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Mark Shuttleworth labels Mir opponents 'the Open Source Tea Party'

Ubuntu Daddy nods to Reg, reveals Ubuntu 14.04 will be 'Trusty Tahr'

Ubuntu Daddy Mark Shuttleworth has labelled folks who oppose Mir, the replacement for X Windows dropped from the recently-released Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander, “the Open Source Tea Party”.

As our review of Saucy Salamander states, Mir's omission was a surprise inasmuch as its inclusion was flagged last July and the software seemed to work as planned.

The announcement Mir would not make it into Saucy Salamander said its omission could be attributed to “outstanding technical difficulties” and “ some outstanding quality issues that we want to resolve before we feel comfortable turning it on by default”.

Shuttleworth has now blogged a different version of events hinting at some heated exchanges among developers.

Here's what he's said:

“Mir is really important work. When lots of competitors attack a project on purely political grounds, you have to wonder what THEIR agenda is. At least we know now who belongs to the Open Source Tea Party ;) And to put all the hue and cry into context: Mir is relevant for approximately 1% of all developers, just those who think about shell development. Every app developer will consume Mir through their toolkit. By contrast, those same outraged individuals have NIH’d just about every important piece of the stack they can get their hands on… most notably SystemD, which is hugely invasive and hardly justified. What closely to see how competitors to Canonical torture the English language in their efforts to justify how those toolkits should support Windows but not Mir. But we’ll get it done, and it will be amazing.”

With the Tea Party recently throwing a political tantrum that brought about a shut down of the US government and nearly dragged the world into a vigorously erupting financial volcano, we're pretty sure Shuttleworth is accusing Mir's opponents of irresponsible and irrational zealotry.

Shuttleworth also reveals some details of Ubuntu 14.04, which he's named “Trusty Tahr”* and says will be “a platform for long-term deployments on the PC and the cloud and the server.”

Here's what the Ubuntu Daddy wants for the next release:

“In particular, we will be providing OpenStack I, J and K on 14.04 for LTS deployments, so we need to make sure we meet the needs of that community for a solid core. On the desktop, 13.10 has benefited greatly from the fact that it has a team just focused on improving quality. We’ll do the same again and more for 14.04.”

Shuttleworth also had some words on mobile Ubuntu, which he said “is too new for an LTS and we’re excited to complete the journey of full convergence.”

“We won’t get there in one cycle but given the pace of improvement of the phone and tablet in the last month I think it’s going to be a fantastic cycle there.”

Shuttleworth also mentioned The Register in his post.

"So yes, I am very proud to be, as The Register puts it, the Ubuntu Daddy," he writes, going on to say "My affection for this community in its broadest sense – from Mint to our cloud developer audience, and all the teams at Canonical and in each of our derivatives, is very tangible today. It’s had its ups and downs this cycle :) but I feel we’ve pulled together."

That collaboration means The Reg earns a little ire.

"What the Register misses in that description is that so many of you are in fact the progenitors of Ubuntu’s goodness. Its a privilege to provide the conduit, but the generosity of all of you in making something wonderful to share through that conduit is what’s most touching."

We're flattered but also a tad worried by this "touching through conduits". Isn't there a name for people who do that? ®

* “Tahrs are three species of large Asian ungulates related to the wild goat,” says Wikipedia.

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