Canonical at Solutions Linux in Paris

[Jono Bacon]

Hi Yann,

> I just learned that Canonical was silver sponsor of Solutions Linux in
> Paris, and that Canonical is going to have a big booth there, as a
> silver sponsor.
> So we are going to have two stands there: Ubuntu-fr, and Ubuntu. The
> Ubuntu being in fact Canonical's one. 
> 
> So, Canonical guys, let me remember you this very clearly:
> Ubuntu is a COMMUNITY distribution. Ubuntu in france is made by
> Ubuntu-fr, and all the community around Ubuntu in France and
> french-speaking countries, packaging, documenting, moderating. The
> fact that Canonical decided to make its own booth (of course we never
> received any notification of all this on the admin list - so far so
> good for the communication) shows that: 
> a/ they don't trust the community to represent properly the
> distribution
> b/ They use the Ubuntu brand to sell Canonical without clearly stating
> it is a canonical booth
> c/ They are just not able to communicate or to work close to a
> community 
> 
> You know what? Ubuntu-fr has been at solutions Linux for the past 3
> years. Now that thanks to the amazing work of the whole community we
> are getting a wide recognition in France, and Canonical starts to show
> interest - how? by just saying "thank you, but now it's business". 
> 
> What pisses me off is that it was exactly the same at linux tag 2
> years ago. I made the remark , I got told "well yeah we need to
> improve that".
> Canonical, fuck you. I don't believe the shit announced there:
> http://www.ubuntu.com/news/UbuntuFoundation anymore. I have been
> asking, asking, again, and again, and again, that this foundation gets
> finally started. It was just a publicity, a lie, but a lie that many
> still thinks is true. Promises are made for those who believe in them,
> eh. 
> 
> Let's make this clear: if Canonical gets a booth called Ubuntu *again*
> this won't be a mistake anymore. It will be that Ubuntu just is NOT
> community driven anymore. This a very, very dangerous step to make. 
> 
> When we are complaining about launchpad you tell us "how come you
> don't trust us?"  How can we trust you with that bunch of shit going
> on? And don't tell me I've not mailed the right person, I mailed
> thousands of people in the last 2 years about this issue. 
> 
> I would *very strongly* recommend that you work toward a common booth
> with the community, or at least organise a common booth for any future
> event in France. Else I am really eager to ear your reasons not too.
> Is it that we don't sell canonical's support contract well enough? You
> don't have a fuckin clue who we are working with in France, there are
> some big companies, but every time we approached you your answer was
> "do for the best". Apparently the situation has changed. 
> 
> Anyway, just to clarify matters: this is just my personal point of
> view, it doesn't engage any official view of the french speaking
> locoteam. 

OK, we need to divide these concerns up into a a few areas:

 * Concerns that Canonical does not understand community.
 * Concerns that a LoCo team is not "trusted" enough to represent Ubuntu
at a trade show.

Let me approach each of these concerns:

--> Concerns that Canonical does not understand community.

This is where I deeply disagree, and my view is stemmed from two areas,
firstly the way Canonical engages with the community in terms of open
governance processes, encouraging advocacy groups, hiring a team of
community people (Daniel, Jorge and I), basing on a community
distribution (Debian) and working closely to send derivative work up in
an open and transparent fashion, our staff working in public discussion
channels and lists, supporting the community with free CDs, t-shirts and
merch, making sites such as ubuntu.com very community focused as opposed
to neon-lit, advertising drowned, business sites etc. The second reason,
and you will have to take my word on this, is that since I started
working at Canonical, it has stunned me how much the company cares about
the community - *every* decision has a deep consideration of the
community. I know some of you won't believe this, but its true - as I
have made clear, when I started my role here, I made it clear that I am
here to fight for the interests of the community, and it has stunned me
how little fighting I need to do - the company really does "get it", and
this is largely due to the excellent example set by Mark Shuttleworth -
his community ethos trickles to every part of the company.

If you compare the approach some other distributors take (such as Red
Hat, Novell, Linspire and Xandros), I think its safe to say we have by
far the most open, transparent, engaging community, and the most
community focused commercial sponsor in Canonical. Of course, they are
better at some things that we are not, but as I have said before in
interviews...the reason why Canonical was the only place I wanted to
work was because of their approach to community.

The thing you need to understand Yann, is that there will be some areas
in which the community do not have 100% control, and in many cases in
the past you have come to me with complaints about this or that, and are
expecting complete community control. We are not Debian. We do not have
that level of community control. We just don't. However, given the
balance between the business side of Canonical and the community side, I
think it is say to say the balance is broadly right, with some things
still to help resolve and fix.

--> "Concerns that a LoCo team is not "trusted" enough to represent
Ubuntu at a trade show."

This is untrue. We have huge trust in LoCo teams, if we didn't why would
we support LoCo teams so much, and encourage LoCo teams to get out there
and represent Ubuntu? Also, I spent a significant amount of time in 2007
visiting LoCo teams who were representing Ubuntu at trade shows, and the
efforts were excellent. However, Canonical is a company, and sells
business services in addition to supporting and sponsoring Ubuntu, and
naturally this requires people on the booth who know the details about
these services.

I don't work on the business team, and this is my own view, but no...I
don't think a community member would be as good at selling the concept
of our tech support products as someone who works on that team. *I*
would not be as good at selling those products; it needs someone deeply
clued in to that product and what we can offer. In many cases at trade
shows, we have companies coming over to enquire about ways of working
with Canonical, and it is always wise to have members of the business
team there to deal with these enquiries - the business team knows the
resources, facilities and current capacity to which we can work with
another organisation.

However saying this, I do feel we can improve how we would with the LoCo
team in the local area when we send people over from the company, and I
will raise this internally.

In my experience, one of the problems with community is that some people
(and I am not included Yann here) can jump on their 'ethical high horse'
when they see something that does not seem right, and this ethical high
horse can cloud the bigger picture. So, on one side, it may be unfair
that between A and Z, F is unfair, but it can cloud all the rest of the
letters there. Community is a collection of different sources of energy,
each broadly connected by the same goal, and while there will always be
things to fix, don't forget the incredible work that is going on.

I firmly stand by my view that on the whole, Canonical gets it right,
but we are not perfect. And we always want to know when things don't
work quite right, so we can fix them.

Hope this helps.

	Jono

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