Ubuntu Governance: Reboot?

[Scott Kitterman]

On Friday, November 14, 2014 20:56:45 Nathan Haines wrote:
> > " Over the years though Ubuntu has changed, not just in terms of the
> > product, but also the community. Ubuntu is no longer just platform
> > contributors, but there are app and charm developers, a delicate balance
> > between Canonical and community strategic direction, and a different
> > market and world in which we operate."
> > 
> > I would say that there is no community strategic direction but only the
> > direction that Mark and Canonical lay out for the community.
> 
> And that is because the community is not participating.  Which can be 
> solved by greater community participation.  Which is a problem that Jono 
> has identified and is advocating a solution to.

I didn't notice any proposed solutions to reduce community participation in 
the blog post.

Personally, all the change he's hyping makes Ubuntu less and less interesting 
for me.  As of a few months ago I was not managing any servers running Ubuntu 
for the first time since 2007.  All the emphasis on cloud, JuJu, MaaS, etc 
makes it clear that Ubuntu Server is not where I should be.  Canonical (and in 
server there never have been many non-Canonical developers) clearly isn't 
interested in the kinds of things I use servers for.

I don't care about the phone.  I don't care about these apps.  I need a solid, 
well integrated Linux distribution to run on actual computers to get actual 
stuff done.

The evolution of the project over the last four or five years has just made it 
less interesting to participate in.  Nothing about governance will fix that.

There are areas which are interesting for people in the community to 
participate in.  There is a great core platform developed by some great people 
that can be used for many different things.  In addition to the long existing 
non-Canonical flavors (e.g. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu - yes, I know two of 
those were originally Canonical sponsored) new ones continue to pop up.

There are some technical/coordination challenges where packages that are core 
to a Canonical flavor are also critical for non-Canonical flavors, but I think 
everyone is working in good faith to sort those out reasonably.

If you want more community participation, figure out what is interesting to 
people and expose them to it.  Governance has got nothing to do with it.  The 
belief that governance is relevant is actually part of the problem.  In a free 
software project like Ubuntu, you don't need any governance body to empower 
you, you need to do it yourself.  If you're waiting for someone to hand you 
permission to do stuff you want, you're in the wrong place as it'll be a long 
wait.

Scott K