Re: [ubuntu-marketing] Making Canonical's/Ubuntu's contributions more visible
Matthew Nuzum pisze: On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 4:36 AM, Przemysław Kulczycki [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now let's get to the point. One of the often accusations against Ubuntu is that it only takes from other projects (Debian, Red Hat, Novell/Suse...) and doesn't give back anything. Ubuntu should make it more visible for others to see what does it contribute to upstream/floss community. Good. I hope something will be done about it ASAP. Reading all those comments about Ubuntu not contributing anything is really irritating. Let's start a wiki page at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Website/Content/UbuntuContributions As the content on this page matures I'll sync it over to the main ubuntu website. I've added another point to the wiki - the recently developed Netbook UI. Feel free to expand it (the whole page) and add anything that needs mentioning. -- ## Przemysław Kulczycki Azrael Nightwalker ## # jabber: azrael[na]jabster.pl | tlen: azrael29a # ### www: http://reksio.ftj.agh.edu.pl/~azrael/ ### signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] Making Canonical's/Ubuntu's contributions more visible
On 09/06/08 at 16:02 +0200, Przemysław Kulczycki wrote: Matthew Nuzum pisze: On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 4:36 AM, Przemysław Kulczycki [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now let's get to the point. One of the often accusations against Ubuntu is that it only takes from other projects (Debian, Red Hat, Novell/Suse...) and doesn't give back anything. Ubuntu should make it more visible for others to see what does it contribute to upstream/floss community. Good. I hope something will be done about it ASAP. Reading all those comments about Ubuntu not contributing anything is really irritating. Let's start a wiki page at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Website/Content/UbuntuContributions As the content on this page matures I'll sync it over to the main ubuntu website. I haven't commented earlier on this page, but there are several points that haven't been raised yet, and need to be raised. I don't think that people are complaining about Ubuntu not giving back. Ubuntu is a community, and cannot really give back or contribute itself. Members of the community can contribute or give back, but they are individuals. If I do something related to Ubuntu, even with my dusty MOTU hat on, I don't want it to be used by a marketing campaign. It's Lucas Nussbaum did [...], or Ubuntu developer Lucas Nussbaum did [...], not Ubuntu did [...]. But I don't think that it's about Ubuntu. The real issue is about Canonical, when you compare Canonical with Novell and Red Hat (the companies, not the distros). It's not about people doing stuff during their free time, it's about people being paid by Canonical to work on things that benefit more than just the Ubuntu distribution. In that page, please make a clear distinction between Canonical and Ubuntu. if volunteer Ubuntu developers have enough free time to also contribute to other projects, that's just cool. If Canonical employees are allowed to contribute to other projects during their work time, that's totally different, and a lot more cool. Specific examples of problems I see with the page: # The dpkg Breaks field was implemented by Ian Jackson for Ubuntu. == The dpkg Breaks field was implemented by Canonical employee Ian Jackson. Drop all the Ubuntu developed, clarify whether it was developed by a Canonical employee, or by community members (give their name if it's the case. But I'm not sure if it's worth mentioning if it was done by a community member). Canonical employs some Gnome developers (...) Who are they? List them! Are they allowed to work on GNOME directly during their work time? If not, it has about as much value as IBM employs some trainspotters. Also, the page is not very well organized. Maybe it could be reorganized like: 1) Work done by Canonical employees that is also used by other distributions/projects (if it's not used yet, don't mention it) 2) Canonical employees paid to work on upstream projects, at least part-time. 3) Other contributions: hosting of servers from other projects in the Canonical DC, sponsoring of events, organization of conferences like FOSSCAMP, etc. I think that the page is a good idea, as I'm sure that Canonical is doing more than many people realize. -- | Lucas Nussbaum | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] Making Canonical's/Ubuntu's contributions more visible
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Bryce Harrington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 06:11:10PM +0800, John McCabe-Dansted wrote: On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 2:18 PM, Markus Hitter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Even if it's distribution specific it's still a commitment to the whole as long as it's open source. Other developers can look there to get an idea how some tasks were done. Always better than starting from scratch entirely. To my mind the biggest contribution downstream projects make is saving developers time. My experience suggests that it if you are a developer and you want to spend less time fighting your distro and more time doing actual productive coding, then Ubuntu is one of the better choices. Interesting... Could you explain this in more detail? In a pure waterfall model downstream projects don't give *anything* back to upstream projects... except a finished project. There isn't a clear dividing line between users and developers. The time I spend trying to get printing to work is time I don't spend coding. Just because I know how to do a simple configure ; wget ; wget ; configure ; make ; vim ; make ; make install doesn't make it a productive use of a weekend. For this reason I like using a Just works distro. As others have mentioned previously the Ubuntu is also fairly friendly to new developers. It could perhaps make things even easier for developers, but thats another kettle of fish. I'd be interested in hearing your further thoughts on this. (I've had my own thoughts on this, but would love to see other's ideas.) Well the development aspects of Ubuntu aren't as polished as the end-user facing applications. Unlike firefox and OO, pbuilder and make-kpkg don't really just work. Debhelper seems less user-developer friendly than emerge. A developer has to learn a programming language or two more or less by definition, but in practice has to also learn autoconf, automake, make, am_edit, pbuilder, make-kpkg, svn/cvs just to be able scratch their own itch. In principle, developing could be as simple as doing dev edit package-name finding whatever you wanted to change, perhaps changing a constant like MAX_COL from 80 to 160 in your favourite editor, doing a dev test-sandbox, and perhaps a dev install. Then when the next apt-get update is run it could be smart enough to use apt-get source and merge the changes into the new version, unless conflicts arise. Often I find that after finally fixing a problem, I've run out of time and have to move onto something else. Perhaps then there could be run a simple dev share command which would the developer to, at their leisure, annotate each of their patches and upload them somewhere others could re-use and comment on them. Presumably apport should also make note of what patches are in use, and bug reports with patches could have a test this patch in a sandbox option and ... I am not necessarily suggesting that it is wise use of resources at this time to focus on making development tasks more user friendly, just that it is conceptually possible and potentially useful. -- John C. McCabe-Dansted PhD Student University of Western Australia -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] Making Canonical's/Ubuntu's contributions more visible
Am 04.06.2008 um 17:11 schrieb John McCabe-Dansted: In principle, developing could be as simple as doing dev edit package-name finding whatever you wanted to change, perhaps changing a constant like MAX_COL from 80 to 160 in your favourite editor, doing a dev test-sandbox, and perhaps a dev install. Then when the next apt-get update is run it could be smart enough to use apt-get source and merge the changes into the new version, unless conflicts arise. Often I find that after finally fixing a problem, I've run out of time and have to move onto something else. Perhaps then there could be run a simple dev share command which would the developer to, at their leisure, annotate each of their patches and upload them somewhere others could re-use and comment on them. Presumably apport should also make note of what patches are in use, and bug reports with patches could have a test this patch in a sandbox option and ... Now, _that_ would be a great thing. Instead of trying to find out how each package's build system is intended to work, one would go ahead, dive into the source and fix actual problems. Wether and how the package's development group picks up such patches is another question, but having a patch and perhaps a few lines of comments should be a real booster for upstream's code quality. MarKus - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter http://www.jump-ing.de/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] Making Canonical's/Ubuntu's contributions more visible
On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 11:11:05PM +0800, John McCabe-Dansted wrote: On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Bryce Harrington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It could perhaps make things even easier for developers, but thats another kettle of fish. I'd be interested in hearing your further thoughts on this. (I've had my own thoughts on this, but would love to see other's ideas.) Well the development aspects of Ubuntu aren't as polished as the end-user facing applications. Unlike firefox and OO, pbuilder and make-kpkg don't really just work. In principle, developing could be as simple as doing dev edit package-name finding whatever you wanted to change, perhaps changing a constant like MAX_COL from 80 to 160 in your favourite editor, doing a dev test-sandbox, and perhaps a dev install. Perhaps then there could be run a simple dev share command which would the developer to, at their leisure, annotate each of their patches and upload them somewhere others could re-use and comment on them. I think you're onto some good ideas here. This probably sounds odd, but the thing that sold me on Ubuntu/Debian over gentoo and emerge was of all things 'apt-get source'. I use that a gazillion times a month, and I love how easy it makes it to get in and poke at stuff. You're definitely right that the steps involved in creating a package once you've got the source is not as straightforward as it could be for a newb (I've got it in finger muscle memory now, but the first few weeks were tough). It would be awesome if there was a simplified workflow something like: 1. $ apt-get source foo 2. $ cd foo; #hack hack Allow the user to edit the code tree directly, no worries about patch systems, etc. 3. $ sudo apt-get build Run from within the source tree, this wrappers all the work of generating a patch from the current source tree's changes and adding it to the package's patch management system (or adding a patch management system if one doesn't exist), running debuild, set up a pbuilder environment if needed, run pbuilder to produce the (unsigned) debs, and place them in the parent directory. Would be nice to not have to run it as root, but not sure that there's an easy way of running pbuilder as non-root. 4. $ apt-get share [bug id | package-name] Like you mention, presents user with a list of their outstanding patches applicable for the given bug or package (or all in the system), prompts for annotation, allows gpg-signing, and uploads to the appropriate place. Maybe a PPA, or maybe sending directly to a Launchpad bug ID, with request to add to ubuntu and/or debian. Of course, the above paints over a huge amount of implementational complexity. Perhaps this could only be achieved for certain well-formed packages. Bryce -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] Making Canonical's/Ubuntu's contributions more visible
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:07 AM, Bryce Harrington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 3. $ sudo apt-get build Run from within the source tree, this wrappers all the work of generating a patch from the current source tree's changes and adding it to the package's patch management system (or adding a patch management system if one doesn't exist), running debuild, set up a pbuilder environment if needed, run pbuilder to produce the (unsigned) debs, and place them in the parent directory. I think debuild already makes a diff.gz. (It would also be nice if, when doing the share, it would have some way of filtering out the weird temp files that can appear in a source tree.) Would be nice to not have to run it as root, but not sure that there's an easy way of running pbuilder as non-root. There is pbuilder-uml, but that doesn't count as easy ;) Using some from of filesystem virtualisation like Plash may also work, and it would be nice to be able test the package in a sandbox. A rather lightweight sandbox would be to let the application run with Copy-on-write access to the /. This may not suitable for all packages, but there could be a list of ways that a package could be sandboxed. 4. $ apt-get share [bug id | package-name] Like you mention, presents user with a list of their outstanding patches applicable for the given bug or package (or all in the system), prompts for annotation, allows gpg-signing, and uploads to the appropriate place. Maybe a PPA, or maybe sending directly to a Launchpad bug ID, with request to add to ubuntu and/or debian. Of course, the above paints over a huge amount of implementational complexity. Perhaps this could only be achieved for certain well-formed packages. Perhaps when one comes across a non-well-formed package one could fix it and do an apt-get share :) -- John C. McCabe-Dansted PhD Student University of Western Australia -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] Making Canonical's/Ubuntu's contributions more visible
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 8:38 PM, Onno Benschop [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 28/05/08 08:30, Onno Benschop wrote: On 27/05/08 18:11, John McCabe-Dansted wrote: To my mind the biggest contribution downstream projects make is saving developers time. My experience suggests that it if you are a developer and you want to spend less time fighting your distro and more time doing actual productive coding, then Ubuntu is one of the better choices. +1 As an IT consultant I've been able to contribute more to Ubuntu than any distribution or project before. I can submit bugs, create patches, provide user help and participate with a very low entry point. I can become a member of a team Over the years I've contributed to other projects, but never felt that it was noticed - I'm not talking about a thank-you, just that when you made a contribution, it was picked up, looked at, critiqued and used where appropriate. Ubuntu does this better than any other group of people I know. Hmm, seems I got distracted when hitting send here :| What I meant the first paragraph to say was this: As an IT consultant I've been able to contribute more to Ubuntu than any distribution or project before. I can submit bugs, create patches, provide user help and participate with a very low entry point. I can become a member of a team where I can contribute to a specific aspect of the project on a code and policy level. -- Onno Benschop Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06 - E115°50'39 (Yokine, WA) -- ()/)/)()..ASCII for Onno.. |?..EBCDIC for Onno.. --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss I would echo these thoughts. Sorry for hijaking this thread. By having a low entry to something like ubuntu-docs and encouraging further growth into the community and teh development process it has been an amazing place to help gve back some of my not spare time. Which is growing smaller and smaller by the minute. Glad to be of any servce that I can. Jonathan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] Making Canonical's/Ubuntu's contributions more visible
On 27/05/08 18:11, John McCabe-Dansted wrote: To my mind the biggest contribution downstream projects make is saving developers time. My experience suggests that it if you are a developer and you want to spend less time fighting your distro and more time doing actual productive coding, then Ubuntu is one of the better choices. +1 As an IT consultant I've been able to contribute more to Ubuntu than any distribution or project before. I can submit bugs, create patches, provide user help and participate with a very low entry point. I can become a member of a team Over the years I've contributed to other projects, but never felt that it was noticed - I'm not talking about a thank-you, just that when you made a contribution, it was picked up, looked at, critiqued and used where appropriate. Ubuntu does this better than any other group of people I know. -- Onno Benschop Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06 - E115°50'39 (Yokine, WA) -- ()/)/)()..ASCII for Onno.. |?..EBCDIC for Onno.. --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] Making Canonical's/Ubuntu's contributions more visible
On 28/05/08 08:30, Onno Benschop wrote: On 27/05/08 18:11, John McCabe-Dansted wrote: To my mind the biggest contribution downstream projects make is saving developers time. My experience suggests that it if you are a developer and you want to spend less time fighting your distro and more time doing actual productive coding, then Ubuntu is one of the better choices. +1 As an IT consultant I've been able to contribute more to Ubuntu than any distribution or project before. I can submit bugs, create patches, provide user help and participate with a very low entry point. I can become a member of a team Over the years I've contributed to other projects, but never felt that it was noticed - I'm not talking about a thank-you, just that when you made a contribution, it was picked up, looked at, critiqued and used where appropriate. Ubuntu does this better than any other group of people I know. Hmm, seems I got distracted when hitting send here :| What I meant the first paragraph to say was this: As an IT consultant I've been able to contribute more to Ubuntu than any distribution or project before. I can submit bugs, create patches, provide user help and participate with a very low entry point. I can become a member of a team where I can contribute to a specific aspect of the project on a code and policy level. -- Onno Benschop Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06 - E115°50'39 (Yokine, WA) -- ()/)/)()..ASCII for Onno.. |?..EBCDIC for Onno.. --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] Making Canonical's/Ubuntu's contributions more visible
On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 4:36 AM, Przemysław Kulczycki [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now let's get to the point. One of the often accusations against Ubuntu is that it only takes from other projects (Debian, Red Hat, Novell/Suse...) and doesn't give back anything. Ubuntu should make it more visible for others to see what does it contribute to upstream/floss community. Good. I hope something will be done about it ASAP. Reading all those comments about Ubuntu not contributing anything is really irritating. Let's start a wiki page at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Website/Content/UbuntuContributions As the content on this page matures I'll sync it over to the main ubuntu website. -- Matthew Nuzum newz2000 on freenode -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
