Freedom and Community

I have read a great many posts about the events of the past ten days in the world of Canonical. Each has an opinion and I, as a rule, understand that people have their own unique opinions. I will not call them wrong or incorrect even though I may disagree with them. Why? It is because I know everyone has a different lens to view the events from; they may see things I do not and vice versa. What follows is a sample of these comments and my opinion.

Canonical started making the relationship unequal, though. They have their reasons and they make sense to them. But they are hurtful to me and I can’t be true to myself and live under them at the same time.

Their true side starts to show itself in those heated moments when you wonder what is really going through  their head.

 Greg Grossmeier (full text)

The first part quote from Greg’s post is spot on. Greg no longer ‘agrees’ with the decisions and direction of the community. Everyone has a right to have an opinion and a belief. What troubles me is the the second quote from the post; it implies that Canonical has been dishonest. If you read the rest of the post Greg clearly states that Canonical has been lying to him. I will admit that I am not fully aware of the relationship between Greg and Canonical, but I do believe there could be another explanation. An explanation that does not require one of the partners to be vilified. Is it possible that both Greg and Canonical shared the same vision and dream in the beginning, but things have changed? Is it possible that Greg and Canonical had similar visions and dreams, but that Greg missed slight differences?

When Ubuntu launched I doubt many thought smart phones would run full blown OSes and be capable of replacing laptops. It took the iPad in 2010 to make people believers in tablets as computing devices for the masses. The slogan was Linux for Human Beings. At launch that meant desktops, laptops and servers, not tablets and phones. I do not view the push to go to tablets and phones as a deviation from that original slogan. The computing world is changing and that is driving changes to how things need to get done in order for Ubuntu to be Linux for Human Beings.

People are leaving

From Planet Ubuntu + Google+ at least 4 community members have left the Ubuntu community because of Canonical’s decisions. Most of them even gave up Ubuntu membership. Is this what we want? Canonical being “Big Brother” in the Ubuntu community?

Howard Chan (full text)

It is true that people are leaving the community. People were leaving the community before these announcements. People are also joining the community after these announcements. Here again there is an assertion that Canonical is being bad when the image of George Orwell’s 1984 is invoked by calling Canonical “Big Brother”. I need to be honest; this type of allegation bothers me greatly. In the past I have seen Canonical compared to the Nazi party as well. These comparisons are so far off the mark it would be funny if it was not so insulting and insensitive for someone to invoke them. Canonical has not declared war, taken innocent people prisoner nor have they tried to brainwash people.

Jono,

You were warned plenty. It’s not your fault. You had to deliver decisions against the best interests of the Ubuntu peer community and in favour of the Canonical community. Driving so hard towards product nirvana that peer relationships were driven into the ground. I’m sure you disagree that the community is dead, but eventually those scales will fall or the fake smile will stop. I don’t know what kind of Community you want, but it sure isn’t the peer community I signed up for.

Council,

Unless you can see a way forwards to rebuild this broken dream, disband. Focus your great skills on Debian. I’m sorry we couldn’t make it work, we were overpowered.

Martin Owens (full text)

The component of Martin’s complaint that expresses that the community has changed and is not the one he signed up is accurate. Going to the point of asserting that Jono has been forced to deliver decisions and that he is presenting a fake smile is going too far. The second part to the Community Council also goes to far because it makes the assumption that there was a shared dream. Martin also tries to instruct the Community Council what to do. Is that not what Martin is accusing Canonical of doing?

In all of these posts I see a bit of a double standard. From my viewpoint Canonical has said “This is what we are doing”. They have not coerced or forced the community to follow. They have not implied that the community members that have chosen to leave the community are in some way bad or evil. Clearly Martin, Greg and Howard want to do something different. I want a community that allows for freedom; freedom for Canonical employees, Canonical as a company and every individual. I would never dream of trying to force Martin, Greg or Howard to work on something they did not believe in. I also would not try to force Canonical to work on or fund something that they did not believe in. While it is painful to see people leave that I have become friends with, that have inspired me and that I have great respect for I refuse to lash out with accusations. I respect these people and their opinions even when they differ from mine.

In closing I would like to share some quotes about Freedom.

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Freedom lies in being bold.”
― Robert Frost

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
― S.G. Tallentyre

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”
― Abraham Lincoln

Ubuntu: Time to Take the Shot

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
It has been an eventful week in the world of Ubuntu. It started with a move to an online format for UDS, progressed through a discussion about the possibility of rolling releases and the announcement of Mir as a replacement for X windowing. That is a lot of change. I have waited until now to write about these changes because I wanted to take my time to reflect on each of them and Ubuntu as a project.

Today the Ubuntu Community Council had a discussion about these events with Mark Shuttleworth. There was one consistent theme; we all want Ubuntu to be successful. One thing Mark expressed is that for Ubuntu to be successful it must succeed with lots of people across all the platforms they use. I agree with him; I would not consider Ubuntu a success if it ends up being no more than the most popular linux distribution for desktops and laptops.

It is my opinion that the emergence of phones and tablets as personal computing devices presents an amazing opportunity for Ubuntu. The two major players, Android and iOS, are tablet and phone operating systems only. Apple has OS X and Google has chrome, and there is no doubt in my mind that they are working towards a convergence as well. The time for Ubuntu to take the lead is now. This would be a dramatic change for Linux in general and Ubuntu specifically. I have no doubt that the incredibly talented people at Canonical and in the Ubuntu Community have a real shot at taking the lead and getting their first. I imagine this process will involve periods of chaos and moments of pain that will require decisive and difficult decisions.

Technology moves rapidly so this opportunity needs to be seized quickly and will require the community and Canonical to be agile. With this in mind one can begin to understand the recent changes and announcements.

UDS Goes Online:
The first thing that has to be acknowledged is that this decision was poorly timed for members of the community. Many people, including myself, are not going to be able to attend sessions due to being at work. With less than a weeks notice there was simply not enough time to take time off from work. While my initial thoughts were focused on the lack of in-person time and the informal conversations that happen outside the sessions I realized today, after attending one session, that there were many things that would be better. Todays remote experience was a far better than my previous remote sessions. I was able to clearly understand what was being said by the people in the hangout compared to poor audio from the fish bowls of the past. I saw more people contributing to the pad and more attention paid to the IRC channel. When I attended sessions remotely in the past I felt like a person that got bad seats to a sporting event. Today I felt I had an excellent seat. I saw several familiar nicks, but I saw several nicks I had not seen in the past and that was exciting. People who could not attend UDS involving travel issues will now have the chance to attend.

With UDS happening every three months this will also allow Ubuntu to be more agile and will help us take advantage of the amazing opportunity while the window of opportunity is still open.

The Potential for Rolling Release:
I would like to stress that this is one possibility. While there is a definite need to be agile, a rolling release is just one way of meeting that need. From a non-developer point of view I like the idea of a rolling release, but I also understand that a great number of items would be impacted and the idea must be discussed to fully understand what that impact would mean. In short, while I like the idea I am not sure it is the right answer.

The Community Council was approached on February 14th and made aware that Rick Spencer had asked his team to come up with a straw man plan for a rolling release so that the the idea could be discussed. Rick wanted to take the idea to the community and we were asked what we felt the best way to do that was. I replied to this with a suggestion that the idea be presented to the community and that we use Google+ to have Rick explain the plan and take questions from the community. If anyone took issue with the Google+ hangout please blame me, and not Rick or his team. Here is the closing note from Rick’s post to the ubuntu-devel mailing list

Such a change needs to be discussed in the Ubuntu community. Therefore, Iasked my team to put together a strawman proposal for how such moving to amonthly cadence with rolling release might work. I will be discussing arough outline of  this proposal on Friday 27th Feb at 6pm UTC / 10amPacific / 1pm EST at http://www.ubuntuonair.com<http://www.ubuntuoneair.com&gt;.Then we can talk specifics next week at UDS. (full text)

If you have thoughts  about these changes please make them heard. Participate in UDS, blog and discuss the changes with the teams you are a part of.

Wireframe Options

Recently I became involved in Ubuntu Friendly and one of the tools I wanted was a wireframe application so I could make quick mockups moving forward. I learned about several options:

• Pencil – Pencil is built for the purpose of providing a free and open-source GUI prototyping tool that people can easily install and use to create mockups in popular desktop platforms.
• Wireframe Sketcher – WireframeSketcher is a wireframing tool that helps designers, developers and product managers quickly create wireframes, mockups and prototypes for desktop, web and mobile applications. It’s a desktop app and a plug-in for any Eclipse IDE.
• Balsamiq – Using Mockups feels like drawing, but because it’s digital, you can tweak and rearrange easily. Teams can come up with a design and iterate over it in real-time in the course of a meeting.

I eliminated Balsamiq because it requires Adobe Air (which is no longer being developed for Linux).

Pencil:
I found working with Pencil very easy to create the mockup of Ubuntu Friendly. Pencil included resources for Windows, Android, iOS and Web Applications. The drawing produced is very clear and does not simulate being drawn by hand. I had one rather important issue with Pencil; it would not export the mockup as a .png. The dialog box would come up and you would take the steps to save a file, but no file was actually saved. When making a .pdf file the table resource was not rendered.

Wireframe Sketcher:
Working with Wireframe Sketcher was not quite as easy as Pencil, nor were there as many built-in resources. The program had no tool to create a table. The resulting sketches simulate being drawn by hand and the program was able to export .png files. This software is also not free and will cost roughly $100.

In the end Wireframe Sketcher is the winner as it is able to create functional mockups without requiring Adobe Air or Java and was able to successfully save .png versions. An added feature, that I will not make use of, is that it works with Ecplipse IDE as well. If you are comfortable with Eclipse, or even Visual Studio, the application will be comfortable immediately.

The IDE style allows you to build an application with multiple screens and even have the screens be interactive. All the other mockup programs I tried lacked this depth. The program even allows for custom made svg images to be used as additional shapes or icons.

If you are an Ubuntu User like I am you can find it in the Ubuntu Software Center.

Ubuntu 12.10 Launch Party

In the past Ubuntu-Us-NY Loco has done more technically oriented launch parties complete with presentations and upgrades; food and conversation was a secondary item. This year, motivated by the success of Randall Ross generating outstanding events in Vancouver, it was decided to make be more social and less technical. The ‘party’ aspect of release day was put to the front complete with a Quantal cake. The result was an outstanding turnout that included several new attendees. The event was hosted by Interlock Rochester and co-sponsored by LUGOR.

Joseph shows off some Ubuntu TV stuff he is working on

The amazing food brought in and shared by all

working on upgrading laptops and relaxing

David L. cuts the cake he provided for the party

Quantal Cake is Yummy!

Ubuntu’s Raring Ruckus Much Ado About Nothing

I have been an ardent supporter of Ubuntu for a while now and had the amazing opportunity to attend UDS and meet the amazing people behind the distribution. This includes Canonical employees and community contributors from around the world including Mark Shuttleworth himself.

It was with sadness that I watched Mark’s blog post twisted and turned in to something ‘ugly’. Here are a few of the twisted headlines:

Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret, to escape the critics’ ire

Ubuntu moves some Linux development inside

Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth Tires Of Critics, Moves Key Ubuntu Developments Out Of Public Eye

There are others, but what I find interesting is that the headlines were so far from reality. We all suspect why that would be… to get more clicks. Sensational titles that stir strong emotions make for great hit counts. Fortunately for the bloggers and associated sites I have a higher standard of Ethics so I will not name names, nor will I claim that I know their motivations.

For those that have not seen it here is the part of Mark’s blog post that is being distorted.

So, we thought we would extend the invitation to people who trust us and in whom we have reason to trust, to work together on some sexy 13.04 surprises. The projects range from webby (javascript, css, html5) to artistic (do you obsess about kerning and banding) to scientific (are you a framerate addict) to glitzy (pixel shader sherpas wanted) to privacy-enhancing (how is your crypto?) to analytical (big daddy, big brother, pick your pejorative). But they all make the Ubuntu experience better for millions of users, they are all groundbreaking in free software, they will all result in code under the GPL (or an existing upstream license if they are extensions to existing projects). No NDA’s needed but we will need to trust you not to talk in your sleep . We’ll also need to trust you to write code that is thorough and tested, stuff you’ll be as proud of as we are of the rest of the Ubuntu experience. Of course.

Mark Shuttleworth

I put in red the key parts of this text that caught my eye. I am not sure how extending an invitation or producing code under the GPL is a bad thing. I am not sure how an honest person could produce a headline claiming that Mark did this because he was ‘tired of critics’. I saw this as a positive opening up of projects like Unity; an opening up in the infancy stage of the project. That is a positive step towards more openness while preserving the ability of Canonical and Ubuntu to make headline release splashes at tech events. Those ‘splashes’ and headlines allow the distribution to pierce the popular media and gain recognition in global computer user population who goes to a big box store to buy a computer. Seriously go ask a non-tech minded computer user what Fedora is and they will tell you it is a type of hat. Ask them what Ubuntu is and you have a far, far better chance of telling you that has something to do with a computer. I, in fact, had this experience Thursday night at my last Linux User Group Meeting (LUGOR) when a young college student stumbled upon our meeting.

student: What meeting is in here?

linux user 1: It is a Linux user group.

student: What is Linux?

Fedora user: You know, like Fedora.

student: It is a meeting about hats.

Ubuntu user: Have you heard of Ubuntu?

student: Yeah, that has something to do with computers, right?

That exposure is important for Ubuntu, Canonical and Linux as a whole. I understand the need for ‘splash’ and ‘magic moments’ in the process of growing a community.

There is another aspect though. Why does the first iteration of a piece of code have to be completely public? Is there some requirement that it must be? I have no issue with someone,  or a group, who has an idea trying to build their first release in a small circle. I would take issue if they did not open up the code after or were unwilling to take feedback and improve the code. What is happening with 13.04 is a more open environment than what happened before, not a more closed environment.

Now, over the years Canonical has invested extensively in building components to help grow and improve the Ubuntu experience. Examples of this include Unity, Juju, Launchpad, Bazaar, Ubuntu One, and various other projects. The majority of these projects are fully open and anyone can participate in them.

Jono Bacon

So, in the future we can expect the community to have people ‘sitting at the table’ with Canonical developers when projects like Juju, Ubuntu One and Unity are being born. I see this as an amazingly good thing. An amazing amount of trust being extended by Canonical and the individuals working on the projects. I also think it will help produce better results and stronger first release code.

Please note that this is my opinion and from my vantage point. I fully acknowledge that others have different frames of reference and are entitled to their opinions.

USB Wireless N Adapter

My youngest daughter, who is five, has been running Ubuntu on a very old Dell laptop and it has increasingly become an issue with over heating issues and other problems. No fault of the Dell; it is very old. The good thing about her having an old laptop is it did not require me to run a long run of Ethernet cable to her computer. I recently purchased a new System76 Gazelle Professional (I will blog about that soon as well) and my plan is to cascade a custom built desktop to my eldest daughter and then the other desktop to my youngest daughter. The only catch is that the desktop does not have wireless; I either need to get a wireless card or run some cable.

I spent the least several days looking for adapters that users had reported working with Ubuntu 12.04 and found the Medialink – Wireless N USB Adapter – 802.11n 150Mbps on Amazon.com with lots of reviewers claiming it worked instantly on Ubuntu 12.04. I received the product today and being a good systems administrator, and father, I wanted to test it to ensure the transition would go smoothly. I am happy to report that the adapter simply worked immediately. The lsusb information is below:

Device 003: ID 148f:3070 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT2870/RT3070 Wireless Adapter

I tested the device on speedtest.net and got the same exact results as the Ethernet adapter in my test machine and there were no lockups experienced during a few large downloads. The device comes with a three foot extension cable, but I did not use that. Overall I am very pleased with the purchase and would recommend it to anyone looking for a usb wireless adapter.

Medialink USB wireless adapter

Ubuntu Accomplishments: Desktop

I have been following the Ubuntu Accomplishments project for a while, but failed to contribute until recently. The first contribution was inspired by a multimedia accomplishment for adding music to your machine. This simple accomplishment will trigger if you add music to your music folder. I keep my music on a NAS so I would never earn that accomplishment. I decided to build a script that would determine if a user had added music to Rhythmbox. This would account for users who keep music in folder other than music as long as they used Rhythmbox as their music player. Here is the code:

#!/usr/bin/python
import commands, sys, os
homeDir = os.getenv("HOME")
path = os.path.join(homeDir,'.local/share/rhythmbox/rhythmdb.xml') 

if os.path.exists(path):
	#user has used Rhythmbox now we need to test for the existence of music
        # test for the existence of <entry type="song"> in the rhythmdb.xml
        file = open(path)

        # convert file to string
        data = file.read()

        # we do not need to keep the file open
        file.close()

        # test for the existence of a song in the file
        if "song" in data:                
                #user has music in Rhythmbox
                sys.exit(0)
                # print "user has music"
        else:
                #user does not have music in Rhythmbox
                sys.exit(0)
                # print "user does not have music"

else:
        # user has not used Rhythmbox
	sys.exit(1)

As I explored this script I noticed that the original script that inspired me was testing positive even if there was only a text file and no audio files. I then decided to improve on the original script. Here is the code:

#!/usr/bin/python
import commands, sys, os
homeDir = os.getenv("HOME")
path = os.path.join(homeDir,'.config/user-dirs.dirs') 
result = open(path, "r")
content = result.readline()
while (content != "" ):
	content.replace( "\n", "" )
	content = result.readline()
	startStr = content[0:13]
	if startStr == 'XDG_MUSIC_DIR':
		musicDir = content

# recursive function to go through sub-directories
def test_for_music(directory):
    dirList = os.listdir(directory)
    for fname in dirList:
        filepath = os.path.join(directory, fname)
        if os.path.isdir(filepath):
            test_for_music(filepath)
        else:
            filetype = commands.getstatusoutput('file -b "' +filepath + '"')
            if "audio" in filetype[1]:
                # audio file present
                sys.exit(0)

# removes extra characters around directory
musicDir = musicDir[21:]
musicDir = musicDir[:-2]

music = os.path.join(homeDir, musicDir)
test_for_music(music)

#user has no music
sys.exit(1)

I hope that the Rhythmbox script can be expanded to include more music players in the future, but I think it is a good start to work with the default music player in Ubuntu. As I worked on both of these items I made several mistakes, but was guided to success by Rafal Cieślak. It was an amazingly easy and rewarding process. This project has finally allowed me to realize my goal of contributing code to the Ubuntu community. If you are looking to get involved in a community project and know a little bit of Python I would recommend Ubuntu Accomplishments.

A Day With Gnome 3

At UDS in Oakland I was asked me what I thought of Gnome 3. I answered honestly that there were parts I liked and parts that I did not. I also expressed that I thought that it would have been better if Gnome and Ubuntu had been able to work together so that efforts were not split on the ‘next generation’ Gnome experience. It had been a while since I had used Gnome 3 so I made a mental note that I should give it another try when I had the chance.

I have been amazingly busy since UDS, but today I found the time to run Fedora 17 and Gnome 3 for the entire day. There was one overall impression I had; I was far less productive. This held true even after I added several Gnome extensions. The dash was missed and as was the ability to minimize apps to a panel or dock. While I liked the dynamic creation of workspaces I found it frustrating to access them by having to go to the left side of the screen and then back to the right side; it was so frustrating I feel like there must be another way that I just missed.

At the end of the day it was with a sigh of relief that I booted back in to Ubuntu (gotta love spare hard drives) and was back in Unity. The experience was a positive one though; it is always good to realize just how good the things you have are in comparison to other options. In my case Unity has made more progress and fits my work style much better than Gnome 3.

UDS Day Five: Vudu

Vudu
This morning at UDS I attended a session that was about making life easier for users by leveraging community knowledge about completing tasks. Scott Lavender and I spoke about his idea last night and it gained enough traction to become a session by the next day. For an example if a user wanted to correct a photo that was ‘too dark’ they would have a suggested set of actions come up in hud that would complete the task. System problems, such as wireless driver problems, were also discussed. The idea there is the system could automatically attempt to fix the problem.

As names were being thrown out someone threw out Voodoo and it seemed like the name was well received. I suggested a slight change to fit with Juju; Vudu would keep the ‘sound’ of the name, but match the name construction of the Juju. I even mocked up a very rough logo.

quick draft vudu logo

Intents
As we were talking about Vudu I started to wonder about leveraging user intents both inside and outside of applications. When a user selects a file they would have the options based on possible intents; publish to twitter or Google+, edit with the GIMP or Inkscape, etc.

Both of these ideas would be an incredible leap in usability for Ubuntu users. I look forward to working with Scott Lavender and others to see if these ideas can be implemented; perhaps by 13.04.

UDS Day Five: Sunset Begins

Today is day five of five at UDS; the sun has started its downward path towards the edge of the horizon. This week has been inspiring, motivating and energizing; incredible things happen when passionate, intelligent and driven people get together for a week. Each and every UDS I have been at has resulted in the same feeling for me; the experience is unbelievably awesome!

Oakland Sunset

The reality though is that those of us at UDS are really watching the sunrise on Quantal Quetzal (pronounced: /ˈkɛtsəl/). At UDS we set tasks for this cycle… not just for Ubuntu the operating system, but Ubuntu the community. A rich vibrant community that embraces and thrives on the energy and diversity of its members. There are many, many hundreds of work items that will begin next week and even if you were not at UDS you can get involved by looking at the various sessions on the event calendar. Simply subscribe to the blueprints that interest you and contact the person who is assigned that blueprint.

Oakland Sunrise

Steve Bird – http://www.birdseekers.co.uk