Ubuntu membership process - A few thoughts

Community Membership
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Hello All,

As an Ubuntu member myself for the past 17 years and running

I was wondering why ubuntu membership applications are on the decline inspite of having its own advantages and perks which is amplified by the fact that ubuntu is a popular choice of Linux distribution nowadays…

So thinking about it makes me wonder if the process of approval be made more streamlined and effective so the official ubuntu member appeal to perspective members and contributors are elevated…

So here is what I have observed

While the ubuntu membership process itself is great including the board meeting at different timezones to cater to the diversity of applicants,

Off late in the recent past I have observed that the approval process has gone slow due to lack of quorum and other issues effectively impacting the motivation to apply to be ubuntu member with pride and step up contributions to the community in the long term.

So I was thinking about ways to improve the approval process so that it could potentially lead to increase in number of perspective members and contributors applying for ubuntu membership and these are my thoughts

  1. Whilst the membership board continues to meet atleast once a month with required quorum and discuss matters related to the board, why can’t we use discourse and other available tools to speed up the process like

a. We use discourse or other tools like ubuntu wiki where our perspective members will introduce themselves and apply… why can’t we come up with a questionnaire on discourse or on the perspective member email tailored to his specific application and give him a week to respond…

Cross verification can be easily done by his details in the discourse application and the testimonies he has from other ubuntu members

b. Once this is done with… why can’t we use a cvis voting system where board members vote on the application based on the answers and discussion with the perspective member and this vote will be open for a week for all the membership board members to vote based on their discretion after reviewing the application.

So in this way, the membership approval timeline can be cut to two weeks max turn around time while the option for an irc meeting still remains and on on demand basis…

Just a few basic thoughts regarding the process…

Would be glad to hear back any feedback or any other ideas regarding the same from the community :slight_smile:

Regards,
Bhavi

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@bhavi, thank you for starting this discussion and caring enough to do so it may bring on more change that will benefit the membership process, I will tell you we already have a streamlined process to get the candidate taken care of and that is we vote on the membership mailing list so the candidates do not usually have to wait, I am in the process of emailing the mailing list to call for a vote of the candidate today.

I posted a couple of days ago to see if we can also move the wiki calendar for the schedule of the meeting day and time to the discourse wiki, I believe having as much of the process as possible in one place will make it easier, I know it will for me keeping up with meetings and I know many candidates still have a hard time editing wiki’s.

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That’s great… but we can make it a bit more speedy I guess by establishing an alternate process too in parallel…

Just a thought :slight_smile:

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I’m not convinced that the reason for fewer membership applications is primarily a result of the process.

I propose that the reason for the drop in membership applications, is a direct result of the drop in contributors.

The goal of membership is to reward and recognise significant and sustained contributinos, wherever that may be. It could be packaging, development, advocacy, support, translations, design, other leadership activites, and more.

When there are fewer people doing all those things, there will inevitably be a drop in those doing a significant and sustained amount of work.

I’d fix that first, or in parallel, at least.

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I agree with this point. I don’t think we should allow membership applications just for the sake of it with some namesake contributions. IIRC, it was 6 months of continuous contribution before one is allowed to apply, but I don’t think that criteria is even checked anymore.

Another possible reason is people don’t know. It took me around 1.5 years until I finally came to know that I can and should apply for Ubuntu Membership. And even after that, I applied almost after 2 years, after I started contribution.

After application though, it took me another 4 months, as I don’t still have the right to edit wikis, so, I didn’t know how to add myself in the board.

I think all of these process can be smoothened, and we should focus on these, rather than how to just make everyone apply for it.

EDIT:

I’ll also propose that membership shouldn’t be lifetime. It should have a lifespan, like the councils have, probably 3 years is the best suite. And everyone will once again have to go through the membership board for extension. Thus, it’ll focus on the quality of members and will reduce inactive ones.

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When I was on the membership board, we used “3 months of sustained and significant contribution” as a guideline. But it really depends on the individual, which is why we valued the wiki page being up to date, and people having testimonials pre-written, and supporters turning up to meetings to cheer for them.

This is a very good point! If people don’t know about it, or perhaps do know, but don’t feel like they “qualify” then they may not apply.

One way to improve this might be to automate it. Scan code repos, discourse, translation tools, and other contribution methods, for people who have clearly contributed a lot, but are not yet members. Contact them and let them know.

In another community I use a tool called Savannah (which was written by @mhall119 (latterly of this parish) to measure contributions. Savannah notifies me when people have contributed significantly (among many other things) to suggest I should reach out and do something to reward that commitment.

I appreciate tools aren’t the only solution, better documentation, and a smoother process would help. But if the community team were notified “Hey, Joe Bloggs has contributed a lot over the last 6 months, they should level up” - it may help.

It isn’t a lifespan, it is two years, with self-renew. I know plenty of people who reflect after that time, and decide that they can’t in all good conscience renew their membership. While others press the ‘renew’ button every two years, whether they contribute or not. I think if you forced people to re-review after a period of time, they wouldn’t, and you’d see an even bigger drop-off in members.

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Personally, I do agree that Membership process still need some improvement. But I don’t agree that is the main reason we don’t have good numbers of new membership application.

Like what we can know from @soumyadghosh’s comment, I’d say many folks simply do not even know if such Ubuntu Membership thing exists and also what Ubuntu membership means and why they should apply for it.

I’ve been participating Korean LoCo since around 2013 and became the leader for 2017-2018 term and 2021-2023 term. But did knew nothing about the Ubuntu Membership until mid or late 2021. The moment I knew about the membership was during submitting Community Donations Funding form to receive event sponsorship from Canonical for UbuCon Asia 2021. The form only allowed Ubuntu Member to apply for it, So I asked Japanese LoCo team folk (with membership of course) to apply for it then I started to search for some details after finishing the event.

Same for the Korean LoCo team, There were good numbers of active folks involved with running Ubuntu gatherings, translation and more most of times. But almost none of them were with the membership. Today, We have @choo121600 @mscho7969 @hothead-jung but they became one of Ubuntu Members very recently only past 1 or 2 years after I telling them “You’re already eligible for Ubuntu Membership, follow this process and prepare application today then apply for it” We also have very long time Korean LoCo Member like @sigmadream who’ve been active even longer then me but without Ubuntu Membership. Some of them are also considering or preparing the membership application after i recommending them to apply for it. (Unfortunately, some folks are currently stalled. But it’s better then not even start doing something :slight_smile: )

So what we’ll need to do for on-boarding much more new members, We need to spread some words about the Ubuntu Membership and also encourage people already contributing to Ubuntu in many ways already but without Membership to apply.

There would be many ways to achieve this.

  • We can speak at large conference to tell people about what is Ubuntu Membership. Like @fenris has been doing on UbuCon Asia for many years including 2022, 2023 and beyond.
  • Encourage folks actively contributing to Ubuntu but without Ubuntu membership. Like I mentioned above, I also encourage our Korean LoCo Team folks to apply for it after seeing they actively and significantly contributing to LoCo and other Ubuntu stuff.
  • Automatically encouraging people or poking community team or other governance body like @popey suggest also seem to be good idea :slight_smile:
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I agree, but I believe we’d focus on quality rather than quantity. The drop-offs will also release the resources they’re using, which will again help the community to reallocate it for better works. As Ubuntu’s growing in different ways, and there are many other side projects happening inside Ubuntu, this will kick in even more.

But, we’ll have to and must make sure that the audience we’re spreading the word with is mature and not coming for the namesake, or for the perks, like what has been happening with the big events that promotes Open Source, Hacktoberfest, Google Summer of Code etcs. People jumped in thousands just for the goodies, and badges etc. Like, MLH shut down for many countries, or Hacktoberfest stopped giving goodies. So, we have to be careful about this thing, as the current process is, once the switch is turned on, it can’t be turned off anymore.

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Totally agreed. I remember I’ve been also take in to account potential similar issue when drafting out LoCo Handover Process with other LoCo Council member folks. I’d like to mention we already have good place with mature audience to spread some words - Ubuntu summit. And also UbuCon(s) that have been continued for multiple years. And well, that’s why I also said “Encourage people already contributing to Ubuntu in many ways already but without Membership”.

This might be probably because you’ve already contributed a lot significantly when applying for membership. Also with good numbers of testimonials. I’d say the membership board does check if the applicant significantly contributed at least 6 month and also received enough number of testimonials.

If you ask why or for some proof, I already saw @mscho7969’s application was denied in 2022 as his contribution were not lasted more then 6 month (I remember it was like 4-5 month or a bit more). So he had to spend more time to contribute then applied for it again.

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As a member of the Ubuntu Memership Board I can say we absolutely check to see if the Candidate has 6 months of sustained and significant contributions and also testimonials.

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Another important angle to consider is visibility.
There are a lot of active users and contributors who have no idea the Membership program exists. I find this comes up a lot with newer faces in the community. It was a major contributing factor as to why we added the Membership content over on Ubuntu Community | Membership and added it into our conference materials.

In my view, it’s a really vital part of the contributor journey. We need to show how you can go from a passionate user → to a contributor → to a member → to sitting on a council where you can help shape the future of the project.

I too see a lot of misunderstanding as to what constitutes as “sustained contributions”. I mentioned in a call with the forums folks the other day that we need to shine a brighter light on non-dev work and the non-code contributors in the community. Their work is just as valuable and they deserve to be rewarded with membership for their valued contributions.

I would love to put our heads together on some ways that we can really spotlight the Membership program and get the word out. Perhaps some blog posts or occasional spotlights of existing members and their Ubuntu journey.

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This was raised in the thread Member for life, the wrong policy back in 2018. The thread didn’t go anywhere. I’m not sure there’s any real need for a change some six years later.

When I obtained my Ubuntu membership I spent many hours each day working on Ubuntu by participating in the Forums, working on bug reports and helping with the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. Today I spend very much less time working on Ubuntu out of choice.

However, I’ve just spent an hour or so looking at various newly created bug reports. I didn’t achieve much although I did make several changes that hopefully will help both the reporter and the Ubuntu project.

How would you now measure my contribution towards an Ubuntu Membership? Time spent on such an activity or the results from that activity if my past contributions are no longer valid?

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I am not here to demean someone. It’s just such opportunities and titles that’s backed by so much of resources, it attracts people who doesn’t care. They just want to get in once, that’s it! Look at the past incidents happened with MLH or Hacktoberfest, some very prominent examples I’ve given. You(in a generic way, not specifically you), I on the other hand aren’t here for fun, we daily drive the OS, or we love the concept, we spread the word, or we do something, that’s not even counted but helps… And even if we are not doing enough now, we did enough some time ago. But, I’ll surely give up my membership, the moment I’ll not do enough for the community.

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Hello world, opinion from someone who would probably qualify for Ubuntu membership but never has bothered here.

In my opinion, the membership doesn’t change my relationship with Ubuntu in any practical way. Instead, I’d argue that for people like myself, it feels like an obligation. Most my time in Ubuntu is spent on Snap stuff. Directly packaging them, helping other people package them on the forums, the occasional patch to Snapcraft itself, extensions, or etc, but mostly aiming to actually keep an eye on support channels in those snaps own communities ( I even presented snaps at CERN ! ).

Whilst I can understand people being proud to wear membership as a badge of honour, ultimately, I do what I do because it’s a hobby. A hobby that helps other people, but even without membership, maintaining packages takes a lot out of me from time to time because sometimes you impose unrealistic expectations on yourself.

I applied and got Star Developer status on snaps the first month they were released. ( I think I was the first application, although Lucy beat me to being the first actual :star:).

There’s a practical benefit there. End users see that star and it provides reassurance to them in myself. That’s an extremely powerful “perk” from a packagers perspective.

None of the Ubuntu membership perks entice me and I’m not keen on placing more expectations on myself. We’re a neurodiverse bunch on the whole, and while I can understand and appreciate people who work hard for community and think I contribute in my own ways there, what benefit is there in me wasting people’s time applying? I can understand people liking the idea of official recognition. But I don’t doubt theres plenty of people like myself who simply couldn’t be bothered, which isn’t a slight against membership conceptually, but simply sums up to that query of, what actually changes, except (imaginary, perhaps) obligation?

Where people have greater ambitions and membership is a pathway to greater things, it makes perfect sense. For myself? I’m happy in my own little world ( with some familiar faces in this thread, I’m not sat in a corner! ) and have been for 6 years, membership or otherwise.

(This is ignoring me helping out in IRC nearly 18 years ago, on account of being 11!, but I can still find myself in the IRC logs)

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Ohh bro… a familiar face, you seem more like a familiar person! I can’t even think, how 3 years are going to pass away, after I completed my first snap :-0

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Has it really been 3 years? Time flies!

I think you were the first person I’d given testimony for regarding Ubuntu Membership, which was well deserved, as is the Snapcraft Star status. I can see that the community interaction drives you as much as the continual self improvement, so as one of the relative newcomers to Ubuntu Membership (on the scale of 2 decades at least), you’re a great example of the system(s) being a success.

Thinking about it, there might be a perception that Ubuntu members are exceptional (and you all are in so many ways), and that perhaps that’s part of the reason people are averse to applying. When the team is full of people hosting conventions, fixing bugs, translating, drawing, advocating, and generally showcasing the best of humanity; it’s easier for people to go “I don’t think I could ever be that good” by comparison. Shifting the perception so that community is percieved on par with ability might help there, such as whether we could highlight new Ubuntu members (e.g., consider the same way Mozilla announces new contributors on the Firefox release notes). The new blood is as important as the old, but one is much more visible than the other.

But ultimately, some people will be like me, where I didn’t attend my own university graduation despite getting top grades in it (plus I saved like £500), but did go to my friends, because I’m happy to celebrate other peoples success but have never felt that bothered about my own, and in such a diverse community, I’d assume there’s a lot similar to myself.

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