10 Disappointments For Open Source In 2013

The open source movement began 30 years ago, in 1983, when Richard Stallman published the GNU Manifesto. Since then, there have been thousands of open source titles to storm the forts of the end user desktop, the small to medium businesses, and even the enterprise and corporate culture. However, that doesn't mean every software title, internal decision, or movement within the open source world is a success. Like every global community, open source has had its share of disappointments -- and the year 2013 wasn't an exception.

Here are 10 of the most disappointing developments for this past year. Some of them were game changers, others were simply thorns in the side of the open source community, and a few may even have spurned a change for the positive within the community. Let's take a look at the cruft that dared to mar the sheen of an otherwise outstanding year.

1. Rift between Canonical and open source

This one is a tough one for the likes of me. Why? Because I'm a big fan of Ubuntu, and I'm a long-time user. The Unity interface and I also get along swimmingly. But it seems like much of the open source community (especially the hard core users) abhor what Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical have done. The biggest cause of this rift is the implementation of Mir over Wayland to serve as the Ubuntu X Server. What has made this even more embittered is the fact that Mir and xMir have yet to see the light of day on an Ubuntu release. My take on this is that Canonical should do everything it can to smooth over this major wrinkle -- even if it means swallowing their pride more than they'd like.