UPDATE: Announcement from www.kubuntu.de

[Dennis Kaarsemaker]

On di, 2006-04-11 at 14:08 +0200, Mirjam Wäckerlin wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> The announcement on www.kubuntu.de has just been updated. Again, I
> post it here for your acknowledgement and for discussion:
> 
> Kubuntu.de protest week – Update
> 
> The linux community received our protest with both, agreement, but
> also criticism.
> We would like to react to those by giving more specific reasons for our protest.
> 
> 
> The aim
> 
> This website, including the forum, the mailing lists and the
> respective IRC channels (#kubuntu-de and #kubuntu-de-team) has one
> aim: to support the community, to offer a platform to the users of
> Kubuntu and, last but not least, to boost the Kubuntu-project so as to
> make it an outstanding distribution.
> We all from the kubuntu.de - team have poursuited this aim together,
> but most of the work has been done by Andreas Mueller (amu). He is not
> only co-founder and unpaid developer of the Kubuntu-project, but he's
> also hosting this website with current Kubuntu-LiveCDs and he's taking
> over all the arising expenses himself. Gnoppix, another "baby" of
> Andreas Mueller, now in possession of Canonical, but still being
> financed by Andreas.

He/You chose to do that yourself. Remember that. And why aren't you
cooperating with the german locoteam?

> What we criticise
> 
> During our endeavours for Kubuntu, several requests to Canonical were
> made. All the mails were addressed to Mrs. Jane Silber, CCO of
> Canonical.
> Our concern primarily regards the following subjects, which need - due
> to the present state of the project - several basic decisions and
> responses by Canonical :
> 
> Developers
> Kubuntu needs more paid developers. Even though Canonical says that
> there is one paid developer for GNOME and one KDE (seb128/jriddell),
> the rest of the paid developers rather tend to support GNOME. It would
> be reasonable to pay at least 2-3 more developers to balance, because
> only providing KDE-packages is not enough.

Then pay a few - Ubuntu needs more paid developers for lots of other
projects too, why would canonical pay all of them? There are lots of
volunteers working on Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu. 

> Status of the project
> What is the meaning behind Mark Shuttleworth's commitment, that he
> wants to make "Kubuntu a 1st class distribution"? Is he stepping back
> from his former declaration that Kubuntu is a pure community project
> (http://www.kubuntu.org/announcements/hoary-release.php), and is it
> planned to integrate Kubuntu permanently into the Canonical support
> system?
> 
> Restricted independence of the project
> Kubuntu should be a little more independent as a project. Of course we
> understand that money has to be made at some point – you can not only
> spend the money, you need to get it back somehow.
> But the decision should be a technical one in the first place, which
> is geared to special markets (concretely: the SMIME support which is
> important e.g. in Germany).
> Sponsoring
> What about having another big sponsor on board? Generally, this could happen.
> Is Kubuntu a community project or are there financial interests behind though?

Now you're contradicting yourself! You want Canonical to pay for KDE
developers and at the same time make KDE more independent. I can't
really see this happening.

> ISO-Updates
> Is there any problem to integrate patches and security updates into
> the install- and live-iso's and to provide updates of the iso's after
> 3 months? Bugs do happen.

Has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

> Community contribution (portal software)
> Except Jonathan Riddell and Andreas Mueller nobody can change the
> website of kubuntu (kubuntu.org – Andreas has gained his account back
> now, after more than two months).
> If someone can't make packages, that doesn't mean he can't do anything
> for the project. A lot of volunteers wanted to contribute, but they
> couldn't because they have no access.
> A portal software solve this problem. This software could ideally
> provide a direct translation (possibly with connection to Rosetta) and
> at the same time allow the export to the official documentation. We
> are already working on the realisation of such a portal.
> 
> 
> Trademarks
> On the site of ubuntuusers.de it is stated that they are the "official
> german portal of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu and all other Ubuntu
> derivatives". None of the concerned party is even known with a
> nickname on #kubuntu-devel or #kubuntu-de.
> There is a contract between Matthias Urlichs, Julius Bloch, Marcus
> Fischer and Canonical
> http://static.ubuntu-de.org/cms/files/00/05/52/agreement.pdf) in order
> to give them the possibility to use the name "Ubuntu" for the
> association "ubuntu Deutschland e.V." over which the three preside.
> The association itself is hosting the portal ubuntuusers.de.
> But this contract doesn't entitle "ubuntu Deutschland e.V." to the
> names Kubuntu, Xubuntu and to all the other names of ubuntu
> derivatives.
> Therefore we request rectification on the sites of the association as
> well as on the site of ubuntuusers.de: that they have nothing to do
> with Kubuntu and other derivatives of Canonical Trademarks and Ubuntu
> Foundation distributions, since they are only supporting
> ubuntuusers.de and no other community projects around Ubuntu and its
> derivatives.

ubuntuusers.de is the official german locoteam. By not cooperating with
them, you placed yourself outside the {K,Ed,X,}ubuntu community. A
locoteam has full rights to use these trademarks.

> Moreover, there exist some so-called "domaingrabber" in Germany which
> only want to make profit with the brand Kubuntu. Why are they not
> admonished and closed?
> This is a sensitive area, but instead of declaring Canonical is hiding
> away from the problems.

Don't confuse 'not paying attention' with hiding. Maybe they simply
don't mind it enough.

> Our protest will continue as long as these questions are not clarified.

Shame. I still fail to see how this helps Kubuntu grow, the only thing I
see here is a group of people who fail to communicate with and cooperate
with the rest of the community.

-- 
Dennis K.
 - Linux for human beings - http://www.ubuntu.com
 - Linux voor iedereen - http://www.ubuntu-nl.org
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