14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical got a lot of flak over the years for the decisions regarding its Ubuntu operating system, some of them justified, but most were just unfair. The truth is not in the middle as you might think because there are much bigger interests at play.
The Ubuntu developers have been criticized many times for the changes that have been implemented in the distribution over time, but you have to keep one thing in mind. Ubuntu is the most used Linux desktop system in world, like it or not, so it’s easy to understand why they are an easy target.
I’ll just go through only three major situations that have been in the spotlight and I will try to put some perspective on them. Most of the time it’s just much noise about nothing, but there are also some people out there that would like to see Canonical fail in their attempt, whatever that is.
Failure is the first step towards success in open source
Let’s remember about the introduction of Unity back in 2011, in Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal). Even if the users and the community have been informed about the big change in design months in advance, Unity hasn't been well received by the community. It was a big leap from the old GNOME 2 desktop environment to Unity, even of the former was based on GNOME.
There were a lot of factors that prompted Canonical to adopt Unity, but one of them stands out. Ubuntu developers were being criticized by the users about problems with GNOME packages that they integrated. They couldn't really do anything about it, besides submitting patches upstream to GNOME. Some of those patches were integrated with delays and other proposals didn't matched the direction of the GNOME project.
Thus Unity was born and Canonical went its separate way. They wanted a desktop environment they could control and they wanted for Ubuntu to look unique among all the others. Even if Unity met some resistance from the get-go, after a few years of development and lot of new features and improvements, the community has started to use it more and more. Unity is the face of the desktop, and now of the phone and tablet. It’s here to stay and, in hindsight, they actually made the right choice and all the criticism was actually unfounded.
A second problem that Canonical faced was a couple of years ago with the introduction of the online search in the Unity dash. Someone discovered early on that the searches were not properly encrypted and all hell broke loose. A lot of the criticism about this online feature was spot on, but the developers made great efforts to fix the issues and this problem went away, without the community noticing.
The third major so called “crisis” that Canonical had to brace was the announcement about the Mir display server. They decided that it was time to ditch the X server and they chose to build their own, even if they endorsed for a while another similar technology called Wayland.
The reasons for Mir were very similar with the ones for Unity. They wanted a technology they could control completely and they didn't wanted to rely on submitting patches upstream to Wayland. The Ubuntu Touch project for phones is moving very fast and they needed something they could count on. The Wayland people and fans were not happy and they still give Canonical a hard time, even if this is Open Source were taking about.
Canonical has been accused of fragmenting the community with yet another display server, but the same can be said about too many desktop environments or about the hundreds of Linux distributions that are being worked on as we speak.
Things against Canonical has gotten so bad that some very weird and unhealthy precedent has been registered for the open source community. A couple of other projects have said that they are going to refuse Mir patches from Ubuntu developers, invoking various reasons, but it’s likely that other important interests are at play.
It's probably all about the money
You have to keep mind that Canonical is promoting a free and open source project, but they also intend to make their project profitable someday. Being in such a strong position in the market, in the first place nonetheless, must always prompt people to filter any information against Canonical and their interests. They could be “evil” as described or they are just be a very big target that disturbs some other people and companies.
Probably the most compelling reason to believe what Canonical is saying, above the other information that is being forth all the time, is the fact that they never hid anything from the community. They said right from the start what they want from Unity, that Unity’s dash will search online (even with all the bugs), and that they will make Mir despite what everyone else was saying.
Conclusion
My point is that all the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt, which is a very powerful marketing ploy) against Canonical is being propagated unfair and that is very likely the criticism towards the company will only increase in direct proportion with their success. Whatever you believe about Canonical, always make sure you understand the motives of the people criticizing the company. They are not as clear cut as you might think.