Ubuntu Governance Sync Meeting Notes - 10 Mar 2026

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Representatives from the Ubuntu Governance bodies along with various Canonical, flavor and community leads met virtually, on March 10th 2026 to discuss the state and future of the Ubuntu Community:

Welcome and Introductions

Disclaimer

It is important to note that the Governance Sync Meetings have a clear goal to encourage communication and collaboration between various Ubuntu Governance bodies. The sync meetings are not created to gatekeep information, nor as a replacement for proper, established governance processes, voting and decision making.

Discourse moderators

  • The Ubuntu Discourse could use more moderators. only a couple of people doing most of the work and the team could use people covering EU and AU time zones.
  • Members of the membership board to post in the governance room, ask if there could be someone to spotlight.
  • Moderators are keeping an eye on Discourse activity for candidates, but for now there are no takers.

Ubuntu memberships

  • Not many membership requests coming in lately.
  • We need to run a campaign to explain why someone would get a membership. What skills are useful, what perks we get, and why it is important from an open source project point of view.
  • Membership applications can be moved to Discourse, and can be run async to facilitate response by the distributed board members. Live chat can be enabled if needed.
  • Clarify different types of membership (DMB vs main Ubuntu Membership). It can be confusing on the outside

Rocks community, crafts council, and Ubuntu memberships

  • Canonical staff are thinking to jumpstart a crafts council to guide contributors towards their Ubuntu membership, through crafting software artifacts used by Ubuntu such as JuJu charms, Snap packages, Rocks containers.
  • Discussion regarding recognizing exceptional contributors.
  • Exceptional contributors could be spotlighted by Ubuntu members. Discuss this privately with the membership board and if the board reaches an agreement, then the board would reach out privately to the contributor encouraging them to apply.
  • Other suggestions proposed that the spotlighted person can be helped in the application process. Another suggested that the person who spotlights the future member, could write the application for the nominee after checking with them.
  • Some good examples of applications should be shared in the documentation. However we should use examples of new contributors.
  • The barrier of contributions required should not be lowered, but he process of applying or nominating should be simple and encouraged.

Discourse post about age verification and age compliance.

  • Work in progress from Canonical.
  • This is not a topic that the community can control.
  • There might be some exception to open source projects, but this remains to be confirmed.

Councils, elections, and boards

  • LoCo Council needs to be looked at.
  • Communications council expiring 24 March 2026.
  • Membership board down to 6 members, when it used to be 7 members.

Get involved!

Ubuntu governance sync meetings take place every 2 months on the second Tuesday of January, March, May, July, September, November. There are two sessions, 3PM UTC and 10PM UTC, to best accommodate our global community. All are welcome to participate in the discussion here on the Ubuntu Discourse!

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Just wondering …

Does that meeting also involve discussing what to do regarding the possible “hiatus” involving Ubuntu flavours that did not renew their LTS status applications? … and whether there is any “intervention” warranted, considered or planned?

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There is no such thing as an “LTS status application” to be “renewed.” So such a subject was not discussed.

Community flavors are the responsibility of the community supporters and contributors to maintain. It is natural and expected that new flavors may appear when enough supporters come together to do the work. It is also natural and expected that flavors may cease releasing if too many contributors leave the team. It’s how many open source projects work.

Flavors have come and gone…and sometimes come back. Non-LTS flavor releases have also happened before.

There has never been an “intervention” that I recall in my many years as an Ubuntu Member. Nor does Ubuntu maintain reserves of resources for that sort of effort. So it’s understandable that no such idea was discussed at the meeting.

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Thank you, Ian. Just trying to clarify my own expectations around this very murky situation regarding UbuntuMATE.

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