Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth hits out at free software 'muppets' after company ditches Unity

'The whole Mir hate-fest boggled my mind - it's free software that does something invisible really well,' wrote Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder and CEO of open-source software vendor Canonical, has hit out at the "anti-social" free software community who "love to hate" anything commercial.

It follows the company's decision to ditch the Unity desktop as part of a wider cost-cutting exercise by the Linux operating system distributor.

Shuttleworth went on to brand sections of the free and open-source software (FOSS) community as "muppets".

Shuttleworth made the comments in a posting on Google+, which largely thanked people for their generally positive response to his decision to refocus the business on the developments that have gained most market traction, but which has meant the closure of other projects.

But the more barbed comments were in response to criticism of Mir, the window environment that replaced GNOME in Ubuntu Unity8, and will now never see the light of day outside of Ubuntu IoT projects such as Snappy Core. Shuttleworth implied that he's taken a lot of flack over Mir, in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" capacity.

One user said: "I'm one of those crazy people that believe[d] in you, and trusted in you to deliver that vision, one of many that put the money for a crowdfunding, some of many that have a Ubuntu Phone! For me I will support anyone that continue the job, but never will I again support or trust you! Good luck to you +Mark Shuttleworth, no more money for your company by me!"

Shuttleworth retorted (and we're going for the whole quote unedited here because it's an absolute doozy: "The whole Mir hate-fest boggled my mind - it's free software that does something invisible really well.

"It became a political topic as irrational as climate change or gun control, where being on one side or the other was a sign of tribal allegiance. We have a problem in the community when people choose to hate free software instead of loving that someone cares enough to take their life's work and make it freely available.

"I came to be disgusted with the hate on Mir. Really, it changed my opinion of the free software community.

"I used to think that it was a privilege to serve people who also loved the idea of service, but now I think many members of the free software community are just deeply anti-social types who love to hate on whatever is mainstream.

"When Windows was mainstream they hated on it. Rationally, Windows does many things well and deserves respect for those. And when Canonical went mainstream, it became the focus of irrational hatred too. The very same muppets would write about how terrible it was that IOS/Android had no competition and then how terrible it was that Canonical was investing in (free software!) compositing and convergence. Fuck that shit."

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will arrive later this year with GNOME returning as the interface.

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