Ubuntu developer summit

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Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon opened the "most important event of the Ubuntu cycle", Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS), which was held May 9-13 in Budapest, Hungary. In addition to Ubuntu, though, there was a large Linaro presence because the Linaro Development Summit (LDS) was going on at the same time. The close relationship between the distribution and the consortium of ARM companies was clearly in evidence. Both summits not only shared conference facilities, but were also closely aligned in terms of how their sessions were run and recorded. Along the way in the first morning's talks, attendees also learned the proper pronunciation for "oneiric".

Ubuntu and Linaro developers were there to plan out their respective development cycles; Ubuntu for 11.10 (aka Oneiric Ocelot) and Linaro more generally for the next six months to a year. Up until now, Linaro has been doing releases in six-month cycles, each just a month after the Ubuntu release that was being tracked. But, as Linaro CEO George Grey announced later in the morning, there would be no Linaro 11.11 release as the organization was moving to a monthly release cycle.

Bacon on the UDS format

Bacon noted that 11.04 ("Natty Narwhal") was a "tremendously adventurous cycle" that took Ubuntu "to the next level". But UDS is the time to look ahead to the next release and it is a "critical event" for the distribution. It is, he said, not a conference, but rather an interactive event where developers and other members of the community come together to "design, debate, and discuss" the shape of the next release.

Each session at UDS is an hour-long focused discussion, which is based on a blueprint that is in Launchpad. It is an "incredibly dynamic schedule" that is updated with changes to session times and rooms, as well as having new sessions added based on the outcomes of the meetings or additional blueprints being added. There are often fifteen simultaneous meetings taking place, with roughly two-thirds of those being UDS, and the remaining meetings being for Linaro.

In addition, the meetings are well set up for external participation as there is audio streamed from each room, as well as an IRC channel established and displayed on a screen so that those not present can participate in the discussion. Notes are taken in Etherpad for each meeting so that anyone can follow along or review them later.

There is an established structure for the meetings as well, which starts with a goal for the meeting, Bacon said. That goal is discussed, conclusions are drawn, and the outcome and action items are recorded. Each meeting has a leader who is tasked with setting the goal, moderating the discussion, and ensuring that all participants, even those who tend to not say much, get a chance to talk, he said.

But the end result of the meeting is action items. People are "here to do real work", he said, and part of that is identifying the actions that need to be taken in the next six (five really) months to achieve the goal. In addition to action items, though, there need to be people assigned to accomplish them. If people are reluctant to sign up for those action items, "start nominating people", as that works well to flesh out who should be doing what, he said.

The UDS meetings serve as a "valuable piece of face time" that should be used to satisfy the overarching goal, which is to "deliver the most incredible Ubuntu experience we can", he said. Bacon then turned the stage over to Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth.

Shuttleworth on Natty and Ubuntu values

Shuttleworth congratulated the assembled Ubuntu community on its work on Natty Narwhal, which was a "profoundly challenging" cycle for many reasons, he said. Ubuntu is in the middle of a transition, which makes it normal for there to be questioning and challenging debate around that transition. But the organization achieved "many of the things we set out to do", he said.

Several specific accomplishments from Natty were called out, including work by the documentation team that made major contributions to both GNOME and Unity documentation during the cycle. That team was successful in "spanning that divide [between GNOME and Unity] with grace and eloquence", he said. There were also major strides made on accessibility, which is one of the core values of the Ubuntu community. There is more accessibility work to do, he said, but it will get finished during the Oneiric Ocelot cycle.

With Unity, "we've set a new bar for disciplined design in free software", Shuttleworth said, by testing the assumptions of the design team with real user testing. He noted that the "mission" for the distribution is to have 200 million Ubuntu users within four years. Ubuntu is not targeting "developers' hearts and minds", but rather the "world's hearts and minds". But that shouldn't leave developers behind because they "need all the things that consumers do, and more", he said.

Shuttleworth also spent some time to "restate and reaffirm our values". People start using something new, like Ubuntu, because of the buzz around it, but at some point they may reevaluate that decision, asking themselves "why am I here?". It makes sense for people to participate or to continue to participate in a project like Ubuntu if they share the mission and values of the group.

The governance of Ubuntu is a meritocracy, he said, and not a democracy. Where hard decisions need to be made, he wants to have the best person making them, whether that person is a Canonical employee or not. But, once a person has been given that responsibility, it doesn't make sense to continually second guess them, he said, "that is how we will be both free software and incredibly effective".

There needs to be accountability to members, contributors, and users, as well. Shuttleworth said that he and other decision-makers should have no problem being questioned or challenged about decisions they have made, "but that can't get in the way" of progress. When you get "stressed" about a particular decision, he said, ask yourself whether the right people are making that decision.

Transparency is also important. There has be a sense of a lack of transparency in some decisions made in the last few years where those decisions were presented as having already been made. The community can "expect and reasonably demand" discussion of those decisions, he said. But Ubuntu brings together the community and multiple companies to make a single platform, and many of the different groups that come together in Ubuntu have different ideas of what (and how) things should be done. Transparency is a "value that we hold", he said, but it requires respect on all sides.

Contributor agreements

Making a case for the Canonical contributor agreement is an area where Shuttleworth has "failed as a leader", he said. He has "strong views" on what it will take to build a collaboration between the community and various companies, and contributor agreements will play a role. Each side has different goals and different constraints. Those need to be respected by all participants so that they can work together.

When all sides are closely aligned in their goals and constraints, they can work together fairly easily, but that isn't really collaboration so much as it is teamwork, he said. Ideological constraints put up barriers, and "free" is not the only way that companies will produce software. There are "second-class options in vast tracts of free software", he said, and in order for that to change, working with various companies will be important. He noted that Android and iOS have quickly created large amounts of useful software even in the face of the Microsoft monopoly.

Starting "today", Shuttleworth is going take on the job of making the case for contributor agreements. It will be difficult to do, but he is up to the challenge, because of the importance. He noted that at one point Canonical had done some work on some software that had been created by Novell, who "had done a lot of work that we benefited from", while Canonical had done "some work that we were proud of". He initially refused to sign a contributor agreement with Novell for that code, but then couldn't sleep that night and changed his mind in the morning because he realized that he was not being "generous".

Ownership of a project comes with responsibilities, and contributors should be willing to give up some rights to their code if they aren't taking on those responsibilities, he said. If someone gave you a plant for your garden, but asked you to agree not to sell the house if you accepted it, you likely wouldn't agree to that, he said. "It would not be generous on their part". He recognizes that convincing the community about contributor agreements is an uphill battle, but that the "upside in this case is all on my side" because those agreements are not popular in the community.

Oneiric

After a brief farewell (but not goodbye) message from Ubuntu CTO Matt Zimmerman, Shuttleworth noted that this development cycle started with a challenge: how does one pronounce "oneiric" (which means dreamy or dreamlike)? With the help of some community members with improvisational skills, and a prop named "Rick" (Spencer, director of Ubuntu engineering), several possibilities were demonstrated: "annoy-rick", "one-eye-rick", "on-a-rick", and so on, before Shuttleworth settled on the "winner", which was "o-near-rick", though, of course, several other alternatives are being heard throughout the summit.

There are "hundreds of things being decided" during the week of UDS, Shuttleworth said. Though there won't be any major shifts (a la Unity) for this cycle, there are lots of choices being made. One immediate decision point was whether to use Eucalyptus or OpenStack as the default cloud platform, and that decision needed to be made on the first day, he said. That was decided in favor of OpenStack, though Eucalyptus will still be supported.

There are some other changes that may be afoot, including potentially switching to Thunderbird as the default email client, as well as possibly changing from Firefox to Chromium as the default web browser. Other, less visible changes will be decided upon as well. After the week of UDS, it will be time to "get stuff done" to make those decisions, and all the other plans made, come together for Oneiric Ocelot, he said.