Kubuntu freedom

[Andreas Mueller]

The linux community received our protest with both, agreement, but also 
criticism.
 We would like to react to those by giving more specific reasons for our 
protest.

The aim
 This website, including the forum, the mailing lists and the respective IRC 
channels (#kubuntu-de and #kubuntu-de-team) has one aim: to support the 
community, to offer a platform to the users of Kubuntu and, last but not 
least, to boost the Kubuntu-project so as to make it an outstanding 
distribution.  

We all from the kubuntu.de - team have poursuited this aim together, but most 
of the work has been done by Andreas Mueller (amu). He is not only co-founder 
and unpaid developer of the Kubuntu-project, but he's also hosting this 
website with current Kubuntu-LiveCDs and he's taking over all the arising 
expenses himself. Gnoppix, another “baby” of Andreas Mueller, now in 
possession of Canonical, but still being financed by Andreas.


What we criticise
 During our endeavours for Kubuntu, several requests to Canonical were made. 
All the mails were addressed to Mrs. Jane Silber, CCO of Canonical.
 Our concern primarily regards the following subjects, which need - due to the 
present state of the project - several basic decisions and responses by 
Canonical :
 
 Developers
 Kubuntu needs more paid developers. Even though Canonical says that there is 
one paid developer for GNOME and one KDE (seb128/jriddell), the rest of the 
paid developers rather tend to support GNOME. It would be reasonable to pay 
at least 2-3 more developers to balance, because only providing KDE-packages 
is not enough.
 
 Status of the project
 What is the meaning behind Mark Shuttleworth's commitment, that he wants to 
make “Kubuntu a 1st class distribution”? Is he stepping back from his former 
declaration that Kubuntu is a pure community project 
(http://www.kubuntu.org/announcements/hoary-release.php), and is it planned 
to integrate Kubuntu permanently into the Canonical support system?  
Restricted independence of the project
 Kubuntu should be a little more independent as a project. Of course we 
understand that money has to be made at some point – you can not only spend 
the money, you need to get it back somehow. 
 But the decision should be a technical one in the first place, which is 
geared to special markets (concretely: the SMIME support which is important 
e.g. in Germany).
Sponsoring
 What about having another big sponsor on board? Generally, this could happen.
 Is Kubuntu a community project or are there financial interests behind 
though?
 
 ISO-Updates
 Is there any problem to integrate patches and security updates into the 
install- and live-iso's and to provide updates of the iso's after 3 months? 
Bugs do happen.

 Community contribution (portal software)
 Except Jonathan Riddell and Andreas Mueller nobody can change the website of 
kubuntu (kubuntu.org – Andreas has gained his account back now, after more 
than two months).  
If someone can't make packages, that doesn't mean he can't do anything for the 
project. A lot of volunteers wanted to contribute, but they couldn't because 
they have no access.  
A portal software solve this problem. This software could ideally provide a 
direct translation (possibly with connection to Rosetta) and at the same time 
allow the export to the official documentation. We are already working on the 
realisation of such a portal.
Trademarks
 On the site of ubuntuusers.de it is stated that they are the “official german 
portal of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu and all other Ubuntu derivatives”. None 
of the concerned party is even known with a nickname on #kubuntu-devel or 
#kubuntu-de. 
 There is a contract between Matthias Urlichs, Julius Bloch, Marcus Fischer 
and Canonical http://static.ubuntu-de.org/cms/files/00/05/52/agreement.pdf) 
in order to give them the possibility to use the name “Ubuntu” for the 
association “ubuntu Deutschland e.V.” over which the three preside. The 
association itself is hosting the portal ubuntuusers.de. 
 But this contract doesn't entitle “ubuntu Deutschland e.V.” to the names 
Kubuntu, Xubuntu and to all the other names of ubuntu derivatives.
 Therefore we request rectification on the sites of the association as well as 
on the site of ubuntuusers.de: that they have nothing to do with Kubuntu and 
other derivatives of Canonical Trademarks and Ubuntu Foundation 
distributions, since they are only supporting ubuntuusers.de and no other 
community projects around Ubuntu and its derivatives.  
Moreover, there exist some so-called “domaingrabber” in Germany which only 
want to make profit with the brand Kubuntu. Why are they not admonished and 
closed?
 This is a sensitive area, but instead of declaring Canonical is hiding away 
from the problems.


Our protest will continue as long as these questions are not clarified.




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