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Hi -
I am going to do a cut/paste of a message that I sent to the warthogs
list on 20 June 2011 (subject Re: What's with all the Canonical
employees that use Mac OS as primary OS?). The thread at that time was
MacOS vs Ubuntu rather than Unity itself, but the same principles hold
for Unity. We recognise the importance of personal freedom, but we also
expect dogfooding of the product that keeps all of us employed.
From that message:
We expect everyone in Canonical to run Ubuntu as their normal work
environment. That is company policy. For most people, we don't
prescribe if that is stock Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or a heavily customised
version, or if it is run on metal or in a VM. However, as with many
good policies, there are exceptions.
1. There are some specific roles in which individual and Canonical
success requires an environment which is recognisably the Ubuntu product
we are promoting (e.g,. customer facing or very public roles, people
who often give on-the-spot demos or who are spokespeople for our
products and values). By nature of their role and job expectations,
these people have less flexibility in defining their computing
environment than others in the company.
2. Conversely, there are also some specific roles in which individual
and Canonical success means it is reasonable for employees to use other
operating systems (e.g., developing the Ubuntu One Windows client, some
of the design roles). In every case I can think of, in order for those
people to succeed at their job and for their work product to be of the
quality we demand, they also need to run Ubuntu (and from my experience
they do). We don't allow exceptions on a "I simply like Windows/OS
X/Solaris better" attitude, but there are situations where the pragmatic
need to get work done means that other tools are a reasonable option.
So, by nature of their role and job expectations, these people have more
flexibility in defining their computing environment than others in the
company.
Therefore, *everyone* at Canonical should be running Ubuntu in some
form. There are exceptions at both ends of the spectrum, for roles that
require a more prescriptive and a less prescriptive approach. The
overwhelming majority of us should use Ubuntu as our primary work
environment, with significant room for personal preference around what
form Ubuntu takes. Those natural variations in the vast swathe in the
middle (including what Ubuntu versions people are running and what
hardware) are generally good for Ubuntu and Canonical, and function
better than a forced allocation of "we need X people running Y
configuration".
I'd also like to repeat a couple things that have already come up in the
thread but may have gotten lost:
- the Platform team pays special attention to bugs filed by Canonical
staff. Those bugs are tagged, triaged and treated separately. So the
best way to help ensure that you have a solid experience with each new
release is to upgrade to it when there is a still time to fix things.
- https://wiki.canonical.com/UbuntuEngineering/WhenToUpgrade gives
some advice on when to upgrade. We do not expect that everyone runs the
most unstable code (although some are expected to do that as part of
their job and we accept the productivity loss that causes in light of
the greater good that comes as a result). I personally switch to the
new release at Beta time. I find that switching earlier is too
disruptive to my work, but that switching later does not provide an
opportunity to file bugs and influence the quality of the release (both
from a selfish "how does it work for me" perspective, and a "make Ubuntu
great" perspective). Beta upgrades generally provide a very stable
experience and almost no work disruption.
- if you need help with anything related to Ubuntu, please contact our
excellent support team. https://wiki.canonical.com/CanonicalUbuntuSupport
- It seems "dogfooding" has taken on a slightly pejorative
connotation in this thread, and that's unfortunate. Believing in the
values of dogfooding doesn't mean a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all,
everyone must be a tester approach. It does mean that we don't ask our
users and customers to do something we wouldn't do.
We have always invited the world to judge us by our actions. We stand
by our promise to make Ubuntu the world's free best software platform,
and for Canonical to ensure that by providing commercially successful
services for Ubuntu. Everyone at Canonical contributes to that goal in
slightly different ways, but using Ubuntu is one of the unifying ways in
which we ensure our individual contributions are aligned to achieve that
goal.
cheers,
Jane
On 07/11/11 03:44, John O'Brien wrote:
NOTE: This email is not intended to start a flame-war and is sent only
out of curiosity.
I stumbled upon this common complaint/concern[1] about Unity this
morning and thought I would share with fellow developers at Canonical.
He asks a legitimate question "Do you require that Canonical
developers work under 11.10 Unity? or are they free to use the shell
of their choice?"
> From talking to some developers at UDS (including canonical employees)
*I was surprised how many were not using Unity at all* for varying
reasons.
I have always felt that I am "required to work under ..." that we
release. Not because of some corporate dictatorship, but because it's
the only way we can provide feedback.
After all, aren't we in the best position to steer the direction of Unity?
But his question still remains, are we required to work under Unity?
Thanks,
jdo
[1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/820#comment-384941
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