The release of Jaunty Jackalope (Ubuntu 9.04) on April 23 might have been the most celebrated open source operating system release to date — with 110 release parties taking place across the globe. But here’s the twist: This wasn’t the result of a corporate PR machine. Instead, the parties involved the efforts of individual Ubuntu community members.
I attended a release party in my home town of Manchester, England to find out just why so many people felt the need to celebrate.
Held in the bar at the BBC, the event, organised by Ubuntu UK loco team with the help of Manchester Free Software members. Over 100 people had signed up to attend and not long after I arrived the room was packed with people.
The Changing Face of Ubuntu
It wasn’t just a room full of netbook wielding techys in Ubuntu t-shirts either, though there were many of those. There were a lot of, well, normal people. Ubuntu seems to have achieved what no other linux distro has done before and has broken free of the tech community to be embraced by the masses. It truly is “Linux for Human Beings.”
This feeling was shared by event organiser Lucy Bridges:
“I was amazed by the level of interest and participation. I think Ubuntu is so interesting to so many people, partly because it’s a great operating system that ‘just works’ for new and old users alike but mostly because of the wonderful community. Ubuntu has developed a reputation for friendliness that extends to real world events, meaning that people who wouldn’t normally go to a traditional ‘geek’ meet up, are happy to go to an Ubuntu event.”
As the night carried on I spotted someone darting about the place who came over and introduced himself as Gordon Allott of the Ubuntu UK loco team and explained he was on a mission to introduce himself personally to everybody there to raise awareness of the team.
I asked Gordon what he thought it was that made Ubuntu so popular:
“What really shines out is the community. Ubuntu is all about promoting the community at large and about making sure that the community stays healthy and well rounded. It’s great to see so many people coming out either in support of Ubuntu, the Ubuntu community or just to meet like minded people.
“You never see Gentoo release parties or Fedora release parties or anything like that. There is nothing specifically unique about Ubuntu the software that makes us organise release parties all over the world, I think its just that the community really wants an excuse to get out there and say ‘Hello, Hi, How are you?’”
People Matters
It is certainly this friendly community that has helped Ubuntu become more than just an operating system. I get the feeling it could almost be regarded as a kind of lifestyle accessory, just in a different way to how Apple and Microsoft’s PR make their products like lifestyle accessories.
Ubuntu could be seen as a statement of individuality or an anti-capitalist choice. Indeed I came across an Ubuntu-using accountant more interested in the political agenda of the free software movement than technical specifications.
The important point to take from this is that Ubuntu has built up an increasing following and a 6 monthly release cycle is the key to stimulating ongoing interest. While the more tech savvy members of the community can get excited about the the new innovations every 6 months, everyone can get excited about each release just being new. Everybody knows that new is better, especially when you can all get together and celebrate with beer.
Contributing blogger Guy Thouret is a software engineer for a wireless energy management system company. He has used various GNU/Linux distributions since 2002.
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What exactly about Ubuntu (Linux) is anti-capitalist?
@Nathan:
Even I don’t go as far as to call Ubuntu anti-capitalist.
Is that a meme running through the current Ubuntu userbase or did Guy just use that term to be sensationalistic ? You have to watch editorial/bloggers like a hawk. They have a tendency to say all sorts of things without really putting much thought into the accuracy of what they are saying.
So Guy, why did you write that? Was it just a flippant remark or is that a serious meme going around inside the Ubuntu community? If it is, cite references.
Ubuntu is definitely not anti-capitalist. Shuttleworth has consistently said that Canonical is a for-profit business. If Canonical doesn’t make money, Ubuntu will have a very hard time continuing as a project. All of the core infrastructure that Ubuntu relies on is Canonical infrastructure.
Canonical is not the Shuttleworth Foundation. That is a completely separate entity which is funding software development as a non-profit. Sure Shuttleworth Foundation funded Schooltool is leveraging Canonical funded properties like Ubuntu and Launchpad to do their work in a weird sort of incestuous mix of Shuttleworth funding project development. But Canonical is a for-profit business to be sure. Shuttleworth continues to re-state that he hopes Canonical will be profitable at some point. That as capitalist as any start-up company.
Shuttleworth did set aside 10 million for Ubuntu operations under the stewardship of the Ubuntu Foundation as a hedge against Canonical collapsing as a business. But that foundation has nothing to do with day to day operations of Ubuntu and has no control over things like the trademarks.
When Canonical requested eeeUbuntu to change its name (now called Easy Peasy btw) because of infringement on the Ubuntu trademarks..that was a commercial enterprise protecting its commercial property..very capitalistic behavior.
Whether the Ubuntu Foundation is anti-capitalist is up for debate, as its a non-profit entity, but that debate is only relevant if Canonical craters and the Ubuntu foundation has to step in and start funding Ubuntu operations. But if things ever get to that point, they’ll be far more pressing concerns than the anti-capitalism debate. Anyone heard anything from the Ubuntu Foundation lately. I think you can request yearly financial statements from them as part of their non-profit status. That’d be an interesting thing to read about.
-jef
@Nathan:
I think it could be seen as anti-capitalist in the sense that the Ubuntu community are not motivated by money. Many people contribute a great deal of their time and ask for nothing in return (apart from a better OS of course).
@Jef:
I think you misread. I did not say Ubuntu is anti-capitalist. I said it could be seen as anti-capitalist for the reason given above.
Another reason is software ownership. Canonical do not own the code, it belongs to the community.
* There are plenty of communities on non-F/OSS platforms that are not motivated by money either. People do the things they love in their non-work time. When it comes to software it just kind of makes sense to use F/OSS for those “hobby” pursuits.
* Much of the development on Linux and Ubuntu is motivated by money. Though, the end product is usually a service or experience rather than individual components.
Guy,
So just a sensationalist hypothetical. Be careful handling that sort of rhetorical device, it’s quite malleable.
And a correction…
Canonical does in fact own some of the code. In terms of copyrights…all of the major Canonical funded projects require copyright assign back to Canonical.
http://www.canonical.com/contributors
Bzr, upstrart, jockey, checkbox, libindicate, notify-osd….and all the open components of launchpad…all of these projects and more require copyright assignment to Canonical.
If you submit submit substantial improvements to any of these codebases you must assign copyright ownership over to Canonical
This gives Canonical the ability to re-license the contributions however they see fit..including re-purposing the code as part of a proprietary codebase. For most things this isn’t a big deal because for most of those project the community has access to a fully functional work. If Canonical decided to fork bzr or upstart into proprietary works by re-licensng, the community would be able to move on with the existing open codebase with the exact same starting point as Canonical.
Launchpad however is different. Canonical is NOT opening critical pieces of launchpad..they are keeping Soyuz(ubuntu package building) and CodeHosting(bzr-launchpad integration) as proprietary specifically to prevent anyone in the “community” from forking and creating a separate web service. Because Canonical requires you to assign copyright to Canonical for anything you contribute to the open Launchpad components, Canonical has the ability to re-purpose that code and use it in the still closed components.
Even better because those components are closed, they wouldn’t even have to give you credit as the original author of the functionality if it leaks into the closed components. And the “community” would have absolutely no say in the matter because the “community” is compelled to assign Canonical copyright ownership which allows Canonical to preferentially to do anything they wish with the “community” contributed functionality.
Whether or not this is fine with individual contributors is a matter between themselves and Canonical. But to suggest that Canonical doesn’t own the code.. is demonstratively false..for pretty much all the projects that Canonical has initiated. It’s interesting to compare Canonical and Red Hat on that score. Can you name a codebase that Red Hat maintains that requires copyright assignment to Red Hat from contributors? When you contribute to a Red Hat sponsored project like libvirt or to any of the projects initiated as part of Fedora development such as the koji build system..you own the copyrights to your contributions.
-jef
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