Improving Community Health: Technical Concerns

[chanath]

@valorie-zimmerman

If Kubuntu was no longer part of Ubuntu, I would not be either. My contribution to Ubuntu is through Kubuntu…

If you done anything with the development of the default DE, say 2010 - 2017, and try to keep it going, and so on, you can say you helped Ubuntu. But, if you’ve concentrated solely on Kubuntu, there wasn’t much help. (Nothing personal!)

Ubuntu was made by a company, and to stay in the business, it has to spend money. By helping other remixes to come through, the company and the leader had helped the open-source world. But, the money was lost, and the idea was lost. And, most importantly, the enthusiasm is gone.

Enthusiasm is the life-blood, once it s drained, it can’t be brought back that easily.

At the beginning I liked when the remixes were embraced as official derivatives. Later, I saw the fragmentation coming in. The (free) users, went on to attack the company’s ideas of introducing new thoughts. And, so on…Those who stayed with Ubuntu from the beginning know that.

Fragmentation is the problem. Your own Kubuntu has a competitor in KDE Neon.

@valorie-zimmerman

Removing the flavors would remove much of the active Ubuntu community. I doubt the Kubuntu team would stay together as a remix; we’d just coalesce around KDE neon. I hope that does not happen.

Flavours cannot be removed. Simply because, they are already there. Going back through the last decade, one can say that flavours shouldn’t have happened. If Kubuntu had been a remix from the beginning for example, its creator wouldn’t have to move out to create KDE Neon, just maybe. It is history now.

(I also have a KDE Plasma install btw, neither Kubuntu nor Neon, but OpenSuse Tumbleweed. I had both, but dropped them and went back to the old friend. Very good wiki.)

[chanath]

And, considering today’s Ubuntu default, what a new user would get, when searching the Ubuntu Wiki page,

tells something about the enthusiasm.

[popey]

@chanath

I don’t think so. Ubuntu is Ubuntu with one DE, the others are derivatives – derived from --officially accepted remixes with other DEs. Too much fragmentation. Ubuntu should’ve let all of them be remixes, without bringing them in as “derivatives.” They take the community away, how small or big it is (or was). Now, Ubuntu is only derivatives.

I don’t think you appreciate how official flavours work here. The terms “derivative”, “flavour” and “remix” have very distinct meanings. Let’s please not mix them up nor try to redefine them to prove a point, because it causes confusion.

Flavours are built from the same archive of software. The developers who work on those flavours all work on the same pool of software, collaboratively. They work together to ensure that changes which benefit one flavour, don’t break another flavour.

Remixes are also built on top of Ubuntu but often wish to be flavours, but don’t meet the requirements yet. So they typically work closely with the other flavour leads, and build from the archive, with a small number of additional packages, typically held in a PPA.

Derivatives take the work we have all built together and make something new, which may include many changes, and likely won’t be called “Ubuntu” in any way - see for example Linux Mint.

Ultimately a flavour is “just” Ubuntu with a different desktop, default applications, settings, themes, but crucially all the software is worked on in collaboration in the Ubuntu archive. Remixes typically aim to be a flavour, but that may take time.

Derivatives are outside the Ubuntu community, having their own support systems, bug trackers, communication channels. I do not believe we serve our community well to suggest we break up the flavours and push them out to the wilderness as derivatives, which seems to be what you’re suggesting.

[chanath]

@popey

Derivatives are outside the Ubuntu community,

You said exactly what I said, only in different words,

@popey

having their own support systems, bug trackers, communication channels.

fragmenting the community.

@popey

I do not believe we serve our community well to suggest we break up the flavours and push them out to the wilderness as derivatives, which seems to be what you’re suggesting.

No, I am not suggesting anything of the sort, but show why the community got fragmented, from the history of last decade around Ubuntu.

For example, a certain computer device creator doesn’t fragment their devices by producing low-end and middle-end devices. Ubuntu was high-end, unique and niche.

[popey]

I don’t believe there is fragmentation in the way you think.

There are a ton of distros, there are flavours within those distros. Each services a particular niche. Some people prefer one desktop over another, one theme over another, or the default selection of applications. The vast majority of those distributions have a vanishingly small number of users. Some of the distros have a few tens, some a few hundreds and a few have some thousands of users. Only a select few get beyond about 10K users. A few have hit 100K and one has hit around 500K or so. Ubuntu has millions of installs, more than all the others added together, multiple times over.

So Linux has fragmentation, for sure, but it’s not a bad thing. All these derivatives, and flavours are servicing the needs of their enthusiastic users who appreciate the choices the developers have made. Ubuntu doesn’t have significant fragmentation at all. We love the diversity of the flavours in our archive, and would actively increase that number. Because every additional flavour in the archive adds developers and brings in users and mindshare. It’s fine that those users are running something other than Ubuntu GNOME, it’s great. It’s not a bad thing.

[rexbouwense]

I began using Ubuntu with 6.06. When Unity was introduced I was not impressed and searched for a different DE. I chose lxde and moved to Lubuntu in 2011. That was before it was recognized as an official flavor. I did not consider that abandoning Ubuntu because the core was still there. Although I am not a “techie”, I can still make my contributions to the project in other ways through the Arizona LoCo Team, through contributions on the Ubuntu forums and Ask Ubuntu, and through my local LUG. I know those are minor compared to what others contribute but us people users out there do what we can. I know that there are many folks out there like me that all that they can do is maintain wiki pages , test beta versions when they come out, participate in LoCo and LUG events all the time spreading information about Ubuntu. They are part of the community as well and while most are not capable of contributing in the “technical sense” through patching code, package management, etc. their activities do assist the community as a whole.

[wxl]

@chanath

if you’ve concentrated solely on Kubuntu, there wasn’t much help. (Nothing personal!)

So helping with the installer and the kernel and other core packages don’t count? What about being UBUNTU ambassadors? I am all about Lubuntu but I encourage folks to look at all the flavors, including the default. Valorie and I both have been at conferences promoting Ubuntu and burning Ubuntu media for people. Sorry, but you are so wrong.

the money was lost, and the idea was lost

Canonical is still in business and Ubuntu still has funding. I would speculate most of their business comes from server stuff. And they offer paid support for desktop. They are still paying people to work on it. Looks like the idea is alive, too.

Flavours cannot be removed.

Then let’s talk about things we can do. If you feel it’s hopeless, kindly move on. The rest of us want to see improvement and will continue making strides in that direction.

[chanath]

@rexbouwense

When Unity was introduced I was not impressed and searched for a different DE.

That’s exactly what I am saying. If Ubuntu stubbornly stayed with Unity, most would’ve stayed, even just to see what happens. It would’ve collected that 32 million. We would’ve had the Ubuntu phone, Ubuntu tablet and the rest.

@wxl

Canonical is still in business and Ubuntu still has funding.

The enthusiasm?

@wxl

If you feel it’s hopeless, kindly move on.

Oh, the standard Linux pseudo rhetoric. Have a good day!
Ah, if you really want to know, this development issue will be the last I’ll test. No more testing after the LTS.

[ogra]

@chanath

fragmenting the community.

you have now hijacked each and every of the recent community discussions with the above repeating like a broken record across the threads.

as a spectator this made the discussion here really hard to read. while we do have issues with the community governance and while contributions surely went down vs the time where we flew several 100 people around the world for UDS, neither is the Ubuntu community dead, nor is it fragmented any more than it was back at that time.

the ubuntu-users mailing list is still active …surely not the 400-600 mails/day it used to have but if someone asks for help there are plenty people helping out … the ubuntu IRC channel is still active and the same applies.

Ubuntu is more than Ubuntu Desktop, Server, Cloud, UbuntuCore … it is an archive we all share, a build infrastructure, a foundation (ubuntu-minimal and ubuntu-standard tasks), initramfs, drivers, iso builds, iso QA tracker, test- and bug-reporting tools etc … if @wxl fixes a bug in systemd i will benefit from it, if @valorie-zimmerman finds and fixes a dbus issue in kubuntu and fixes it, I will benefit from it, if I add a fix to initramfs-tools or livecd-rootfs as an Ubuntu Core maintainer, all flavours will benefit from it … we share an infrastructure, a base system, we (used to ?) share the same installer and the same iso image setup.

Flavours got the permission to use the *buntu trademark because they agreed to work inside the Ubuntu distro and avoid fragmentation on their stuff for exactly the above reasons (unlike i.e. mint).

The community is there and still functional (despite a bit quieter), but the governance is gone and we need a new one, which is what most of these conversations are about, not about fragmentation (and repeating it constantly does not make it come true, even if you think different).

[chanath]

@ogra

Flavours got the permission to use the *buntu trademark…

Don’t I know that!
And, it was the mistake!
Company should’ve concentrated on one Ubuntu. 32M would’ve come in then.
We/you would’ve have a Ubuntu phone, and a tablet and so on.

@ogra

The community is there and still functional (despite a bit quieter), but the governance is gone…

One needs enthusiasm for that, don’t you think so? How to have the governance (without the company money)?

[belkinsa]

@ogra

Flavours got the permission to use the *buntu trademark because they agreed to work inside the Ubuntu distro and avoid fragmentation on their stuff for exactly the above reasons (unlike i.e. mint).

I’m not trying to make more of a mess here, but when you say that, I guess the fragmentation doesn’t lie in the flavors then. Maybe it doesn’t really exist not even through the various technologies that the Community uses since it goes back to mainstream. Just like how some Ubuntu Memberships’ work goes upstream.

@ogra

The community is there and still functional (despite a bit quieter), but the governance is gone and we need a new one, which is what most of these conversations are about, not about fragmentation (and repeating it constantly does not make it come true, even if you think different).

If what I said above is true, this what we should really focus on.

[belkinsa]

@ian-weisser

No group-tracking that I’m aware of.

They exist. But how useful would they be if we used them fully?

[ian-weisser]

@belkinsa

They exist. But how useful would they be if we used them fully?

Well, I have learned something.

I don’t see much utility there, and it seems a bit tedious to look somebody up that way. Membership in a group does not seem a useful metric of contributions to that group. I try to be fairly honest, and ways to game group memberships leap to mind.

[HayashiEsme]

Hello, I was the kid who lamented her funky experiences with contributing earlier last year before our lives changed with the pandemic.

I’ve had some time to explore the open source community from Canonical and beyond. It’s been quite interesting to reflect on what I didn’t know then and what can be solved.

I’m getting the sense that the issues relating to community have been unfortunately dropped without transitioning off to another solution due to Mark Shuttleworth’s desire to focus on developing other parts of Ubuntu, and that solutions to this problem are in the process of being implemented. I see yesterday’s message regarding Ubuntu Studio’s package approval painting optimism. I suspect many of these solutions will have take time, the length of which can be unsurprisingly frustrating.

I guess us as the community shouldn’t be taking this as neglect but in reality an opportunity to rebuild itself. I’m looking at updating the contribute docs to reflect the new ways to contribute, and I’d hope that others will find a way to fix small things that tangibly result in a new community:)

Certainly I do hope that Canonical rolls out plans to prune Launchpad of some of groups and begin to update some of these documentations or group descriptions to something newer. It would least start to bring more helpful eyes here. Most of us developers are too afraid overwhelmed with imposter syndrome than to have realized that the messy nature of a mature project had more to do with why they were overwhelmed in the first place:)