Representatives from the Ubuntu Governance bodies along with various Canonical, flavor and community leads met virtually, on January 14 2025 to discuss the state and future of the Ubuntu Community:
- Mauro Gaspari (@ilvipero) kicked off the first-ever Ubuntu Governance Sync meeting sharing meeting goals, format and schedule. After that, there was a brief round of introductions.
- Merlijn Sebrechts (@merlijn-sebrechts) mentioned that Technical Board elections are still ongoing and have been delayed due to very busy times at Canonical before the winter holidays. The Community Council is following up with an updated schedule.
- Simon Quigley (@tsimonq2) questions for the Membership Board. Documentation on membership board, and how to join calls should be updated. Mattia Rizzolo agrees that documentation should be updated. Aaron Prisk mentions the perks and requirements for joining. Wild Man would like to move scheduling and the whole process on discourse and discourse has a calendar system.
- Simon Quigley (@tsimonq2) talked about mentioning or dedicating either a release or activity to Vorlon (Steve Langasek). Simon also mentions he is in contact with Steve’s family and he can pass messages as needed. Perhaps release notes.
Ideas on how to celebrate Steve’s memory:- Hidden file in the release.
- Wallpaper competition with a subject or image that Steve liked.
- Community Council to reach out to the Release Team and ask what is feasible.
- Merlijn Sebrechts (@merlijn-sebrechts) announced the upcoming communications council. This goal-driven council will eventually replace platform-specific councils such as Matrix, IRC, Forums. Members from those councils will be invited to join until proper elections can be held.
- Aaron Rainbolt (@arraybolt3) talked about the necessity of having some guidelines and rules on the duties and expectations of anyone filling a governance team. Specifically, someone who is not around for extended periods of time should not be allowed to keep a long term governance position. Ideas:
- Mattia Rizzolo (@mapreri) spoke about written rule that a declares how often a governance body meets, and each member needs to participate to a minimum amount of meetings every year.
- Mauro Gaspari (@ilvipero) suggested that exceptions can be made, if the board member announces their limited absence beforehand. This however should be time-limited.
- The main goal is to consolidate communications related councils, such as IRC, Matrix, Forums, Discourse, Hideout, in a single council. This council is not going to get involved with daily operations
- Each platform can keep their own operators/admins teams and they are going to keep carrying on the daily operations and platform specific decisions
- Merlijn Sebrechts (@merlijn-sebrechts) offered guidance from the Community Council point of view.
- Questions about members of a council that don’t respond anymore:
- We should make it very clear what is required for these positions. Positions are also a responsibility
- It shouldn’t be seen as punitive, it’s just bad to have an empty seat for two years
- The new communications council should explain what is required. If you don’t answer for X weeks/months, we can do re-elections for that seat specically.
- We should contact people before kicking them off
- Membership board did it with 3 for a while, “violating” quorum.
- DMB has actual rules about considering a member inactive after 6 consecutive meetings inattended. This changes quorum. → https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeveloperMembershipBoard/KnowledgeBase#Board_Member_Attendance
- Thinking out loud: Should we merge different “memberships”?
- Simon Quigley (@tsimonq2) , Aaron Rainbolt (@arraybolt3) : Lubuntu membership should stay. Works well, and is different. Standards are high
- Larry (@Wild_Man) : Discussion started because Forum is going to disappear, what with Forum Membership? People with forum membership should remain Ubuntu members?
- Aaron Prisk (@aaronprisk) : what if Ubuntu Membership board objects to Lubuntu member?
- Maybe middle-ground approach: merge some boards that don’t work, keep some boards that still work?
- Simon Quigley (@tsimonq2) DMB questions about Contributing Developer
- Simon Quigley (@tsimonq2) asks questions on the process to get contributing developer rights. since it does not include upload rights, can we carry this process async? The general consensus from Heather Ellsworth (@hellsworth) , Benjamin Drung (@bdrung) and Simon Chopin (@schopin )is that it would be acceptable.
- Aaron Prisk (@aaronprisk) shared stellar engagement improvement on the Ubuntu Discourse after the migration of the forums to discourse, and the change of policy regarding technical support.
- Thomas Ward (@teward) discussed Technical Board elections and issues related to documentation.
- A larger discussion sparked around documenting governance structure, updating documentation, getting Mark’s approval and making it public.
- CC and CT to pull the current page and edit it.
- CT to get Mark to approve it.
- CT to publish revised copy.
- Better documentation of the selection process, the shortlisting process and whether or not to take CoC violations into account that didn’t get “official” warnings.
- Merlijn Sebrechts (@merlijn-sebrechts) : Most important part is to give the CC to take action to ensure the health of the community. Even if they didn’t act perfect in the past. We need to ensure bad actions from the CC in the past don’t snowball into big problems for the community.
Discourse
- Larry (@Wild_Man) reports that SSO redirects folks to a place that is not the original page. Mauro Gaspari (@ilvipero) confirmed that this is accurate and how the Ubuntu One works. There are plans to improve it but it will take months.
- Support category still require trust level 1 to post. Aaron Prisk (@aaronprisk) lowered the requirements to get TL1 to make it very easy to get in.
- Aaron Prisk (@aaronprisk) checked the limits of new posts and replies for people who have new accounts in the system. After a discussion, there was an agreement to review those limits and if needed, make those a little bit more flexible towards new users.
- Discourse badges can be created for ex-forums users to thank them for their support over the years. Additionally, we want to send a custom message about trust levels.
- Add pinned post sharing the same discobot message for new users
Get involved!
Ubuntu Governance Sync Meetings take place every 2 months on the second Tuesday of January, March, May, July, September. There are two sessions, 3PM UTC and 10PM UTC, to best accommodate our global community.
All are welcome to join and participate in the discussion!