Ubuntu Community Council 2017 election under way!

[Mark Shuttleworth]

**

*The UbuntuCommunity Council 
election has begun and ballots 
sent out to allUbuntu Members . 
Voting closes September 27th at end of day UTC.*


*

The following candidates are standing for 7 seats on the council:


 *

   Anis El Achèche -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/elacheche

 *

   Leo Arias -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/elopio

 *

   Danial Behzadi -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/danialbehzadi

 *

   (incumbent) Marco Ceppi -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/marco-ceppi

 *

   Aaron Honeycutt -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AaronHoneycutt

 *

   Walter Lapchynksi -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/wxl

 *

   Marius Quabeck -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/marius.quabeck

 *

   José Antonio Rey -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/jose

 *

   Larry Tavin -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/wildmanne39

 *

   Iulian Udrea -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IulianUdrea

 *

   Martin Wimpress -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MartinWimpress

 *

   Naeil Zoueidi -https://wiki.ubuntu.com/nzoueidi


Please contact the community-coun...@lists.ubuntu.com 
list if you are an Ubuntu 
Member but did not receive a ballot. Voting instructions were sent to 
the public address defined in Launchpad, or your launchpad...@ubuntu.com 
address if not. Please also make sure you check your spam folder first.



We’d like to thank all the candidate for their willingness to serve in 
this capacity, and members for their considered votes.



*

**Mark, on behalf of the current CC*
*

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2009 Community Council vote complete

[Mark Shuttleworth]

Thanks to all Ubuntu members who participated in the CC ballot, which
was completed today. The new community council takes office immediately,
and (in alphabetical order) comprises:

  Alan Pope
  Benjamin Mako Hill
  Daniel Holbach
  Elizabeth Krumbach
  Matthew East
  Mike Basinger
  Richard Johnson

We had several additional candidates, and the ballot was richer for
their willingness to stand. I'd like to thank all of them, and in
addition would like to thank James Troup who steps down from the CC
after 5 years as a founding member.

Welcome to the new faces, I look forward to two wonderful years of good
governance in the Ubuntu community!

The structures by which we organise tens of thousands of participants
have matured substantially in the past years. We have a deeper and
richer LoCo structure today than ever before (thanks to those who lead
there). The Forums Council has matured in its role and sets the example
for delegated leadership from the CC. The Tech Board has lead the
restructuring of the developer community, and so we are merging the
excellend MOTU Council into the new Developer Membership Board,
providing a more granular view of developer participation across the
huge Ubuntu archive. Ubuntu Translations are now more formally lead. All
in all, I'm proud of the commitment this community continues to show
towards effective leadership, and the willingness of members of the
community to step up and participate in that way. Thank you all!

Mark

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TechBoard 2009

[Mark Shuttleworth]

Thank you to everyone who voted in the Tech Board election, which came
to a result last night. We had 84 votes from 130 eligible voters. The
new Tech Board in reverse alphabetical surname order is:

* Matt Zimmerman
* Mark Shuttleworth
* Scott James Remnant
* Martin Pitt
* Kees Cook

Detailed results are available at:

 
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/cgi-perl/civs/results.pl?id=E_e09bf9bea196cfff

Thanks also to Mario and Evan, who made it a far more interesting race,
and to the rest of the new Board for their willingness to lead in this
capacity.

Mark


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Introducing the Karmic Koala, our mascot for Ubuntu 9.10

[Mark Shuttleworth]

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the *Karmic Koala*, the
newest member of our alliterative menagerie.

When you are looking for inspiration beyond the looming Jaunty feature
freeze, I hope you'll think of the Koala, our official mascot for Ubuntu
9.10. And if you'll bear with me for a minute I'll set the scene for
what we hope to achieve in that time.

Server

A good Koala knows how to see the wood for the trees, even when her head
is in the clouds. Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of
cloud computing by embracing the API's of Amazon EC2, and making it easy
for anybody to setup their own cloud using entirely open tools. We're
currently in beta with official Ubuntu base AMI's for use on Amazon EC2.
During the Karmic cycle we want to make it easy to deploy applications
into the cloud, with ready-to-run appliances or by quickly assembling a
custom image. Ubuntu-vmbuilder makes it easy to create a custom AMI
today, but a portfolio of standard image profiles will allow easier
collaboration between people doing similar things on EC2. Wouldn't it be
apt for Ubuntu to make the Amazon jungle as easy to navigate as, say, APT?

What if you want to build an EC2-style cloud of your own? Of all the
trees in the wood, a Koala's favourite leaf is Eucalyptus. The
Eucalyptus project, from UCSB, enables you to create an EC2-style cloud
in your own data center, on your own hardware. It's no coincidence that
Eucalyptus has just been uploaded to universe and will be part of Jaunty
- during the Karmic cycle we expect to make those clouds dance, with
dynamically growing and shrinking resource allocations depending on your
needs. A savvy Koala knows that the best way to conserve energy is to go
to sleep, and these days even servers can suspend and resume, so imagine
if we could make it possible to build a cloud computing facility that
drops its energy use virtually to zero by napping in the midday heat,
and waking up when there's work to be done. No need to drink at the
energy fountain when there's nothing going on. If we get all of this
right, our Koala will help take the edge off the bear market.

If that sounds rather open and nebulous, then we've hit the sweet spot
for cloud computing futurology. Let me invite you to join the server
team at UDS in Barcelona, when they'll be defining the exact set of
features to ship in October.

Desktop

First impressions count. We're eagerly following the development of
kernel mode setting, which promises a smooth and flicker-free startup.
We'll consider options like Red Hat's Plymouth, for graphical boot on
all the cards that support it. We made a splash years ago with Usplash,
but it's time to move to something newer and shinier. So the good news
is, boot will be beautiful. The bad news is, you won't have long to
appreciate it! It only takes 35 days to make a whole Koala, so we think
it should be possible to bring up a stylish desktop much faster. The
goal for Jaunty on a netbook is 25 seconds, so let's see how much faster
we can get you all the way to a Koala desktop. We're also hoping to
deliver a new login experience that complements the graphical boot, and
works well for small groups as well as very large installations.

For those of you who can relate to Mini Me, or already have a Dell Mini,
the Ubuntu Netbook Edition will be updated to include all the latest
technology from Moblin, and tuned to work even better on screens that
are vertically challenged. With millions of Linux netbooks out there, we
have been learning and adapting usability to make the Koala cuddlier
than ever. We also want to ensure that the Netbook Remix installs easily
and works brilliantly on all the latest netbook hardware, so consider
this a call for testing Ubuntu 9.04 if you're the proud owner of one of
these dainty items.

The desktop will have a designer's fingerprints all over it - we're now
beginning the serious push to a new look. Brown has served us well but
the Koala is considering other options. Come to UDS for a preview of the
whole new look.

UDS in Barcelona, 25-29 May

As always, the Ubuntu Developer Summit will be jam-packed with ideas,
innovations, guests and gurus. It's a wombat and dingbat-free zone, so
if you're looking for high-intensity developer discussions, beautiful
Barcelona will be the place to rest your opposable thumbs in May. It's
where the Ubuntu community, Canonical engineers and partners come
together to discuss, debate and design the Karmic Koala. The event is
the social and strategic highlight of each release cycle. Jono Bacon,
the Ubuntu Community Manager has more details at
http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/02/19/announcing-the-karmic-koala-ubuntu-developer-summit/
including sponsorship for heavily-contributing community members.

More details of the Ubuntu Developer Summit can be found at
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS.

A newborn Koala spends about six months in the family before it heads
off into the wild alone. Sounds about perfect for an Ubuntu release

Run-off ballot for Tech Board place, from today till 20 Jan 2009 09:00 UTC

[Mark Shuttleworth]

There is now a ballot of Ubuntu developers, to select a new member of
the Technical Board:

   https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-dev/+poll/2009-01-tb-nominees/+vote-simple

The candidates in alphabetical order are Colin Watson and Kees Cook.

In a departure from tradition, we will have a race between two
candidates, rather than a confirmation vote. So there are two
candidates, one place, and you get to choose. Both candidates have
indicated that they are happy to be in a race rather than a
confirmation. In future, depending on circumstance and candidates, we
may take either approach.

As it happens, both candidates work for Canonical. That's not a
requirement for the position. However, the requirements do stack the
deck heavily in favour of someone who is able to devote full time
attention to the whole linux stack, in Ubuntu or Debian, and is very
aware of the Ubuntu community processes and players. As more companies
build businesses around Ubuntu and hence employ people who are very
active in the Ubuntu developer community, I am sure we will find great
non-Canonical TB candidates. We have already built substantial
non-Canonical representation in the Community Council, for example.

This is a simple two-candidate selection, the winner will be the
candidate with the most positive votes. In the event of a tie, I will
act as a tie breaker.

Please vote soon, the vote is only open for a week. Thank you to both
candidates for standing, and thanks in advance to all who participate in
the ballot.

Mark
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Introducing the Jaunty Jackalope

[Mark Shuttleworth]

As we approach the launch of Ubuntu 8.10, it's time to create space for
future plans, and so I'm writing to introduce you to The Jaunty Jackalope.

Jaunty, the code name for what will most likely become Ubuntu 9.04, will
be the focus of our efforts from November through to April next year. We
will be gathering forces in Mountain View on 8th - 12th December to
survey the upstream landscape and finalize Jaunty plans, enjoying the
excellent hospitality of Google and Silicon Valley's abundance of talent
and innovation. The Ubuntu Developer Summit is the social and strategic
highlight of each release cycle and it would be a great pleasure to
welcome you there. Jono Bacon has written up a
http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=1278 guide to sponsorship for those who
would have a substantial amount to offer at the Summit.

The Warrior Rabbit is our talisman as we move into a year where we can
reasonably expect Ubuntu to ship on several million devices, to
consumers who can reasonably expect the software experience to be
comparable to those of the traditional big OSV's - Microsoft and Apple.
The bar is set very high, and we have been given the opportunity to leap
over it. It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shine, and we want to make
sure that the very best thinking across the whole open source ecosystem
is reflected in Ubuntu, because many people will judge free software as
a whole by what we do.

There are some specific goals that we need to meet in Jaunty. One of
them is boot time. We want Ubuntu to boot as fast as possible - both in
the standard case, and especially when it is being tailored to a
specific device. The Jackalope is known for being so fast that it's
extremely hard to catch, and breeds only when lightning flashes. Let's
see if we can make booting or resuming Ubuntu blindingly quick.

Another goal is the the blurring of web services and desktop
applications. "Is it a deer? Is it a bunny? Or is it a weblication - a
desktop application that seamlessly integrates the web!" This hare has
legs - and horns - and we'll be exploring it in much more detail for
Jaunty. We have already laid some foundations for weblications in the
online services discussions that took place in Prague, but since we
fully expect those services to ship in 9.04 the discussion will be that
much more intense in Mountain View.

Those bizarre-but-fearsome antlers might well remind one of the
intricate pattern of collaboration between developers in a distributed
version control system. So it's fitting that Jaunty will see us move all
of Ubuntu into Bazaar. For the first time, any developer will be able to
branch any Ubuntu package with a single bzr command, publish their
changes, and perhaps even publish builds of that package in their own
Package Archive. We will also make the developer community structure of
Ubuntu much richer - in addition to MOTU and core-dev, we are
introducing ways for developers to participate in specific applications,
either at the package-upload level or at the version-control level.
Whatever your level and specialisation of interest, we'll make sure that
you can participate accordingly.

December's UDS is likely to be packed full of interesting people and
ideas. I very much look forward to seeing everyone there. "There he
goes! That way!"

Mark

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Planning for Ubuntu 8.10ish - The Intrepid Ibex

[Mark Shuttleworth]

With Hardy now past feature-freeze it's time to start to plan
features that are being lined up for inclusion after Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
is released in April.

And so I'd like to introduce you to the Intrepid Ibex, the release
which is planned for October 2008, and which is likely to have the
version number 8.10.

During the 8.10 cycle we will be venturing into interesting new
territory, and we'll need the rugged adventurousness of a mountain
goat to navigate tricky terrain. Our desktop offering will once
again be a focal point as we re-engineer the user interaction model
so that Ubuntu works as well on a high-end workstation as it does on
a feisty little subnotebook. We'll also be reaching new peaks of
performance - aiming to make the mobile desktop as productive as
possible.

A particular focus for us will be pervasive internet access, the
ability to tap into bandwidth whenever and wherever you happen to
be. No longer will you need to be a tethered, domesticated animal -
you'll be able to roam (and goats do roam!) the wild lands and
access the web through a variety of wireless technologies. We want
you to be able to move from the office, to the train, and home,
staying connected all the way.

The Intrepid Ibex will take shape at our next Ubuntu Developer
Summit, an open event to which members of the Ubuntu community,
upstream communities, corporate developers and other distributions
are all invited. That summit takes place in beautiful Prague, in the
Czech Republic from 19th - 23rd May 2008. Together we will draw up
detailed blueprints for Ubuntu 8.10. Please join us there to help
define the Intrepid Ibex:

   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS-Intrepid

Ubuntu 8.10 will be our ninth release, and the fourth anniversary of
the first release - 4.10. In those four years, Ubuntu has grown as a
project, an ethos and a community. The Ubuntu community have worked
to set the benchmark for open, inclusive, and collaborative
development processes. We have open specifications, open governance
structures and a willingness to empower everyone to make their
unique contribution to the success of the project.

This has created an extraordinary diversity in participation; a
depth of talent including packagers, programmers, translators,
writers, testers, advocates, technical support, artists and many
others. Those contributions come as much from the corporate world -
Canonical and other companies that have embraced Ubuntu as a core of
their offering - as from a huge number of individual professionals.
It is this combination of expertise and perspectives that makes it
such a pleasure for me to be part of this project, and I thank all
of you for your continued passion, participation, and energy.

Hardy is our best development cycle yet, delivering on our promise
of reliability and stability for the Heron. We must stay focused on
that goal. To the extent that you have a brilliant idea for the
future, you now have a peg to hang it on - the Intrepid Ibex. When
the Hardy Heron has taken flight we will engage fully with the Ibex.
Give it horns!

Mark

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Gobuntu-devel mailing list created

[Mark Shuttleworth]

Hi folks

Colin Watson and Evan Dandrea have been working to get Gobuntu off the
ground. We now have daily CD image builds available for Gobuntu, and
have started a new mailing list for discussions specific to Gobuntu
development:

  https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/Gobuntu-devel

Here are some Gobuntu FAQ's:

What is Gobuntu?
Gobuntu is a new flavour of Ubuntu that is aiming to apply the strictest
possible interpretation of the Free Software Foundation's "Four
Freedoms" [1] to all content, both code and media, on the disk. The
Gobuntu install disk should include nothing that is not modifiable and
redistributable, and for which source elements are not completely
available. For example, if a PDF is on the disk, then the original
document should also be available with modification rights.

How does Gobuntu relate to Ubuntu?
Gobuntu is a flavour of Ubuntu, just as Kubuntu and Xubuntu are flavours
of Ubuntu. Gobuntu development happens as part of the broader Ubuntu
project and shares the same archive, so work done to identify
problematic content in the archive and split that up benefits users of
Ubuntu and Kubuntu as well.

What hardware will Gobuntu support?
At this stage, we recognise that Gobuntu will work with relatively few
laptops and desktops, because of the widespread use of  binary-only
firmware. Running Gobuntu on your laptop will be quite an achievement!
But we are working with hardware manufacturers to encourage them to make
it possible to use their hardware with an entirely free platform.

Where is the wiki and the website?
Coming soon! For the moment, the community will meet on the
gobuntu-devel mailing list.

Thanks very much to Colin and Evan, and we welcome participation from
other folks interested in building a purely-free reference platform for
other projects like gNewSense!

 [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

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List of vendors with good free software track record

[Mark Shuttleworth]

Hi folks

We'd like to beef up the Restricted Driver Manager with additional
information about vendors who have an excellent track record for working
with the free software community. There is a page on the Ubuntu wiki
which serves as a template for the text which will be on Ubuntu.com for
the Gutsy release.

  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FreeSoftwareDrivers

Please discuss appropriate vendors on #ubuntu-devel or #ubuntu-kernel or
on the ubuntu-devel mailing list, then add them to that page once there
is broad consensus. Feel free to expand the categories and to list
vendors in multiple categories, but please don't change the explanatory
text itself except for typos.

Here's-to-a-freer-world'ly yours,
Mark
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Community Council nominations and confirmation polls

[Mark Shuttleworth]

Members of the Ubuntu community,

We have 5 nominations to expand the community council, and voting starts
today.

Each candidate is standing individually, so there are 5 separate votes.
If a majority of the voters approve that candidate, then (s)he will be
confirmed as a new member of the CC with a two year term.

I would urge all formal members of the Ubuntu community to vote. The
formal members are those who are currently listed at:

  https://launchpad.net/~ubuntumembers/

The polls themselves are listed at:

  https://launchpad.net/~ubuntumembers/+polls

Please vote in all polls where you have a personal opinion on the
candidate's contribution to Ubuntu and their competence to sit on our
top governing board. There are candidates from a variety of significant
communities within Ubuntu, such as the Forums and the documentation
team, but once confirmed to the CC they will represent the community as
a whole and not any particular subteam - even if they retain a position
in one of the other team councils of the project.

The Community Council is our highest governing body of the project, and
makes fundamental decisions around our community structure, and code of
conduct. They serve to mediate disputes and also appoint the leaders of
key community teams.

We specifically have 5 independent candidates because we believe that
it's important to have a broad coverage of timezones and areas of
expertise on the CC.

I'd like to thank Dennis Kaarsemaker, the CC secretary, for setting up
the polls, and the candidates for their willingness to serve. I would
ask folks who lead various communities within Ubuntu to draw the
attention of their members to these polls so that we get the broadest
participation in each of the decisions.

Mark
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Introducing the Gutsy Gibbon

[Mark Shuttleworth]

Folks, allow me to introduce the Gutsy Gibbon, who will be succeeding
the Feisty Fawn as the focus of our development love in a few short
weeks, for release in October 2007.

The Gibbon won the G-race to be our engineering mascot for this next
release, but it was a close run. We very much wanted to honour the
tremendous contributions of the GNU project to Free Software by awarding
the role to the Glossy Gnu. This prompted an intense internal debate
about trademarks, at which both the Fiery Fox and the Icy Weasel were
heard. In the end, however, the judge, jury and elocutionary (that would
be me) took a liking to the Gibbon's extraordinary reach, and the Gibbon
won outright.

The Glossy Gnu will nonetheless play a role in this next release,
because Ubuntu 7.10 will feature a new flavour - as yet unnamed - which
takes an ultra-orthodox view of licensing: no firmware, drivers,
imagery, sounds, applications, or other content which do not include
full source materials and come with full rights of modification,
remixing and redistribution. There should be no more conservative home,
for those who demand a super-strict interpretation of the "free" in free
software. This work will be done in collaboration with the folks behind
Gnewsense.

Our Gutsy is an expert in brachiation, which is apt for a project that
needs to navigate a complicated forest of branches very quickly.

Some folks would say that any monkey can install Ubuntu (and sadly,
other folks would say that many have), but the Gibbon will take easy
installation to a whole new level, with work on an
unattended-installation infrastructure in Ubiquity that makes it trivial
to roll out Ubuntu desktops across an organization while getting on with
other, more complicated stuff such as Windows service pack installations
on legacy desktops.

While Ubuntu is by no means the 800-pound gorilla in the server game,
the Gibbon will show that lean and mean count for something! Agility of
deployment, together with integrated management will be a focus for the
Ubuntu server team. Gutsy will not be an LTS (Long Term Support)
release, but it will nonetheless see a lot of server work and be useful
for fast-moving server deployments.

On a personal note, the monkey on my back has been composite-by-default,
which I had hoped would happen in Edgy, then Feisty. I'm nervous to
predict it now for Gutsy, for fear of a third strike, but I'm told that
great work is being done in the Compiz/Beryl community and upstream in
X. There's a reasonable chance that Gutsy will deliver where those
others have not. I remain convinced that malleable, transparent and
extra-dimensional GUI's are a real opportunity for the free software
community to take a lead in the field of desktop innovation, and am keen
to see the underlying technologies land in Ubuntu, but we have to
balance that enthusiasm with the Technical Board's judgement of the
stability and maturity of those fundamental layers.

Of course, the real work of deciding Gutsy's goals will happen at
UDS-Sevilla, May 5-11 in the wonderful Andalucia, Spain. I hope many of
you will be joining us for some hard work and also, no doubt, a fair bit
of monkey business! As usual we will be running a semi-virtual summit,
open for participation by VoIP and real-time online editing of the
blueprints for Gutsy Gibbon. If you have items you want on the agenda,
please make sure they are in the Ubuntu blueprints list:

   https://launchpad.net/ubuntu

...and then also nominate them for discussion at UDS-Sevilla! Please
only do this if you intend to participate in the developer summit -
either in person or virtually - so that you can present your ideas and
collaborate with the other developers. The summit should be a great
combination of hard work planning Gutsy, presentations from cutting edge
upstreams on their own plans for this next six months, and some time in
the sun for R&R in the best tradition of the region. For those of you
who can't make it across the Atlantic, we hope to see you for Gutsy+1 at
UDS-Boston in the first week of November.

Now that the Fawn has found her legs, and is ready for her debut on
April 19th, we need to lay some foundations for Gutsy. In the next few
days we will open up a limited-upload target for Gutsy and start
uploading toolchain packages there. Our aim is to open Gutsy for general
upload on the same day that Feisty is released. Wherever you are, that
will be a day for celebration. Go ape!

Mark



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