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Similar to this question Why is Unity 2D being discontinued? and an fellow up on this one Is Unity going to end in 18.04 LTS

What was the official reason by Canonical to axed the project when it was love by some many of their users and innovative?

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    The links in this question have many upvotes indicating interest in the community. Why weren't they closed as primarily opinion based like the proposed close votes for this question? This question can arguably be less opinion based than the links because it asks for an "official reason" aka seeks a cited source. Aug 11, 2017 at 3:09
  • @WinEunuuchs2Unix good point. The first we probably missed it, the second is closed as dupe to an objective question. Aug 11, 2017 at 9:07
  • What's an objective question?
    – MathCubes
    Aug 11, 2017 at 9:57
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    @MathCubes What's an objective question?: I think the answers to that would be subjective :p Aug 11, 2017 at 11:02
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    @MathCubes I am not sure if you are sarcastic due to me not being a native speaker... With "objective" question I was referring to questions that are not "primarily opinion based". Sorry if this wasn't clear. Aug 12, 2017 at 10:40

2 Answers 2

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Didn't you read the announcement post penned by Mark Shuttleworth at all? Selected quotes:

I took the view that, if convergence was the future and we could deliver it as free software, that would be widely appreciated both in the free software community and in the technology industry, where there is substantial frustration with the existing, closed, alternatives available to manufacturers. I was wrong on both counts.


The cloud and IoT story for Ubuntu is excellent and continues to improve. You all probably know that most public cloud workloads, and most private Linux cloud infrastructures, depend on Ubuntu. You might also know that most of the IoT work in auto, robotics, networking, and machine learning is also on Ubuntu, with Canonical providing commercial services on many of those initiatives. The number and size of commercial engagements around Ubuntu on cloud and IoT has grown materially and consistently.


The choice, ultimately, is to invest in the areas which are contributing to the growth of the company. Those are Ubuntu itself, for desktops, servers and VMs, our cloud infrastructure products (OpenStack and Kubernetes) our cloud operations capabilities (MAAS, LXD, Juju, BootStack), and our IoT story in snaps and Ubuntu Core. All of those have communities, customers, revenue and growth, the ingredients for a great and independent company, with scale and momentum.

Plain English: no money in Unity.

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  • You are still active here and have more rep then I last recall. Alot more.
    – MathCubes
    Aug 11, 2017 at 5:30
  • @MathCubes he's still under 100k so he's still a newbie :-D
    – Rinzwind
    Aug 11, 2017 at 5:37
  • @Rinzwind I remember when he just had like 20-30.
    – MathCubes
    Aug 11, 2017 at 5:39
  • Ah, the good ol' days.
    – muru
    Aug 11, 2017 at 5:39
  • Does your reputation wrap around beyond 2^32 or something?
    – Jos
    Aug 12, 2017 at 12:27
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Unity will be supported until Ubuntu 16.04 EOL (End of Life) which is April 2021 I believe.

Additionally, with interest by users such as yourself, a "fork" of Unity will be made (perhaps more than one) supported by a third party.

I expect that some of the looks and features of Unity that people have come to know and love will be ported over to the Gnome Desktop Environment (DE) which Ubuntu 18.04 will be based on. Two things to remember are:

  1. Don't worry as Unity EOL is a long way off.
  2. Developers listen to users like yourself and what you request.

This article explicitly quotes reasons for Ubuntu dropping Unity down the road:

"If we are going to take outside money and go public, how efficient do we need to be?" Shuttleworth said. "In a very cold commercial sense, we have to bring those numbers into line and that leads to headcount changes. One of those pieces I could not bring into line was Unity. We can't go through that market process and ask for outside investor money when there's something that big that doesn't have a revenue story. That's the pinch we got into."

Translation: Unity costs a lot of money but doesn't earn revenue. Gnome DE is Free. Investors will like the change.

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    @AndreaLazzarotto Yes I anticipate the question will be closed within 24 hours but I don't want people to worry unnecessarily. Indeed other questions and answers have addressed the future of Unity so it might be nominated as a duplicate. Aug 11, 2017 at 0:41
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    @MathCubes reading about ubuntu-MATE 17.10, it looks like many loved features in Unity (7) have been made available in the ubuntu mate desktop, so users have other places they can go (if gnome is not for them, but the ubuntu-desktop team have been working on making gnome less of a shock too)
    – guiverc
    Aug 11, 2017 at 0:55
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    Closed or not, this is not an answer to the question. Also, if you anticipate an answer will be closed it's usually better to leave it as is, otherwise the Roomba process might be interfered. Aug 11, 2017 at 9:04
  • This link is for those like me who didn't know (until a fortnight ago) what @AndreaLazzarotto is referring to when saying Roomba. There may be better links but it's the only one referenced back to me in one of my questions where I first heard the word. Aug 12, 2017 at 1:15
  • I hope it goes without saying that predicting that a question will be closed is no reason to avoid answering the question. Believing a question should be closed is usually a good reason not to answer it (though facilitating automatic deletion of the question strikes me as one of the least important reasons to avoid answering questions one thinks ought to be closed). In contrast, believing a question will be wrongly closed, opposing the closure, and voting to reopen the question are entirely consistent with posting an answer. Aug 12, 2017 at 1:21

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