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Ubuntu Unity Project Faces Uncertain Future (linuxiac.com)

submitted 7 months ago by cm0002@lemmy.zip to c/linux@programming.dev

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Probably more Ubuntu enthusiasts have noticed that Unity, the official Ubuntu flavor that brings back the once-beloved Unity desktop for the first time since gaining official status, has failed to deliver a 25.10 release. Well, there’s a reason for that, and now its maintainers are publicly asking for help.

In a post published yesterday, one of the Ubuntu Unity team members explained that project lead Rudra Saraswat, who’s been at the center of development since the remix’s early days, no longer has time to maintain the project due to university studies.

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[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I’m going to guess, based on the only other comment on this post from @Blaster_M@lemmy.world, that the “beloved” qualifier might be overselling the level of appreciation for Unity. Either it’s not actually that beloved by Ubuntu users or there is only a relatively small number of people for whom Unity truly is beloved. In any case I’m guessing it hasn’t had enough users to justify funding from Canonical.

In fact, just looking up Canonical on Wikipedia to verify the company name and see if they were for-profit I found this:

Canonical achieved a small operating profit of $281,000 in 2009, but until 2017 struggled to maintain financial solvency and took a major financial hit from the development of Unity and Ubuntu Touch, leading to an operating loss of $21.6 million for the fiscal year 2013. The company reported an operating profit of $2 million in 2017 after shutting down the Unity development team and laying off nearly 200 employees.

[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

In any case I’m guessing it hasn’t had enough users to justify funding from Canonical.

in 2017 after shutting down the Unity development team and laying off nearly 200 employees.

Just in case it wasn't clear, Canonical has no interest in funding it anymore. The project was then picked up my community maintainers, which based on the article was just one person who was 12, now ~15 years old. I bring up the age just to point out that, yes, school is a more important thing to focus on.

[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Oh wow, I thought I read it was university studies (which I’d still say is more important priority-wise), but that’s really young!