Is Canonical getting "Neroed"?

[Liam Proven]

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 8:58 PM, Michael Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Neroed" is a term me and my friends created based on what happened to
> the creators of Nero Burning ROMs.  A company that is "Neroed" started
> out small with a great product that was a joy to use, but eventually
> as they became successful the quality of their product began to
> degrade into the bloated difficult piece of crap it is today.  When we
> say a company is "Neroed", we mean its become so big and successful
> that they don't really care about quality anymore.  Apple is one good
> example of a Neroed company.  Micro$oft became Neroed some time ago.
> My friend considers Youtube to be Neroed.

It's more usually called feeping creaturism, a Spoonerism on "creeping
featurism", and what it results in is bloatware. Not to argue in any
way, but there is no need for a new term.

> Mark Shuttleworth's recent comments to the community concerning the
> new UI design for Ubuntu 10.04 (which I don't have a problem with) and
> many of the inexplicable changes made to Ubuntu in previous releases
> (ie; removal of the monitor hardware selection screen from the screen
> resolution window for instance) has me really concerned.  Has
> Canonical let success get to their heads?  The snarky "this is not a
> democracy" comment by Mark Shuttleworth, which is really hypocritical
> coming from a man who dislikes such corporate dictatorship, should be
> setting off alarms in every person who uses Ubuntu and Linux in
> general.

It's a bit unpalatable, but he's right. He's paying the bills, he's
the (benevolent) dictator-for-life, it's his toy and he can do
whatever he wants with it.

Twas ever thus.

> Is Canonical getting "Neroed"?  I think it is, and I think the
> community needs to get its head out of its collective ass and stand up
> for the principles upon which the distro was created.

I think they are. Ubuntu was created to pull Debian out of /its/
developer-group's collective ass and take this world-class Linux
distro and make it usable by mere humans.

The objective of Ubuntu is to create a desktop Linux that is as
polished and smooth and easy and friendly as it can be, at least as
good as Mac OS X but running on mass-market hardware.

It isn't to run on as many architectures as possible (like NetBSD). It
isn't to support anything that can usefully run Unix or for which
somebody wants a Linux OS (that's Debian). It isn't about freedom of
choice (also Debian.) It isn't about keeping it simple and basic and
traditional Unix-like; that's Slackware. It isn't about an
enterprise-grade Linux for large enterprises; that's Red Hat and SUSE.
It isn't about something pretty, simple and colourful with a wide
range of components and editions, where the full-on edition is
commercial - which rather nebulous statement is about the best summary
I can come up with for Mandriva.

And so on.

No, it's Shuttleworth's personal attempt to make Linux easy enough for
everyman, by saying "these are the core components, this is what it
looks like, we run on x86 and x86-64, it costs you nothing, now like
it or lump it".

Fortunately, apart from his remarkable generosity, he also has
welcomed splitters, forkers, branchers, and all manner of awkward
ungrateful types who don't like their free toy and think they can do
better. He graciously allows all manner of people to take his work and
tweak it. He just restricts usage of the name.

So we have specific-purpose remixes like Edubuntu, with which I have no issue.

Then there are second-class citizens like Kubuntu or Xubuntu. These
remove the hand-tuned GNOME interface, bolt on a pretty generic build
of less-polished interfaces, don't bother with custom themes, and slap
it out there and hope it flies.

KDE is a lot less polished than GNOME and the Kubuntu people can't
even be bothered to provide a theme for it so it looks like Ubuntu.
Nope, the default ugly greys-and-blues is what you get. Here kid, have
 a wallpaper.

Xubuntu is similar, not actually any lighter or faster than proper
GNOME Ubuntu and rather less featureful.

Personally, I think he should strip them of their special "we've been
around so long we get to use a tweaked Ubuntu name" status and set
standards of integration and polish for them to live up to.

As in, "sure, you can call yourself 'Ubuntu KDE Remix' or 'Ubuntu Xfce
remix", but I want to see a version of the Human theme, matching
wallpapers etc., and complete functional parity."

As it is, these not-quite-equals dilute the Ubuntu brand.

Ubuntu means Debian, GNOME, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc.; it means one
best-of-breed app choice per category, best-effort-to-perfection
compatibility with the modern Internet of Micros~1 apps and tools, and
the best godsdamned fit, finish, polish and integration in the Linux
industry, and if your personal respin can't match that, it should not
be called any version of Ubuntu. I don't think Kubuntu or Xubuntu
match up to that, for a start.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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