Ubuntu Governance: Reboot?

[Jono Bacon]

Hi Everyone,

Firstly, thanks for the thoughtful discussion going on. While I think
some of it may have wandered of the point a little, I am delighted to
see we are having this conversation: this was the goal of my blog
post.

It seems a common thread here is a feeling that my suggestions of more
active, inspirational, and strategic governance is difficult or
impossible to achieve due to Canonical's dominance in Ubuntu.

Frankly, I think this is an excuse. I am not denying that Canonical
are dominating a certain set of projects - Unity, Mir, Juju, to name a
few. I don't blame community members not choosing to participate there
because Canonical are primarily making the decisions of direction and
focus. I also understand that some people are pretty annoyed by some
of the decisions made by Canonical over time. I get all of this.

Ubuntu is a big place though.

It is not just limited to those projects. There is far more that is
open and collaborative than limited and restricted.

We have hundreds of core developers, MOTUs, docs writers, translators,
and other members in the community. We have numerous derivatives and
flavors. We have literally millions of fans and users across the
forums, IRC, discourse, social media, and elsewhere. Just because
Canonical's focus is on mobile and cloud, this has not mean't that the
desktop, our archives, applications, loco teams, and other areas
cannot continue to be developed, improved, and enhanced.

Likewise, Canonical doesn't hold a monopoly on inspiring others around
the spirit of why Ubuntu is special. Sure, Canonical is focusing it's
efforts on a dedicated set of places (mobile and cloud), which I don't
blame them for, but at no point has anyone been silenced for
motivating and inspiring others to help Ubuntu focus on additional
areas too, or areas that Canonical is not interested in. Again, Ubuntu
is far more open than not.

My primary point here is that I think we may have forgotten a little
about why Ubuntu is so special. Together we have created a platform
that provides an incredible wealth of software people can educate
themselves and others with, set up businesses, create new technology,
create art and music, and more. A student today can install software
right now that they could use to create an animated movie, an album, a
software tool, a magazine, a startup, and other things. They can meet
smart and passionate people online in our community and learn new
skills and methods of participation. Ubuntu is arguably the most
popular Open Source desktop platform, and most popular OS on the
cloud.

This is *incredible*.

Are things perfect? No. But nothing is. We all have restrictions and
frustrations in our workplaces, in our local communities, and in our
families. Ubuntu is a family, and we are no different. Expectations
differ, behavior differs, and consequences differ. Sometimes it is
great, sometimes it sucks. That's life.

But are these imperfections enough to suggest we can't focus on and
inspire others around why Ubuntu, and the wider Open Source spirit is
so special?

Again, nothing is stopping anyone from doing this. Nothing is stopping
someone stepping up and inspiring our community to focus on the
desktop, make it awesome, and continue to be the best it can be.
No-one is stopping anyone from building the strongest local user group
community in the world, creating an incredible community of artists
and designers, and more.

The point of my blog post is that I don't think you are going to see
as much of this from Canonical (due to the focus on cloud/mobile), and
am suggesting our governance and leadership spends more time doing
this. They are perfectly placed to do this; our governance is
independent and diverse, and I think this kind of motivational,
inspirational leadership could inject so much opportunity and
motivation into the project.

Now, some of you have asked why I didn't raise this as a topic when I
was at Canonical. Well, good question. At times I tried to encourage
our governance boards to be a bit more proactive, but I admit that I
never raised this as a high enough priority, which I wish I did. I
think I was also, frankly, a little too close to the sun with
Canonical - I was *always* busy, constantly over-scheduled, and I
think I saw things at times from too much of a pure Canonical
perspective. What I can assure you is that I haven't secretly waited
until I left to discuss this - that is a nothing more than a silly
conspiracy theory.

Also, when you step outside of a community for a bit (as I have been
recently with my focus on XPRIZE), it helps to focus the mind on what
is really important. Ubuntu is something we should all be proud of,
and I am just suggesting our governance and leadership helps to
inspire a new generation of Ubuntu contributors to come and be a part
of the family.

Thanks,

   Jono


On 17 November 2014 03:42, Daniel Holbach <daniel.holbach at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 17.11.2014 12:38, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:
>> Well then https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityCouncil/ should be updated:
>> "Members are appointed by Mark Shuttleworth and approved by a vote by
>> the entire Ubuntu membership."
>>
>> I have not paid enough attention to CC elections to notice when this
>> changed but it was in fact the process at some point right? Also
>> doesn't the final list still got to Mark who can veto?
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityCouncil/Restaffing is correct and
> mentions and reserves the option to short-list candidates, but that
> hasn't happened in a while AFAIK.
>
> But yes, wiki.u.c/CommunityCouncil should be updated.
>
> Have a great day,
>  Daniel
>
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