[ubuntu-us-ma] Is Ubuntu-centricity holding us back?

[Walter Bender]

On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Danny Piccirillo
<danny.piccirillo at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> For a while now, i've been thinking about the possibility of ending our
> Ubuntu-centricity. The community is Ubuntu's greatest strength, yet the
> community isn't being listened to. More importantly though, i think it is a
> huge disservice to the greater Free Software (aka Open Source) ecosystem to
> have one of the strongest global network of advocates to be banded around
> one distribution. I'd like to propose that we become a general Free Software
> team, and recommend that the rest of the LoCo's do the same.
> I can't even think of any pros to being an Ubuntu-only team. Having one OS
> to promote may make certain advocacy easier, but there's no reason why a
> general team couldn't make the decision to primarily support Ubuntu in most
> cases. As an official LoCo, we get freebies from Canonical, but i don't
> think this is a very big deal. We can make our own CDs and i'm sure if we
> were doing worthy projects, Canonical would still be willing to provide us
> with CDs, as it would be in their interest.
> Now, a few of the cons:
>
> Lack of community input for major decisions and arrogance among those in
> charge
> Lack of support for educational events, and it's not hard to see why since
> Canonical may endanger their own educational services revenue if they helped
> out more.
> Alienate the many many non-Ubuntu members of the Free Software community
> Being exclusive to Ubuntu makes it hard to reach out to a wider audience of
> people with varying levels of interest from beginners to hardcore computer
> people
> We're doing a disservice to the rest of the community by only acknowledging
> one free desktop OS
>
> I think what we are united around, more so than an OS which, to be frank, i
> don't feel any loyalty towards, is ideals. Yes, i'm sure at least one person
> is thinking that they just care about what tools work, but let's not forget
> to thank the ideals that made these better tools possible. I think most of
> us imagine a world where these ideals are universal, and see an incredible
> amount of potential in that.
> If this idea is well-received, we could either just do our own thing or use
> LibrePlanet which is a network that already exists and would be easy to move
> to. I understand some people have some badly tainted perceptions of the FSF,
> but i would have no problem being a part of their extended network. Either
> way, the more i think about it, the more i do think it is appropriate for
> LoCo's to abandon their exclusive-to-Ubuntu nature.
> I'm sure you can think of other good reasons as well. We would be giving up
> our Ubuntu exclusivity, but not abandoning Ubuntu. It seems this could make
> our job easier, benefit the greater FLOSS community, and still have no
> significant disadvantage for Ubuntu.
> Thoughts?
> --
> .danny
>
> ☮♥Ⓐ - http://www.google.com/profiles/danny.piccirillo
> Every (in)decision matters.
>
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>

FWIW, I am much more likely to participate if the focus were less
Ubuntu-centric (even though I am an Ubuntu user).

regards.

-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org