DoctorMo's Blog

Today I decided to post a message to the ubuntu developers mailing list, seems this new notifications stuff is causing a few ruffled feathers.

If you go back to my post ‘It’s the Infrastructure Stupid‘ I use the new nofications system as an example of good thinking when it comes to building foundation components for ubuntu.

But here is where my criticism comes in. The notifications system is being developed by the Desktop Experience (Dx) team (not to be mistaken with the Desktop Team), this new team of developers is charged with bringing radically new ideas to the ubuntu desktop.

The problem with this team is that it’s an internal Canonical team that has been hidden away, deliberately cutting ties with the community development process in order to get some OEM jobs done. I’m not sure if this was a management decision or something about the people involved in the team. But I do know it’s a mistake to believe you can develop highly visible components of a radical nature outside of the community and bring them in by force.

It doesn’t matter technically how good a job the new team does. So long as their ideas and development progress is all focused in on it’s self and as long as they are seen to have the utter arrogance that only they can do radical things. Then the community will put up a fight every time they bring something out.

See this is just human nature, if you see some alien group forcing changes in your community, you resist.

It doesn’t help that the people involved on both sides are now emotionally driven. The DX team will be ego centric and heavily invested in their design of their work and the rest of the community will be horrified that they’ve been left out of the development process. Egos on both sides will be hurt.

This is something Jono Bacon should be worried about, he needs to get Canonical employees to think of themselves as a part of a larger community than just the Canonical business. If he can’t, the community will be hurt by Canonical throwing it’s weight around because it’s too out of touch to know what’s going on.

Each individual must have ties with the community in order for the business as a whole to get a long well and position it’s self in mutually beneficial ways.