I recently had a conversation with Clemens, the head of Blue Systems about Blue Systems and Kubuntu.

As I have said in the past, Jonathan Riddell was hired by Blue Systems to work on Kubuntu. They have also hired Aurélien Gâteau to work on KDE full time.

The reason behind this was that Blue Systems also has their own Distro, NetRunner. NetRunner is built on Kubuntu. The reason for the placement of developers in both Kubuntu and KDE was to help ensure the stability of NetRunner and to promote what Kubuntu and KDE are doing.

When asked if Clemens plans to change anything, he said “no.” however, he did give the community a few challenges he would like to see happen with Kubuntu.

“get into top 10 on distrowatch. Or, be the best KDE distro on distrowatch. I’m not interfering, just giving my own personal thoughts.” This was the challenge that was given by Blue Systems.

Something that we both agree on is taking a page out of Apples book. Building an Army of users. Being able to attract users to Kubuntu without the expectations of anything more than just using for their daily lives.

The Kubuntu Community will continue to run the Distro. Kubuntu will remain the KDE flavor of Ubuntu.

Also, I have an open question forum at Kubuntu Forums Net (http://www.kubuntuforums.net/forumdisplay.php?166-Kubuntu-Council-Talk) and I will be updating the community and anyone else who wants to know here and on my twitter account @dwonderly.

Once again, more information as I get it.

Cheers!

Fast forward for earlier this month when it was announced that Blue Systems was going to be sponsering Kubuntu. Not only that but, they have hired both Jonathan Riddell and Aurélien Gâteau.

Our partnership with Blue Systems also means that Kubuntu will remain a community run distribution. While we will have two developers and a budget that will able us to attend both UDS and KDE events.

As always, Kubuntu will stay on top of it’s game as it continues to work closely with KDE to release the best up to date KDE software.

However, if you have read some other things there are a few things that have members of the community and Kubuntu Council concerned. One of those is the Canonical (Ubuntu) Trademark policy and some of the wording.

The reason why we are concerned is that we have discovered how widespread Kubuntu really is. We have had people reach out asking us if there is a way to provide commercial support contracts. As the current policies state, as long as we are using the Kubuntu name, it is registered to Canonical. In the policy there are things that this type of support are restricted.

Restricted use that requires a trademark licence

Permission from us is necessary to use any of the Trademarks under any circumstances other than those specifically permitted above. These include:

• Any commercial use. OEM services
• Use on or in relation to a software product that includes or is built on top of a product supplied by us, if there is any commercial intent associated with that product.
• Use in a domain name or URL.
• Use for merchandising purposes, e.g. on t-shirts and the like.
• Use of a name which includes the letters BUNTU in relation to computer hardware or software.
• Services relating to any of the above.

So, as you can see, these are some services we would like to provide but, have to have a release and blessings from Canonical.

As of now, we are waiting to see what happens.

I will keep you all updated as to what is going on as time moves on.

If you can’t make it, there is always remote participation and that also rocks!

Cheers!

Just Users.

There is an open source culture out there that if you are using you should contribute back. And yes, while this is the practice that we use and this is why Ubuntu has grown, there is a small unseen issue that crops up from this. That is the expectation that a user needs to (or should) give back. We have reached a point in relevance where we now have a group of people who are using Ubuntu and open source in general who have no desire and no inclination to contribute.

When you talk to someone in Ubuntu about new users the phrase “How do we get them involved?” comes up. I do not think this is a very healthy attitude at all. We let people know that they can get involved (it’s all over the website) but, I think that we need to change the mindset of expecting them to get involved.

There are other open source projects who have started to master this mindset. Let’s take Mozilla Firefox as an example. If you were to walk down the street and ask people about the internet most of them have heard of or, are using Firefox as a browser. There are “Just Users” and are not contributing to Firefox and they are not being pressured to do so.

This is something that we need to be aware of as we become more relevant and as we stretch out to more platforms. Not all of our users are going to want to contribute. With coming at users with the mindset of figuring out how to get them involved can feel like a religious group walking around and knocking on doors to “talk” (pressure) people into their way of thinking. In a way, open source people do the same thing without realizing it. We automatically expect things back from people who use our software and we make sure that we talk to people about it.

We even do this internally. Yesterday at the Leadership Summit there was a mention about Canonical people becoming more involved in community. In a way we are forcing our “community views” down the throats of people who are not interested in such. This will cause frustrations on both ends. The employee and the “Just User” as well as those of us who are involved start to feel frustrated. The first group gets frustrated because they feel that the ideals are being pushed onto them and the pressure they feel is very unwanted and/or uncomfortable and the second group has already built in expectations on what people “should be doing” when they use open source software, these expectations are not being met.

This causes an instant rift within communication between these two groups of people. This rift is not healthy and in some ways can become damaging.

I think that if we all start becoming aware of this mindset and start actively working our way around this idea of “users must contribute” we will see the value in having a true Ubuntu point of view. That is, Humanity Toward Others.

Now we give the job over to the hard working translators for their work. If you want to help translate the Kubuntu System Docs into your native language, head over to Ubuntu Translation wiki page and The Kubuntu Docs Translation page on launchpad.

Just a note, the deadline for the translations is September 29th. Please have your translations done by then so we can get them included into the release.

Once again, thanks you all for your hard work and I look forward to seeing the translation team hard at work. YOU GUYS ROCK!

The take I got from it in IRC was very well received. Then life hit and I didn’t do anything about it. I was hoping that from the talks at UDS-O and the conversations I have had that something would have happened during this release cycle.

Well, we (community) have decided to do something about it. We want to start building a curriculum for an Ubuntu Leadership team. This is going to be a growing project and we want to have off the ground and running by the end of the Ubuntu-P cycle.

During my last post, there was a concern that this would become a mandatory system to become a leader within Ubuntu. No. I want to make that very clear right here. The goal of Ubuntu Leadership is to be a place where people can learn what it takes to become a leader, allow leaders to become better leaders and explain what Ubuntu expects from it’s leaders in the Leadership Code of Conduct.

We will also showcase the differences between the different types of  leadership styles. They all have their own challenges and approaches. There is also a challenge where we have paid employees and volunteers working side by side on the same projects. This opens a few more doors of where some more unique leadership skills is required.

As we build and grow I am confident that we can become a dream come true for several people within Ubuntu and the Community at large. If you would like to help get this project up and running, please contact me. I have already started drafting some ideas and I would love any and all involvement.

I will be attending UDS-P in Orlando, FL in Oct/Nov and I will be hosting a session or two on this subject. Stay tuned and I will be posting more plans for the project here. I am looking forward to working with all of you in building this project.

What is it?

Libertopia is an annual festival of peace, freedom, music, community and ideas that will change the World.

It is a unique experience…a 3 day celebration of our individuality and diversity packed with renowned speakers, workshops, panels, parties, banquets, music, film, art, literature, commerce, exhibitors, themed camps, performers, social networking and much more!

Why are we there?

After looking at what Libertopia is trying to accomplish in thought and ideals I thought this would be a perfect venue to do some FOSS outreach. Having said that, Ubuntu California in San Diego is planning am Ubuntu booth for the event. As far as I know we will be the only tech booth at the event.

When is it?

October 21 – 23, 2011

http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/ubuntu-california/1255/detail/

What do we need?

Right now our needs are on two levels.

1. We need volunteers for the booth. If you are in the San Diego area and wish to help please contact me.

2. We need some help with the booth costs. This includes the cost of the booth for the weekend and for printing costs.

If you can donate that would be awesome! If you are a company that would like to help sponsor us, we will include your name/company name at our booth and with any flyers that we print to hand out.

Thank you for any help you can give. Our goal is $400USD for this project.

Cheers!

Now you may be asking why this is a Kubuntu Doc Jam and not Ubuntu. Simply put, Ubuntu System Docs now uses Mallard and not DocBook plus, I’m leading the charge for Kubuntu Documentation.

If you are interested we will be meeting in #ubuntu-doc on FreeNode on September 4th from 1800 – 2200 UTC.

Please review the Kubuntu Documentation Guide

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

EDIT: Please note that there is a change of IRC channel. We will be in #ubuntu-doc and not #kubuntu-doc.

Well, it’s that time again, we are getting ready for the Southern California Linux Expo to be held January 20-22, 2012 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport Hotel in Los Angeles, CA.

Currently there is a call for papers. If you wish to speak at this years SCaLE please, review the CFP Information page.

Topics of Interest

(Note: 17 Nov, 2011 is the deadline for abstract and proposal submissions)

• System Administration
• Kernel Developer
• Application Developer
• Cloud/Virtualization
• General Open Source / Free Software Advocacy and Technical Content

Topics of interest which have been subjects of presentations in the past include, but are not limited to:

• Kernel Internals and Enhancements
• Unix variants: Tools and Appliances
• Open Source for Embedded Platforms
• Open Source development tools for Mobile Devices
• Open Source for Cloud Computing
• Open Source for Unified Communications
• In-depth Programming/Scripting with Open Source Languages (Examples include Perl, Ruby, PHP, Python, etc.)
• Desktop Operating Systems
• Linux/Unix/Windows Inter-operability
• Shell Programming
• Open Source Productivity Applications
• Tools for Multimedia and Gaming
• Tools for Profiling and Performance Tuning
• Open Source Animation Tools
• Open Source Database Platforms
• Open Source Licensing
• Government Policies with Open Source
• Open Source Promotion and Adoption: Current State
• Open Source Success Stories
• Open Source Audio/Video Manipulation tools

For more information please see the SCaLE 10x Call for Papers page.

We are please to host a Testing and Upgrading Global Jam in San Diego, CA.

Located downtown in the Hillcrest district, the Cafe Libertalia is a great place.

Please review the event on the LoCo Directory

Please ensure that you read and review the Testing and Upgrading pages to ensure that you have things ready and setup for the Jam. We will also be helping introduce people to Ubuntu and assisting in installing and setting up Ubuntu.