Users first

Dopo il rilascio di Ubuntu 11.04 - nome in codice: "Natty Narwahl" - il fondatore di Canonical Ltd. e patron di Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, parla dal suo blog.

Premesso che non ho ancora avuto occasione né di aggiornare alla versione 11.04, nè tantomeno di saggiare le decantate nonvità e meraviglie della nuova interfaccia utente denominata "Unity", alcuni passaggi del post di Shuttleworth mi hanno, come al solito, colpito:

"Users first, on free software. That has always been our mission"

"[...] in my view the future of free software is no longer just about inner beauty (architecture, performance, efficiency) it’s also about usability and style"

"In the design of Unity we chose to be both humble and bold. Humble, because we have borrowed consciously from the work of other successful platforms, like Windows and MacOS. We borrowed what worked best, but then we took advantage of the fact that we are unconstrained by legacy and can innovate faster than they can, and took some bold leaps forward"

"Ubuntu’s killer feature remains that community. The spirit of Ubuntu is about understanding that the measure of our own lives is in the way we improve the lives of others. Ubuntu has both economic and human dimensions: it’s unique, in my view, in bringing those together in a way which enables them to support one another"

"By welcoming all participants, and finding ways to accommodate and celebrate their differences rather than using them as grounds for divisiveness, we make something that’s bigger than all our individual dreams"

Hasta luego.


[Photo credits | photo by G. M. (The royal natural history vol. 3) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]

L'uomo che sussurrava ai Nàrvali

Nel caso vi sfuggisse al momento, il narvalo è un mammifero della famiglia dei delfinatteri.

In questo caso, però, il nàrvalo in questione è quello che dà il nome alla prossima release di Ubuntu, "Natty Narwahl" appunto.

Ne parla in una breve intervista il patron di Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth.

Che c'è di speciale in questo?

Beh, niente, se non fosse che Shuttleworth, quando gli chiedono come sono i suoi rapporti con quelli di Debian risponde che sono

"Quantum mechanical – Debian is a collection of more than a thousand individuals, and each of them has a different relationship with Ubuntu, so I would describe our overall relationship as a wave function rather than a vector"

e a me piace uno che usa questo genere di metafore :-)

Inoltre, ci sono altre interessanti informazioni; sui tablet:

"I think they will be a serious form factor that’s widely used, alongside clamshell (keyboard/notebook) form factors, phones and TVs";

sull'ecosistema del free software:

"[...] each free software player has different constraints – different things are easy or hard for them. None of them are inherently more moral than the others [...]. So it’s weird that we spend so much energy on belittling different company approaches, rather than just getting on and enjoying the fruits";

sugli investimenti che Shuttleworth sta effettuando:

"Mainly companies that are helping to create sustainable economic development in Africa and other frontier markets. And companies that give software away ;-)";

e, infine, sulla voglia di meritarsi la possibilità di ritornare nello spazio... ed oltre:

"I would very much like to return. I feel I need to do something on Earth that I can be proud enough of to justify the great privilege of another orbital flight. And I’d like to go further [...]".

Hasta luego.

[Photo credits: photo by Carsten Tolkmit http://www.flickr.com/photos/laenulfean/2913482048/sizes/m/]

Onirico

Mark Shuttleworth ha da poco ufficializzato sul suo blog che il nome della prossima release di Ubuntu, la 11.10 prevista per il rilascio ad ottobre di quest'anno, sarà Oneiric Ocelot.

Con lo scopo di:
"capture the essence of our next six months work in a simple name"

il Grande Capo di Ubuntu ci rivela anche che
"this next release more than most requires something other than orthodoxy".

Ecco quindi che si arriva a scegliere la denominazione di Oneric Ocelot, perché in particolare questa accoppiata ricorda
"the way innovation happens: part daydream, part discipline".

Ma c'è anche spazio per il più classico degli speech motivazionali:
"Ubuntu is now shipping on millions of systems from multiple providers every year. It makes a real difference in the lives of millions, perhaps tens of millions, of people. As MPT said, “what we do is not only art, it’s performance art”. Every six months the curtains part, and we have to be ready for the performance. I’d like to thank the thousands of people who are actively participating in the production of Natty: take the initiative, take responsibility, take action, and your work will make a difference to all of those users. There are very few places in the world where a personal intellectual contribution can have that kind of impact. And very few places where we have such a strong social fabric around those intellectual challenges, too. We each do what we do for our own reasons, but it’s the global impact of Ubuntu which gives meaning to that action".

In definitiva, dice il Capitano:
"keep up the discipline and focus on the Narwhal, and let’s direct our daydreaming to the Ocelot".

Hasta luego.



[Photo credits: By Danleo (Self-published work by Danleo) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Ocelot_01.jpg, via Wikimedia Commons]