Developments on the Ubuntu governance

[Elizabeth K. Joseph]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 10:44 AM, Ian Weisser <ian-weisser at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Monday, November 17, 2014 11:27 AM I wrote:
>>> My preferred solution is to address the underlying problem. This
>>> isn't a problem we can throw a team at for a cycle or two. It's an
>>> element of the culture within our community, a holdover from Ubuntu's
>>> technocratic roots during the first few years.
>
> On Monday, November 17, 2014 12:36 PM Scott Kitterman wrote:
>>I've been following this thread and you lost me here.  What's your view
>> of the underlying problem?
>
> The cause (not problem) I see: The Ubuntu community equates technical
> prowess with leadership. But they are two different skill sets.

You are absolutely right that they are different skill sets and it's
quite rare to find someone with both who actually has time to commit
(I think these tend to be very busy people!), we shouldn't wait around
for them.

But the technical prowess requirement is a very interesting
perspective. While my day job is highly technical and I've done work
in Debian with packaging, the work I do directly with Ubuntu has been
overwhelmingly of the less technical type: News, Documentation, Event
planning, minority outreach, dispute resolution. I don't feel that my
lack of highly technical contributions in Ubuntu have ever held me
back. I also honestly believe that our community-focused councils
(Community, IRC, LoCo etc) reflect skills in leadership and expertise
in their area rather than being placed there because of some technical
prowess. Not to say that these skills can't be improved (I think we
could all use help with leadership skills!), but as a CC member who
helped place some of these individuals on the councils, my motivations
for adding them were because I thought they could do a good job
meeting the charter of the council, not because they were popular or
accomplished developers.

Scott talked about Kubuntu, and I can say similarly for Xubuntu - our
project lead for several years was the brilliant and dynamic knome,
who largely works on the web and artwork side of things and happens to
be great at herding cats. He's not a developer, our developers are
working on developing things for the project, not making sure team
meetings happen. Looking at the Lubuntu community, they are also very
active adding non-technical contributors to roles where technical
ability is not required.

So, if the perception truly is that you need to be a developer to
participate in governance and leadership in Ubuntu, we do need to
address that.

-- 
Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph || Lyz || pleia2
http://www.princessleia.com