Danny, Your mail reads like someone wanting to hijack an entire community to kick start an FSF initiative. This is not the first time I have witnessed this happen. The FSF tried to hijack UK Linux User Groups recently and this was an abysmal failure as the members of those teams saw through the transparent hijacking attempt very quickly.
On 8 June 2010 22:06, Danny Piccirillo <[email protected]> wrote: > The reason that Ubuntu's local > community teams should move to LibrePlanet is because having one of the > worlds strongest FLOSS advocacy networks centered around one piece of > software and sponsored by one company is a disservice to the greater free > software community. > Back that claim up with evidence. I'm certain that the existence of Ubuntu _and_ its community of advocates as done more for FLOSS over the last 5 years than any other single distro. Helped in part by FLOSS on other platforms such as Firefox and OpenOffice, Ubuntu has been instrumental in bringing FLOSS to the world at large. > I have been heavily involved in Ubuntu advocacy for years, but for a while > now, i've been considering the prospect of local teams operating independent > of Canonical. What makes you think teams don't already operate independent of Canonical? I don't know of many LoCo teams that have Canonical employees as their leaders (although I know of at least one, but he was recruited after becoming team lead). Canonical is very much 'hands off' with LoCo teams. LoCo teams are in no way tied to Canonical. They can schedule events, advocate Ubuntu (and FLOSS in general) and do all the other things communities do with little or no effort from Canonical. It's probably one of the single reasons Ubuntu has become insanely popular, the community of people who are willing to give their time to promote it. > This would not be a move to abandon Ubuntu, but simply to open > up more possibilities and reach our full potential. You're talking from your own perspective here and contradicting yourself. Many other teams already liaise with FLOSS groups, LUGs and other organisations as part of their advocacy. This is indeed encouraged within LoCos. If it's not encouraged in your LoCo then perhaps it should be. > Most people in LoCos are > not loyal to Ubuntu, but to free software (aka open source). I disagree. Most people in LoCos (from my experience) are loyal to Ubuntu, but use other platforms and distros as well. There is no exclusivity requirement when you sign up to (or start) a LoCo. Nowhere on the wiki / documentation / code of conduct is it mandated to use Ubuntu. Diversity and choice are great, we don't want a team of automatons who agree with everything Ubuntu/Canonical says/does and only run their software. That appears to be the Apple way :) > We are united > by a set of ideals and work together to promote software which helps further > these ideals. You're making an assumption here. Not everyone is working under the same set of ideals/principles as you. Some use Ubuntu because they like it, not because of some philosophical ideal. > Why then, must all of our advocacy revolve around one > GNU+Linux distribution? Because we're Ubuntu LoCos? People can be in a LoCo and a LUG and another FLOSS group and a knitting group, a car enthusiast club. We are not exclusive. > Firstly, because Ubuntu is seen by most people as the best way to introduce > new people to a (mostly) free desktop environment. What distro are you proposing instead? Gnewsense? I have witnessed a FSF created free software group in the UK have a flamewar over whether the group should give out Ubuntu CDs at Software Freedom Day or not. I would envisage that this LibrePlanet would be similarly minded given it's an FSF initiative. That kind of in fighting is unwelcome in free software communities, but seems inevitable whenever Free Software zealots get their hands on a group. > It is certainly much > easier to simply promote one operating system than a family of them. Still, > this is no reason to limit ourselves. A team not entirely exclusive to > Ubuntu can just as easily choose to promote Ubuntu exclusively for events > aimed at the general public. Ubuntu may be the best now, but if something > better came along or if Ubuntu went downhill, we should be able and ready to > adapt. Being an Ubuntu LoCo does not provide this flexibility. > That's a bit glass-half-empty. How about getting involved and helping to make Ubuntu better rather than hedging your bets and anticipating the day when/if it fails? Seems overly pessimistic to me. > Secondly, because the infrastructure is there. Canonical provides a wiki and > mailing lists to their teams and in exchange, the teams work for them, > albeit loosely, as part of the Ubuntu LoCo project, under its name and > banner. LoCo teams are not obliged to use any of the resources that Canonical provides. A group of like-minded individuals can setup a LoCo pretty much anywhere on the planet. They don't have to use the web hosting, mailing list, launchpad or irc channels. Those services are provided as a courtesy by Canonical and Freenode. Indeed my own LoCo doesn't use Canonical for web hosting, we have gone out and found a local business who were willing to sponsor the team by hosting the site and podcast files for us. That said it makes _sense_ to use at least some of the services Canonical provides. Launchpad integrates with the LoCo directory and the IRC channels can benefit from involvement from the IRC Council (also not a Canonical instrument). In addition we on the LoCo council can help LoCo teams if we know about them, and being on LP, freenode and lists.ubuntu.com helps us to know about them, and thus help them. > Canonical also provides printed install discs to officially approved > teams, but there is no reason why Canonical should not provide sponsorship > to any team of people who will be promoting Ubuntu. I helped organise an event in the UK recently. We had Ubuntu CDs and SuSE CDs side by side. I see no problem with a LoCo offering alternatives to new users. This isn't "there is the ubuntu way and there is the highway". Maybe your LoCo is different, maybe that should change? > It's mutually > beneficial. In the meantime, to continue receiving materials only provided > to officially approved teams, LoCo's can continue to operate alongside > LibrePlanet groups. Canonical do. It's entirely possible for someone to run a non-LoCo event and make a request to Canonical for sponsorship, whether that will be accepted or not is another matter. Canonical is a small company with a massive global footprint. They get requests all the time for sponsorship from individuals, groups and LoCos to help them. They just flat out don't have the resources to fulfil every single request. One of the reasons Canonical gives benefits to Approved LoCo teams is to show appreciation for the work that team has done in the past. A team that shows strong advocacy, holding events, jams, providing effective support is clearly a team that should be rewarded. After some productive sessions at UDS last month, we (LoCo Council & Canonical) are working on additional benefits for approved LoCo teams which should make it even more easy and fun for them to hold events. > This isn't all to say that Canincal has been working to > actively lock teams in, but this is the effect it now has. Creating the LoCo > project, providing the structure needed to establish global network of local > advocacy teams, was a great service, but the time has come to grow beyond > its current scope. Other groups are available, people are free to join them. We don't need to De-Ubuntuize the Ubuntu LoCo teams to make that happen. As outlined previously, people are free to join whatever group they like. I know Fedora Ambassadors in my own Ubuntu LoCo team. They _most_ welcome to be in the LoCo. Similarly I'm pretty sure you won't get kicked from a Fedora channel with an /ubuntu/ irc cloak. > LibrePlanet is inspired by Ubuntu's LoCo Project, but it's instead organized > around ideals, not any particular piece of software. Surely there are some > who only care about what tools work best, but let's not forget the ideals > which made these better tools possible. Most of us imagine a world where > these ideals are universal and see an incredible amount of potential in > that. LibrePlanet isn't yet another social group for GNU+Linux users, but a > team of activists. These groups are more open to users of any free software > who may be interested in advocacy. Sponsorship could come from Canonical, > Mozilla, or whoever. Isn't this much more in line with the nature of FLOSS? > A laudable goal, and I personally wish LibrePlanet well, but I'd appreciate them not trying to hijack an existing community to do their bidding. > Being a LoCo does in many ways lock you in to promoting Ubuntu. You may > promote other software and welcome users of other distros, but by their very > title, LoCo teams exist for Ubuntu. The very reason i began taking this idea > seriously is because some non-Ubuntu users wanted to get involved with an > event organized by my local community team, but did not want to work under > an Ubuntu banner (literally). So don't. Use a LUG/FLOSS banner instead or as well as. > I don't blame them. I went on to discover many > people who lurk on our mailing list and even IRC channel simply hadn't > gotten involved because they were put off by the exclusive nature of the > group even though they do happen to use Ubuntu themselves. There is an > incredible network of people out there who want to help, and we shouldn't > box them out. > Perhaps that says more about your group that people feel it's exclusive, than Ubuntu or indeed the people themselves. Also note that in every community there are people who don't/won't contribute for some reason or another. I personally don't think it's effective to go for 100% contribution from members. I've seen LUGs try this in the past and it fails abysmally. There are many people who would rather sit back and shout from the sidelines than actually get down and do work. No matter how you restructure / rename the group there will _always_ be those individuals. They are perfectly entitled to 'lurk' or 'leech' (as the LUG I am recalling called them!) from the community they're in. Nothing is compelling us to force them to contribute. That said if they want to contribute then we should help them do so. If they want to contribute in a non-ubuntu way then there are plenty of avenues for them, and it seems LibrePlanet might be just one. > Many people have some badly tainted perceptions of the FSF, but being a > LibrePlanet team does not require strict adherence to FSF rules. "A leopard never changes its spots". I absolutely don't believe that at all. The fact that you mention "FSF rules" speaks volumes and jars immediately. As I mentioned in the first paragraph in the UK we've had this kind of attempt to create a 'Free software group' in the UK, hijacking LUGs. The first activity was pasting the GNU manifesto onto the front page of the LUG website. As soon as this was moved to a sub page (combined with an unwillingness to rebrand as a GNU/Linux group) the team was no longer seen as a 'free software group' and was dropped like a hot potato. That LUG continues to do great work to this day, and has members who (from memory) use Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Mandrake, Gentoo and BSD (amongst others). > Teams could > work on would be creating a voice for free software that doesn't have the > (in my opinion mostly wrong) reputation of the FSF to be too extreme, and > this is coming from someone who often doesn't agree with their approach. To > provide an example and get the ball rolling, i'd like to announce > the LibrePlanet Massachusetts Team. > Good luck. I welcome the initiative to create a free software group, but don't appreciate the perceived need to rebrand / hijack Ubuntu LoCo teams to do it. Cheers, Al. -- loco-contacts mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
