Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog

Bruce Byfield

Curious about how design decisions are made for Ubuntu's Unity? About how the development team reacts to criticisms of its efforts? If you are, then a moment of unusual -- and troubling -- clarity emerged last week on Launchpad, Canonical's development site.

The moment takes the form of Bug #882274, filed by Tal Liron under the title "Community engagement is broken." Although other people comment, much of the discussion is between Liron, an active bug-filer, and Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu's founder. Liron writes as an Ubuntu loyalist, mostly succeeding in maintaining his politeness and trying to be constructive, but his frustration and feelings of being ostracized are obvious.

The discussion covers a lot of territory, so let me summarize some of the highlights with a minimum of commentary:

"This bug is opened with love," Liron begins. "The issue appears to be a communications failure between the people who make Unity and its community of users. The bug is easy to reproduce: open a Launchpad bug about how Unity breaks a common usage pattern, and you get a "won't fix" status and then radio silence. The results of this bug are what seems to be a sizable community of disgruntled, dismayed and disappointed users, who go on to spread their discontent and ill will." He lists several bugs which fit this pattern.

Liron suggests four causes of this so-called bug. First, he suggests that the Unity team does not explain the reasons for not fixing a bug or feature request, beyond leaving the impression that doing so doesn't fit into the general plans for Unity. Second, Unity has been marketed so heavily that unrealistic expectations of perfection have been created. Third, the Unity team ignores "strongly-worded criticism." Fourth, the team often doesn't discuss its decisions at all.

Several others echo Liron's statement, complaining most often about a lack of transparency. Then Mark Shuttleworth enters the discussion. Among other things, he rejects the idea of more customization in Unity, saying:

"We cannot build an interface that supports every conceivable option that any given user might want. We simply cannot. Not because we're too selfish, or too stupid, or too uncaring, or too greedy, but because that is not a reasonable goal. More importantly, trying to accommodate too many different variants would result in a far buggier product, with far less usability. This is standard practice in professional development and design."

Shuttleworth also comments that, "If there is selfishness here, it's selfishness on the part of people who DEMAND attention and offer no constructive solution. Nobody has a right to expect someone else to devote their time to a mission in which they have no interest." If someone dislikes Unity, Shuttleworth suggests, "then don't use it."

Liron's reply is that, "your response proves that this bug is endemic." He also accuses Shuttleworth of "being impatient with and unsympathetic to community woes" and of not seeing filing a bug as constructive. He suggests an FAQ might be a useful way of interacting with the community without taking up a lot of time.

At this point, Shuttleworth moves to limit discussion, declaring, "This matter is settled, we will enjoy our collaboration more if we accept that and move on . . . . In Unity, when there is a disagreement, we defer to the designers."

Liron responds that design decisions not only have consequences for developers, but for community members as well who have to explain and defend those decisions. Apparently becoming frustrated, Liron continues:

"Mark has been very focused on perfecting the internal team process -- and has done an astoundingly productive job with it -- but the remaining problem is how to properly include us "outsiders." Unfortunately, I don't see this problem fixed given Mark's current attitude. He just doesn't think what we do is very valuable for Ubuntu at large. Apparently we're a tiny minority of nerdy curmudgeons who hate change and love to whine."

To which Shuttleworth replies:

"Do you seriously suggest I don't know anything about free software, or working to include the community? . . . My point is that what's broken is not the engagement; we're engaged. What's broken is the sense of entitlement on one side of this conversation - "do what I want, or I leave, and you're an idiot by the way". As I said previously, in a collaborating community, that sort of language is toxic. So I ask folk to stop doing it."

Shuttleworth goes on to point out that increased flexibility in Unity would cost time and money, and -- even worse, threaten to upset the positioning of everything else in the interface. "That's why iOS has a springboard in only one place, same for Android. These are modern interfaces, based on serious design work. Our goal is to compete with those, so we're not that interested in matching functionality that was in Win95, especially if we think that functionality will get dropped in Windows 8 or 9 or 10."

The conversation continues for many more posts, including an interesting one by Bazon Bloch that claims that Unity usability testing was done using only fifteen Windows and OS X users, and that "Unity is in fact not developed for the Ubuntu community."

However, the effective (although not actual) last word in the discussion is Liron's, saying to Shuttleworth: "In summary, this is yet another "won't fix" bug. Community engagement might not be optimal, you acknowledge, but there's nothing the Unity team is going to do about it."

Drawing Conclusions

This isn't the first time I've inferred and even seen the attitudes on both sides of the discussion on Launchpad, Ubuntu's mailing lists, or in the comments added to Shuttleworth's blog entries. However, I don't recall any other place where all of them were so clearly on display.

To what extent this discussion voices the opinions of Ubuntu members or Canonical employees is uncertain. However, the discussion reinforces my long-held inference that the needs of Ubuntu and Canonical are diverging as more of the decision-making power is claimed by Canonical.

Even more importantly, the discussion suggests a growing urgency in Shuttleworth -- most likely, to make Canonical profitable. Unless I mis-remember, at the start of Ubuntu's history, Shuttleworth seemed more tolerant of the usual give and take of community development.

Now, he sounds impatient, resorting to personal attacks and invoking his personal authority or the necessities of design or standard practice instead of offering explanations. At times, he seems to address issues that at best approximate what others in the discussion are saying. Exactly why this change has happened is uncertain, but it adds a sting to Shuttleworth's once-humorous title of Benevolent Dictator for Life. The change also tends to undermine his assumption that he knows how to work with a community. And if he responds in these ways to a supporter with a few doubts, then the break with the mainstream GNOME project becomes less surprising.

Not having a financial stake in Canonical, I'm inclined to side with those Ubuntu members who are wondering what is happening to the community they imagined they were building. If nothing else, their request for more explanation of decisions seems a reasonable request, and one necessary for the smooth running of any community or business.

But whatever side you take (if any), the course of the discussion seems unhealthy for both Ubuntu and Canonical, let alone for the larger movement of which they are prominent members.

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