Leaving Edubuntu

[Stéphane Graber]

Hey everyone,

Before this discussion goes any further, I'd like to remind you of some
facts and history based on what was said in the previous mails.

Edubuntu is a distribution started in 2005 with 5.10 (Breezy Badger)
which went through a lot of changes over the years. It started as a
regular distro, then evolved to a distro + server edition with the
inclusion of LTSP.

The inclusion of LTSP made edubuntu quite well known for that, to the
point where LTSP was actually moved to Ubuntu itself and made available
on the Ubuntu alternate CD-Rom instead of through Edubuntu (with Hardy).

At some point, the project made a major change with changing its name to
Ubuntu education edition which I guess we all agree now was a major
mistake and got solved very recently with going back to Edubuntu with
Jaunty, then back to a full distribution as a DVD image with Karmic.

All that wasn't always smooth, especially with Hardy where the name
changed, LTSP was moved to Ubuntu and Edubuntu was made an add-on.
I guess it's the point where we lost most of our contributors and users
that we have since then tried to fix the best we could.

A major event in the recent history is the week we spent in Barcelona
with Jonathan and Jordan (remotely) to discuss and redefine what
Edubuntu actually is and what we want it to be.
That wasn't done all by ourselves, we tried to integrate the opinion of
our users the best we could with everyone present at the UDS (scheduling
multiple sessions throughout the week) and on IRC.

We are currently discussing with the Community Council to have the
Edubuntu project and teams clearly documented so we gain the CC trust
again and have clear management process.

So far, I believe that the CC is pretty happy with what we've done
though most of these changes were quite brutal and may have surprised
some of our community members. We still believe it to be needed and a
good way to have Edubuntu back to what it used to be.


Now, speaking of the recent wiki issue, I must admit I don't have a
strong opinion on that, not using the wiki that much. Though, I really
appreciate anybody's work on it, as long as it's done in a consistent
and non-disruptive way.
During the recent Edubuntu meeting, I believe we followed the agenda as
it was defined on the wiki page, looking back at the wiki now, I must
agree that it could be clearer and for example only show the next
meeting's agenda instead of showing all the paste meeting's agenda.


I believe that with the strategy document and the edubuntu council team
description, we are getting on the right path to have a clear and well
defined project.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Edubuntu/StrategyDocument
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Edubuntu/WikiSite/Teams/EdubuntuCouncil

Also, before finishing that long e-mail, I'd also like to remind all of
you that we are all humans, we all have work outside of ubuntu/edubuntu
and even inside of the ubuntu project, we all have a lot of other things
we are working on.
So, please do not expect us to be responsive at any time in the day and
have us go through tons and tons of information, all we want is
transparency and being able to see what's happening, where and whether
or not something should be discussed before getting implemented.

-- 
Stéphane Graber
Ubuntu developer
http://www.ubuntu.com