Choosing to do their own thing instead of helping define and adopt the development community consensus approach, spewing FUD and criticism of the community for 2 or 3 years, then finally giving up and adopting what the rest of the community did in the first place.

It looks like it is an attempt at bizdev.

With Mir, it was an attempt to own it, so when some mobile vendor wants to implement it for their devices, they have to consult with them and get some licenses. With Unity 8 and Ubuntu SDK, it was similar. Once prospects of Ubuntu mobiles failed, it was abandoned.

Wit Snap, it is an attempt to own the Linux app distribution space (that's why you cannot have 3rd-party repos), so anyone who want to distribute snaps, has to talk to them.

I have nothing against Canonical trying to make money; but inserting themselves as a monopoly on some layer of Linux stack isn't the way to do that. Community will always route around.

Yup, pretty much nailed my thinking.