Gnome, Debian, Nokia (with respect to Qt and Meego), Fedora / Red Hat, and Novell do not require similar contributor agreements.
If Canonical didn’t have those kind of contributor-agreement requriements, I would have no trouble with them using Unity instead of Gnome Shell. To me, with these kind of contributor agreements in place, though, it casts a shadow over any community involvement.
Care to actually point out any instances of extremism related to this issue? I’ve seen people that are disappointed and upset with Canonical for essentially abandoning contribution to GNOME as an upstream project, but that’s about it. For you to come up with a completely outlandish and over-the-top comparison based on so little evidence of actual extremism is quite bizarre, to be honest.
From Jono, he’s apparently having trouble with proxies.
Hi Jason,
There are some inaccuracies in your comments, highlighted below:
“It’s not “extremist” to point out that Canonical hasn’t even
*attempted* a token effort at cooperation.”
That is untrue. Canonical have worked with GNOME extensively over the
years, and the Ayatana technology has been proposed to GNOME for
inclusion, but it was rejected. Mark has made it clear that he would
love Unity to be part of GNOME.
“There has been from Canonical: no mention of performance concerns, no
cooperation on design elements, no code, and no bug reports.”
Mark highlighted performance concerns in his keynote, and we have been
focusing more and more on design team community growth in the last six
months. The perf issues is the reason we are porting Unity to compiz.
“What I would like to see is a future where Mark and Canonical stop
claiming credit for work they didn’t do and start being a good
community member–showing up to hack-fests, for example, with a
good-faith effort at trying to reach consensus.”
Canonical have sent significant numbers of developers to GUADEC, we
hosted the UX hackfest, and always send devs to the GTK hackfests.
Also, we don’t claim credit for other people’s work – can you give me
examples of where we have done?
“Similar to what jdub said, it appears Mark is only interested in
differentiation as a business strategy.”
Is differentiation a bad thing? While I agree that collaboration is at
the heart of Open Source…being different is a *good* thing.
Thanks,
Jono
@Jonner, there are many examples on identi.ca I believe, but where’s the comparison exactly? Did you read what I wrote? I asked the question, “ever wonder why animal rights protesters don’t really get much done?” – If you read it correctly then you’d see that it’s actually a statement regarding in-fighting not an accusation of extremism, I want to prevent people from drawing lines here and _BECOMING_ extremist.
People who get involved in in-fighting are too cowardly to confront any real enemy. e.g. proprietary software companies which force you to sign a EULA which takes your soul away.
Here, canonical are confronting the competitors head on, they’re making inroads and have OEMs behind them.
It’s great the work that canonical is doing, and if you want to argue with them about it then you’re arguing with the wrong people.
Why not direct attention towards someone a little more evil and controlling in the software ecosystem rather than kicking it to ubuntu because they’re a soft target?
There are no enemies amongst us, other than the enemies we choose to create.
@Osmo, goot point re: the indicator, I think that the about thing is from the ibus stuff, I just threw it in there.
I know there are a couple of other errors in the UI designs but these designs will be the basis of the code I write.
Looks good!
* The vertical bar/pixel stripe carries no information, think of tufte!
* Reset as a label on a button? Seems a bit harsh/dangerous, i think some variation on ‘revert…’ is better and used elsewhere?
Also, it seems fitting the keyboard layout is the hard problem when minimizing the number of tabs. Maybe put it as a seperate window? It can also serve as pretty great feature when learning shortcuts. That is, a keyboard layout viewer has a use case where you have no intention of switching keyboard layout. The key idea is that the keys change dynamicly when a modifier is pressed. Ask someone with a mac if my explanation is poor
http://www.google.com/images?rls=en&q=keyboard+viewer
Push the code upstream! Even if the bits with indicator applet requires another solution
“Those who would fight monsters should be careful that they do not become monsters themselves in the process.”—Friedrich Nietzsche
@Frej, I fully intend to push this upstream and do my best to make sure it sits well there.
On your points
1, Yeah, a title on the right side panel would probably be helpful to indicate what it is. This will be a plugin (hopefully in the first release, if not then by the second) and so the plugin will need a few properties probably in an xml file which indicate it’s name and the title can come from there.
2. Reset is a bad word, it is the word currently used, and revert is a better choice, nice catch I’ll use it
The keyboard layout is in a separate window which is opened when add or edit is clicked (currently there’s no way to edit, but we need one for this proposal), as stated in the drawings when a modifier key is pressed the keyboard changes to reflect what that modifier will do to the keys.
I can see that maybe when a known shortcut combination is pressed and the layout is open, maybe it indicates what that shortcut combination does? Does that sound good to you?
Just to be sure I have a fair view of history…
Can someone point to a public archived discussion of a proposal to include an Ayatana developed technology into GNOME that did not agreeing to copyright contribution to Canonical?
-jef
Karl: you might want to check the official position of your employer before decrying the perils of being ‘religious’ about software freedom.
http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy
Choice quotes:
“We believe that every computer user: Should have the freedom to download, run, copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for any purpose, without paying licensing fees.”
“Ubuntu software is free. Always was, always will be. Free software gives everyone the freedom to use it however they want and share with whoever they like. This freedom has huge benefits. At one end of the spectrum it enables the Ubuntu community to grow and share its collective experience and expertise to continually improve all things Ubuntu. At the other, we are able to give access to essential software for those who couldn’t otherwise afford it – an advantage that’s keenly felt by individuals and organisations all over the world.”
Sounds pretty ‘religious’ to me. Admittedly, they’ve recently added this rather disappointing bit to the ‘Licensing’ page:
“All of the application software installed by default is free software. In addition, we install some hardware drivers that are available only in binary format, but such packages are clearly marked in the restricted component.”
Ah well. But note that it does not cover “codecs” (quotation from your post). As I read it, Ubuntu is bound by its own commitments *not* to ship non-free codecs by default; your own project is committed to shipping only F/OSS software by default, excepting only ‘hardware drivers’.
Say hi to dbarth for me, BTW.
@Adam, I get your point, and well made it is, maybe what I should have said was religiously defensive. The point here is that people screaming that something is wrong isn’t helpful to anyone, crazily accusing others of being non-free etc is an old debate which isn’t helpful.
I truly believe in having a good free-software driven moral code, but then I also believe it’s not helpful for people to denounce others. Like catholics vs. protestants no-one wins.
Great!, sorry about asking, but with current climate I think spelling everything out, even if obvious helps
.
Other than than it sounds good, tbh i just skimmed the wiki page
About the keyboard viewer, i found a video:
Found a video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqXxVFAxSgI