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Christopher Davis: System76: A Case Study on How Not To Collaborate With Upstream

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Preface: the following post was written in the context of the events that happened in September. Some time has passed, and I held off on publishing in the hopes we could reach a happy ending with System76. As time has passed, that hope has faded. Attempts to reach out to System76 have not been productive, and I feel we’ve let the impression they’ve given the wider tech community about GNOME sit for far too long. Some things have changed since I originally wrote the post, so some bits have been removed.

Recently there’s been some heated discussion regarding GNOME’s future. This has led to a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt being spread about GNOME, as well as attacks and hostility toward GNOME as a whole and toward individual contributors. This largely started due to the actions of one company’s employees in particular: System76.

This is not the first time System76 has been at the center of a public conflict with the GNOME community, nor is it the first time it was handled poorly. At this point, I no longer feel comfortable working with System76 without some sort of acknowledgment and apology for their poor behavior, and a promise that this won’t happen again.

You might be thinking: what sort of behavior are you talking about? What has System76 done to deserve this treatment? Well, it’s not any one incident – it’s a pattern of behavior that’s repeated multiple times over the past few years. I’ll share incidents I know of from the past, what their behavior has been like in the present, and my own thoughts on the future.

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Microsoft Tim has covered it

System76 is a toxic collaborator, denounced from GNOME

  • System76 is a toxic collaborator, denounced from GNOME

    And what does GNOME say about System76’s plans to create its own desktop ? Any. He says it about something else, although it is not exactly GNOME as an organization – although it could well be – the one that raises its voice, but Chris Davis, one of its developers in an extensive article entitled “System76: a case study on how not to collaborate with the upstream «.

    «The following post was written in the context of the events that occurred in September. […] I waited hoping that we could come to a happy ending with System76. As time passes, that hope has faded. Attempts to connect to System76 have not been productive, and I think we’ve let the impression that GNOME has been given to the tech community linger too long, ”Davis begins.

    Davis accuses System76 of launching FUD ( fear, uncertainty and doubt , as is) against GNOME , but also against specific people in the GNOME environment as a result of the debates about the future of the project that led to the noted GNOME Way article. It is also not the first time that System76 acts like this, according to Davis, who has lost his confidence in the company correcting its ways.

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