You can look around in discourse or look at Ubuntu Newsletters there has been a decline for many years now. Ubuntu Membership has been steadily declining for years and so has Ubuntu Developers. There hasn’t been fully functioning Ubuntu Community Team in years now and the Community Council which is the main governance body has been abandoned and vacant without any official communication from Mark who is the project leader.
Here you can see a thread of long time Ubuntu contributors sharing the same concerns:
This isn’t exactly news to anyone rather the community council has been defunct for awhile and Mark and Canonical really haven’t done much of anything to address community concerns about the abandonment of the project by the “benevolent dictator”
From the Ubuntu Community Code of Comduct:
“ Responsibility for the project starts with the “benevolent dictator”, who delegates specific responsibilities and the corresponding authority to a series of teams, councils and individuals, starting with the Community Council (“CC”). That Council or its delegated representative will arbitrate in any dispute.
We are a meritocracy; we delegate decision making, governance and leadership from senior bodies to the most able and engaged candidates.”