Lack of Connection Between Canonical and the Community

[Scott Kitterman]

On Monday, December 08, 2014 09:37:23 AM Jono Bacon wrote:
> On 8 December 2014 at 09:28, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:
> > From my point of view, the number one thing that Canonical could do to
> > improve interest in external willingness to participate in the broader
> > Ubuntu project's development efforts is to either get rid of the CLA or
> > modify it so that it was offering the same rights to contributors that it
> > was asking to receive from them.
> > 
> > Since you've asked people not to dwell on the past, I won't rehash
> > specifics, but it's been a significant source of friction and contributed
> > to people's perception that Canonical is somehow not as friendly to free
> > software as it should be.
> > 
> > It's one issue that could be resolved with the stroke of a pen, no major
> > investment needed.
> 
> I think a big piece of our evolution here is changing the mindset of
> where control lives. Here you focus primarily on Canonical making
> changes, but our community of non-Canonical people can do a huge
> amount here too.
> 
> There is no doubt that the CLA has been controversial. No one is
> denying that. Speaking personally, I also believe we have lost people
> because of it and I too would prefer if Canonical would get rid of it.
> My assumption here though is that this is unlikely to happen.
> 
> I think though that while the CLA lost us some pre-existing
> contributors (primarily developers), I don't believe it significantly
> stands in the way of attracting new people (particularly
> non-developers). I believe it has been more of a headline than a
> blocker to many new folks.
> 
> Scott, what do you feel we as a wider community could do to inspire
> more participation? I would love to hear your ideas.

I think there is an inverse relationship between the amount of non-Canonical 
contribution to development (I'll limit my comments to that, since that's what 
I know the most about) and the degree to which contributing to Ubuntu is seen 
as a contribution to Canonical, the corporation.

There are, broadly, three classes of people willing to contribute to Ubuntu 
development:

1.  People who use it and want to fix stuff that bothers them.
2.  People who are driven by the idea of software freedom.
3.  People who have a direct economic incentive.

Paid developers (whether paid by Canonical or someone else) are in category 
#3, although they are also quite often in #1 and #2.  These aren't exclusive.

Lowering the barriers to initial contributions (which others have discussed) 
is great for people who are primarily focused on scratching their own itch 
(#1).  Once they get engaged and learn to contribute effectively, then, if 
motivated, they can be turned into long-term contributors.

Once one's immediate itches are scratched though, what's the motivation?  
Personally, I'm in the "I'm here for the freedom" [1] camp.  I have very 
practical reasons for caring about the freedom too (I often tell people I 
consider use of proprietary software in business to be a business risk), but 
I'm here for the freedom.  To the extent that Ubuntu is seen as a Canonical 
project with limited community participation, and no longer as a community 
driven project to which Canonical is the predominate contributor [2], it's 
going to feel more and more like working for Canonical for free and less like 
contributing to making the world a better place.

The most important thing that Canonical can do to encourage more contribution 
from the broader community is act like they are part of a broader community.  
Canonical has made a lot of decisions which put them in a poor light in the 
community.  Maybe they were good business decisions and it was worth it (I 
don't know), but it's had an impact.  There are different ways to go about 
these things [3].

The standard Canonical response to critiques like this starts with "But Red 
Hat ...".  I don't care about Red Hat.

Also, the fact that Canonical is willing to pay community developers (in the 
form of prizes) for non-Ubuntu [the Linux distribution] Ubuntu [the project] 
contributions [4] [5] is also something I find demotivating.  The message I get 
from that is Canonical doesn't care about community involvement in building 
Ubuntu [the Linux distribution].  So balancing that out somehow would be good.

Scott K

[1] http://skitterman.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/back_home_from_uds_karmic/
[2] http://skitterman.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/business-opportunity-in-ubuntu/
[3] http://vizzzion.org/blog/2012/09/online-search-results-in-the-shell/
[4] http://developer.ubuntu.com/showdown/
[5] https://juju.ubuntu.com/charm-championship/