14 DAY TRIAL // Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical, has admitted that one of his blog posts has enraged the Ubuntu and Linux community and took the blame for the communication gaffe he supposedly committed.
It's not an usual thing to see Mark Shuttleworth admitting to have made a mistake. He was in a criticizing spot before, with Unity and other projects, but he didn't make amends.
In a blog entry posted on October 18, he announced that a few key aspects of Ubuntu development, starting with 13.04, would become closed community input. Or so everyone thought.
“The skunkworks approach has its detractors. We’ve tried it both ways, and in the end, figured out that critics will be critics whether you discuss an idea with them in advance or not,” explained Mark.
“Working on something in a way that lets you refine it till it feels ready to go has advantages: you can take time to craft something, you can be judged when you’re ready, you get a lot more punch when you tell your story, and you get your name in lights (though not every headline is one you necessarily want,” continued Canonical's founder.
He later explained, in another blog post, a day later, that he actually meant the opposite. He wants more people to get involved in projects that were initially developed internally.
According to omgubuntu.co.uk, in the Ubuntu Q&A that followed the released of Ubuntu 12.10, Mark Shuttleworth went even further and admitted his error, although in all fairness, the initial blog didn't contain any factual errors.
“I really screwed up that blog. It never even occurred to me that people would interpret as aiming to be more closed when the obvious intent was to open everything up, while still preserving the delight of the reveal,” said Shuttleworth.
It's nice to see, from time to time, important people admitting their mistakes, but Mark shouldn't have done so with his announcement. It wasn't so much of an error, as it was an overreaction of the community.