Representatives from the Ubuntu Governance bodies along with various Canonical, flavor and community leads met virtually, on January 13th 2026 to discuss the state and future of the Ubuntu Community:
Welcome and Introductions
- @ilvipero kicked off both sessions of the Ubuntu Governance Sync meeting sharing meeting goals, format and schedule .
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.
Topics from flavor sync meetings
- lightdm project status discussion: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/current-status-of-lightdm/29048/13
- Blender not building on ubuntu
- Blender/minizip-ng issue discussion: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/01/msg00205.html
- Blender snap request: https://devtalk.blender.org/t/blender-snap-add-latest-stable-ubuntu-26-04-or-4-5lts-stable-ubuntu-26-04-branches/43981
Communications Council updates
- Matrix room upgrades progressing. Thanks for the feedback
- Need to be careful when making changes that are or may be perceived as governance structure changes.
- Room upgrades triggered some major changes with admins and owners, that should be better communicated.
- Discourse and Matrix stability
- @Wild_Man reports discourse has suffered in the last month but 3 level category is now enabled.
- Ubuntu fridge redirects to the community hub
- Planet Ubuntu currently seem to be not working → @aaronprisk to check status and report back.
- @Wild_Man asks questions about new wiki and moderators. @aaronprisk commented that there is an early discussion by @shanecrowley on the Ubuntu Discourse.
Governance team topics
- CLA changes that it appears there is either a lack of clarity or decisions made by Canonical
- It also should be noted that a CLA enforcement in Ubuntu will result in a loss of contributors.
- Discussions with Canonical Legal are going on and as soon as we have an assigned member of the legal team, we will start a discussion with Ubuntu governance stakeholders.
- Transparent documentation and requirements for Ubuntu contributions are needed.
- @teward has questions on trademark rules. This has recently come up with a local community. Guidelines on use of trademark without contacting Canonical would be ideal.
- @sarnold linked this: https://canonical.com/legal/intellectual-property-policy
- @teward commented that this should be reviewed and updated as needed. And add a review date to the document.
Loco Council updates
- @diogoconstantino mentions that Term of the loco council has just expired, and new elections should be held. CC mentions that the current council can keep up the work until new elections are up.
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!