It's a bit sparse maybe. And as "early" adopters, we probably don't care about the social crap etc. But as long as I can yank those packages whenever I want, I'm fine with that.
What I'm really excited about this time around is the launch of Ubuntu Touch, being able to use an open-source OS on my mobile phone.
You can do that now with Firefox OS, and unlike Ubuntu Touch, it's actually developed openly. Ubuntu for phones is open source in the same sense as Android -- developed behind closed doors by a company that doesn't particularly care about community input.
If you think that Ubuntu for phones is really going to be any more open than Android, I expect you'll be disappointed.
> All the Ubuntu Touch specs are public and discussed during a public developer summit online.
Interesting. Can you point me to the online discussion of Mir that took place during the first six months of its development?
> Nearly all of the core apps shipping on the image are community contributed.
... With a mandatory CLA that allows my open-source contributions to be used under a proprietary license by Canonical. See the detailed explanation here [1] on why this is such a big deal.
> seriously there's no need to go around making things up about another OSS project.
The irony of hearing that statement going in the other direction after Canonical's handling of the Mir/Wayland debacle is truly precious. My criticism isn't about promoting FFOS, it's about calling Canonical out on their bad behaviour.
> Interesting. Can you point me to the online discussion of Mir that took place during the first six months of its development?
Ubuntu Touch switched to Mir a week ago and was using SurfaceFlinger up until then.
Sure Mir began life as a close proof of concept but has been OSSed for a long time now, certainly long enough to see if it was a good fit for Ubuntu Touch. We could argue whether Mir is now part of Ubuntu Touch or just a component of it but that's just arguing semantics.
> ... With a mandatory CLA that allows my open-source contributions to be used under a proprietary license by Canonical. See the detailed explanation here [1] on why this is such a big deal.
If you don't like signing a CLA you don't have to sign it. You don't have to contribute if you don't want to. You're also free to fork any of the CLA'ed software as you see fit.
> The irony of hearing that statement going in the other direction after Canonical's handling of the Mir/Wayland debacle is truly precious.
Wayland isn't a fit for Ubuntu. In order to deliver the things we want in time for 14.04/14.10 we prefer to maintain our own stack. That's not being any less open than anyone else, it's just how it is, shrug.
What I'm really excited about this time around is the launch of Ubuntu Touch, being able to use an open-source OS on my mobile phone.