Loco Council, or an alternative idea of what it could be :)

Jono Bacon jono at ubuntu.com
Fri Sep 28 10:06:09 BST 2007


On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 14:40 +0100, Yann wrote:
> Hello Teams, 
> 
> Well, I guess a LoCo Council would be better than having Jono doing
> all the locowork alone... But there has been another project in the
> mind of a couple of locoteam contacts for quite a long time now, and
> maybe this is a right time to share it with  you :) 
> This project is the result of a lot of different issues, problems
> encountered, things some of us did not like too much (you won't
> probably agree with all of them but here they are)
> 
> - Canonical hosting sucks. You have the choice between poor dedicated
> servers or being in canonical's datacenter and stick to 3 or 4 apps. 

I think this is unfair - the vast majority of LoCo teams are more than
happy with the hosting. Don't assume your specific needs are also the
needs of other people in the project - most teams simply want a website,
mailing lists, IRC and forums, and this is provided fine.
 
> - Canonical won't let you build a not-for-profit. Believe me or not,
> but at some point in the growth of your loco, money will be needed.
> Ubuntu-fr and Ubuntu-de managed to get a "LoCoTeam Agreement" 2 years
> ago, which allowed us to use the name "Ubuntu-fr" and "Ubuntu-de" to
> start our organisations. This was for us, I think juliux can  confirm
> this, a huge step forward. We can now fund a powerful and reliable
> hosting solution, organise events with more money involved, sponsor
> events with shirts, flyers, stickers,  .... and buy some for other
> locos :) 

If Canonical won't let you build a not-for-profit, how did you get a
"LoCoTeam Agreement"?

> - Some companies want to help Ubuntu and the loco project but don't
> want to give money to a company. Some of them turned to Ubuntu-fr,
> willing to give money, and asking us to use it not only for ubuntufr
> but also for other locos - ubuntufr can do it, but technically
> speaking ubuntufr is more about french speaking countries :) 

In the majority of cases, people who want to support a LoCo team want to
help a specific LoCo team, not the wider LoCo project, and I have never
seen a company come forward to support the wider project, let alone
getting into discussions as to whether they donate to a company or not.

> - As canonical is a company, it works like a "blackbox". The Ubuntu
> Foundation was announced two years ago because "It's important for us
> to distinguish the philanthropic and non-commercial work that is at
> the heart of the Ubuntu project, from the commercial support and
> certification programs that are the focus of Canonical Ltd.", said
> Mark Shuttleworth. Sadly, this never happened, and I got told over and
> over I misunderstood what the foundation was about. I was at the
> linuxtag in germany in 2006, you had a Canonical both called "Ubuntu"
> and a "Ubuntu Community" booth held by the locos. Anyway, if people
> want to fund Ubuntu, how can they now if the money the give to
> canonical is going to be used for ubuntu, or to help improve the
> support company that canonical is? Nothing says that money given to
> canonical will be used for Ubuntu development or Locoteam
> sponsorship. 

I find this stunning. It often amazes me how much cynicism people have
to companies and individuals who support Open Source implicitly.
Canonical has invested millions and millions of dollars in Ubuntu, and
from the outset produced governance structures that mean the community
is inherently open and governed by all - the concept of the CC and the
many councils has helped remove the worry of Canonical taking over from
day 1. In addition to this, Canonical spends a fortune on hosting, sends
out millions of free CDs, employs a great many staff who work on Ubuntu
in the community full-time and affords a number of other expenses. Yet,
despite this investment, and despite the deliberately open governance
structures, the company is still met with cynicism and that it is a
"black box". I am not suggesting you believe every word that comes out
of Canonical, but maybe a little trust is in order?

> - Ubuntu owns Ubuntu trademarks and copyrights, and therefore uses it
> to build exclusivity contracts for mechandising, for example. Which in
> theory would mean loco would not be able to do ubuntu-related
> merchandising. As it is one of our primary income modes, I find this a
> bit sad. (to be confirmed, though). 

Canonical runs the Ubuntu Store, yes, and that is a Canonical business
service. Does this mean you want all branded Ubuntu material to be
managed by the community?

> - It is hard to get Cds, it is hard to get these "event boxes". And
> nobody knows who gets them and how this is decided - black box system.
> The only thing we know is they are needed, and if canonical don't
> produce them anymore, someone else has too... and if we have to do it
> ourselves, it is a lot cheaper to produce a lot and then distribute
> among locos :) 

How is it hard to get CDs? You mail ShipIt. As for event boxes? What do
you mean? If you mean boxes for running events that are shipped out to
teams with marketing hardware, they don't exist yet, they are just an
idea. Do you honestly think it will be cheaper for you to produce short
runs of Ubuntu CDs than for us to place orders for hundreds of thousands
of them?

> Anyway, there are a couple of issues I am not too happy with (and from
> what I heard some other people share some of my views). You won't
> probably agree with all of these but, well,  I am speaking really only
> for myself here :) 

I think many of these issues are derived as "Canonical has some degree
of control, and I don't like it". If you are expecting everything
Canonical does to be signed over to the community, its not going to
happen - sorry to be blunt, but I am sure you would prefer me to be
honest with you. Canonical strives to get a faire balance between
supporting the Ubuntu community and earning a living. Bear in mind that
there is a connection - if Canonical is successful, that wealth will be
invested in Ubuntu. I am not suggesting you should therefore favour
Canonical as a business, but I think you are being unfair on the company
given its (in my view) pretty good track record for supporting, funding
and assisting the Ubuntu community.

> In the end, what is this mail for? Well, Ubuntufr and Ubuntude have
> quite some money now, and a hosting which is reliable, and being
> further improved to accept more locos. In some time (let's say a
> couple of months) we will probably buy *stuff* (stickers, flyers,
> posters, shirts, polos, banners, [put here whatever you want, it all
> still need to be discussed], like  more than we would need for our own
> locos, and find a way (logistic company? someone with a lot of time? a
> company supporting ubuntu?) to get them distributed among locos, along
> a yet-to-define process. 
> 
> In a medium to far future we may ask canonical for the right to build
> another not-for-profit organisation with ubuntu in its name to
> separate the money dedicated to this project from the money belonging
> directly to ubuntu-fr and ubuntu-de. If we don't get it, well, we may
> build a not for profit without ubuntu in its name :( But with that
> kind of organisation, companies who want to support ubuntu but don't
> want to give the money to another company would finally have someone
> to give the money to. And depending on how much money we get, who
> knows how many things we could do :) 

I think you need to flesh out your thoughts in detail - right now it
sounds like a bunch of gripes without any concrete issues that are
negatively affecting the community. Sorry if I am misunderstanding the
gist of your argument here.

I think its unfair to say "If we don't get it, well, we may build a not
for profit without ubuntu in its name :(" - what you are suggesting
affects the wider LoCo community, and you need to get everyones view of
the success of this scheme.

	Jono

-- 
Jono Bacon
Ubuntu Community Manager
jono(at)ubuntu(dot)com
www.ubuntu.com / www.jonobacon.org




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