Why is that? I don't see any evidence of mass users leaving Ubuntu anytime lately. Only minor whining on nerd forums about the default desktop and other quibbles.
It's not sustainable because the type of people who are generally attracted to something like Linux are the very people Mark just insulted. The facts are clear: the average computer user doesn't care about an operating system that much. It's a means to an end. Most people are just using their OS as a portal to access media anyway so they really don't care.
Yes Canonical/Ubuntu has brought in a lot of new users but the simple fact is if you want the platform to keep advancing you need geeks. Suzy soccer mom and Bob the casual user are a great audience to attract but they aren't going to writing the next breakthrough software or fixing major bugs. They might bring money to fund the development and that's great, but once you shut us out we'll go to another distro and make that one better.
If he was a true leader he would diplomatically find a way to attract the widest audience possible. By intentionally provoking the same people who built Linux he's just ensuring that someday they'll move to something else that will blow them out of the water.
He is searching for the widest audience possible...and that is the soccer moms like you mention, not the nerds that care about the 1% of features 99% of their target audience had no need for. He is basically saying that it doesn't work to have 100k people's input from all backgrounds and opinions on a project like Ubuntu because nothing will ever get accomplished.
Which is a perfectly reasonable assumption in my view if you want to put out a polished product, which Linux has had a very hard time doing since inception. No one complains that Apple didnt have a committee of 10k Apple users vote on how the latest version of OSX should have been implemented. Shuttleworth is trying to do the same.
I'm not sure why everyone is so upset by this. I think people just believe if anything involves Linux they think they should have an opinion in the matter no matter what the project is, which for Ubuntu isn't the most efficient way of moving the project forward.
You make a good point, but the OSX comparison doesn't work. Apple practically invented the smooth user experience and they design based on feedback and studies, not being arrogant and forcing change for the sake of change.
When you boil it down, it's pretty simple. Unity sucks, taking away the users ability to configure sucks, but they've made the stand and don't want to back down because it's the only way they can differentiate themselves from other distributions. Why? Because different, not because better.
