hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1974.txt

Episode: 1974
Title: HPR1974: Ubuntu Community donations, Governance and Hardware
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1974/hpr1974.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 12:43:42

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This in HPR episode 1774 entitled Ubuntu Community Donations, Governance and Hardware.
It is hosted by NAWP and is about 27 minutes long.
The summary is, I in general was feeling bad about how donations work with Ubuntu.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
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Good day and welcome to this edition of Hacker Public Radio.
My name is JWP and I occasionally do podcasts here.
What I'm hoping for is to talk a little bit about community and I had been feeling bad
since I read about Jonathan Redell who used to do the Ubuntu thing,
not getting his donations from canonical.
You know, when you click the $5 and you click flavor, you're supposed to get some money.
Well, I was just concerned about this and so I started doing some research about various things.
So a little bit about it about me.
I started off using Slackware and OpenSusa, I think back in the 90s, so 98, 99.
And I used Slack for a really long time.
As I got into the netbook thing and I used, you know, I ran into canonicals distribution
and I started using it and I really liked it.
You know, and it really worked and it had everything on it and it just worked.
You know, and I was like, my God, finally something that I don't have to work with all the time
and I could just, you know, put on my computer and just work.
And then, you know, canonical started doing this thing called unity
and then they put the X's in the wrong spot.
And I just didn't get that anymore.
It was just more of a pain, especially since at the time I was working with smaller monitors
and netbooks and stuff and that unity desktop just takes up too much space when you're working.
So I moved on to XFCE and I've been using XFCE for, I don't know, three or four years now
ever since canonical came up with this unity idea.
I guess it's okay. I got a 27-inch monitor and, you know, I run this stable version
or the LTS version of Ubuntu on my work machine.
I do that via USB and it's something that's not working right.
I just use that to fix it.
And it looks really good on my 27-inch monitor.
But, you know, performance wise, it's just too much.
So I don't.
But the base from Ubuntu uses Mint and I use Mint XFCE now for pretty much everything that I do.
And so I follow canonical closely and I even sell canonical at work.
So I do things for an enterprise hardware company and I sell a lot of Ubuntu
and Sousa licenses and real licenses.
So the, and it's just a very, very interesting, you know,
how this donation thing worked and how I felt about it.
And so I had to research it.
I talked to briefly to Alan Pope at Oddcamp about it and I talked very briefly to Jonathan Riddell about it
at the Fostam this year and I just felt bad, you know.
And I felt really bad about how Ubuntu was managing their community and that's something that I felt, you know,
really emotionally involved with because it's really the only thing with Sousa Slackware
that I've ever really been able to get to work year after year, day after day.
And so this podcast is going to be about what I found out.
So my distribution that I use with canonical is Sousa Ubuntu.
So I went to the Sousa Ubuntu site and I said, well,
and I looked at the donate and it said, it's such a really interesting thing.
This is the Sousa Ubuntu project as a team of contributors and not a formal organization as a result.
The project is unable to accept monetary donations.
However, there are a few ways you can support us financially and in direct manner.
And then they say, bounty source.
So if you set up a bounty for an XSE team, you can get Unix stickers for Sousa Ubuntu.
You can do HelloTux buy products from there and you get something t-shirts.
And it says you can donate on the contribution site at canonical.
And the money going to community projects goes to a pool of money that members of a project
can make requests to support Sousa Ubuntu.
Okay. And lastly, they talk about donating your time.
And so I was like, okay, so that's from the website.
And let's see how it works with other folks.
So the other one that I'm interested in is
you can it's made and they came up with you can do something this thing called Patreon
and help the mate community grow.
And you have PayPal set up and commercial sponsorships set up and become Bitcoin
and all kinds of stuff.
So mate seems to have a little more and they have a PayPal thing.
So it says the funding for this campaign has three things.
The fund going to make projects and bandwidth costs,
a fun full-time development and support projects on Ubuntu mate depends on.
Partens will be rewarded with exclusive project news updates and directly we set up a number of payment options.
So it doesn't talk about that they're a nonprofit though.
I don't know really, so I don't see anything that says they're a nonprofit.
They use Patreon and you can donate money to mate if Ubuntu mate if you want to.
Okay. And so I guess that's okay.
I'm not really a big mate guy, so I'm not going to do that.
But that's how another flavor in Ubuntu does it.
So I went to the Ubuntu site and I looked around and it looks like
that it's pretty much like the Ubuntu Godside.
So far it's set up.
You give a donation and then you have to request it be in a Ubuntu community member
and you have to request for funds and then they do it.
And so I got the report interestingly, right?
Exactly when all this trouble with Ubuntu or Ubuntu started, they stopped doing the report.
So the last report is September of 2015 and they haven't done reports since then and they had done reports
really obviously there.
And they also don't get very much money.
There's not much money and it's $9,000 ending balance in September.
So it's not a huge amount of money.
And no, it looks like no flavor in this requested money it was given.
So they have, the last one had Ubuntu My Mar events, Aw Camp,
which we all loved and loved and liked.
And so I don't see it.
Most of it was, there was one equipment proprietary drivers, PPA for a guy named York Castro.
And that seems fine and there was some merchandise packs and stuff down on the bottom.
So nothing from the report was given to the flavors.
Okay and so when I went to the download page to look and see there,
now when I click the server just now and I click download the LTS version,
it didn't offer on Firefox for me to donate it.
I'd seen the donate thing before but it doesn't seem to be there for the server thing.
Let me try it for the workstation thing.
Hold on just a sec.
Okay and yes, there are a bunch of donating things for the desktop.
And they say your personal mobile computing that gives like you want for cloud computing,
for Ubuntu things, for community projects.
And I think this is, I support local teams, Ubocons, upstream projects,
and all the good work, but it doesn't say anything about flavors.
So I want to secure things powered by the internet.
I want a community cloud and I want there.
And it doesn't give you the option to take me now.
And then it tells you to put your money where your mouth is and stuff.
And I guess that's okay but it doesn't mention anything about giving any money to the flavors.
So I don't see that there.
So maybe that changed.
I don't see anything about giving money to the flavors.
I actually am a little put off by that no other place asked for money.
So you got it from door and they don't do it.
And so it's a little cheap I think.
I'm not for sure though.
So it goes on.
And like I said, I didn't like the contribute thing.
And I did like that they did say their total contribution is better than buying a King Kong versus Godzilla DVD.
So I went to the main page and I went down and I clicked about it.
And so that there's appears to be some separations between canonical and the corporation and the governance.
And in the governance and that there seems to be something called a Buntu community council, social structures and community community.
So I was supervised by the Buntu community council and then you click on that link that handles elections, board of vectors.
It's also responsible for the code of conduct and sharing.
The council is ultimately responsible for dispute resolution and it should be required.
For example, in the past we've had to resolve conflicts between local teams and the Buntu forms both very important parts of the community.
The community council needs every two weeks on internet chat relay.
You can propose an honor for discussion on the community council agenda.
Okay, and then there's the Buntu technical board, the Buntu technical board is responsible for the technical direction that Buntu takes.
It makes decisions based on package selection, packaging policy and installation system processes, the kernel, the X server, liabilities and stuff.
And the date and agenda of the next meeting alternating with community council.
So you can propose an item.
And so that's interesting.
I don't know how that is.
I may go to the community council meeting and just listen to that on ARC and see how that goes.
So nothing, not very certain anything so far that grabbed me on the website.
Still nothing about flavors and donations that I saw.
I don't know maybe they changed the website.
I'm not sure what Jonathan was talking about but it's not there and they didn't do that.
But they haven't published a report either.
And let's be honest, the total donations that canonical is getting is much, much lower than mint is getting.
And I think I've been mint got $16,000 last month, which is huge.
$16,000 you can have full-time people and stuff working for you from a variety of places.
So let's take a deep breath and a deep breath about this donation button that the canonical guys are doing.
Okay.
So when you click on Ubuntu Community Council team, you see that, okay, so there has been some changes.
2015, 1130.
The first one looks like he's from Brazil and he does core stuff.
Mark Shuttleworth is on there.
A guy named Michael Hall is on there.
And that there's a new one.
Slatrina Belkin.
Let's click on that.
That one you can see.
Okay.
And it sees, I'm only...
So it is a...
This Slavanna Belkin is only a Ubuntu community member, not a developer.
I use Ubuntu Linux to get away from Maximism and I'm a biologist and that will most likely do research and not develop games.
You're a Ubuntu user since 2009.
So the idea that it's insider...
I guess it's not so because they have this biologist.
Slatrina Belkin is on there and he seems to be a normal human being, just like me.
And he uses Ubuntu just fine on his own.
Okay.
And so I guess a government council...
I would have to read the minutes or go there to see if it's useful or not useful or how much power it has or what it doesn't have.
I mean, there's another issue that I've long had with canonical and that is the issue of a Ubuntu certified hardware.
Now, I look high and far for Ubuntu certified laptops and I buy them every time I see them.
If I go into a store and I see the Ubuntu certified laptop, I buy it.
And by Ubuntu certified, I mean it's got the sticker on it or on there it says it's run Ubuntu and it upsets me that canonical doesn't owe you more of their stuff.
It doesn't push more of their stuff, that there's no way to order from an OEM without a lot of money.
Something like the Acer 720 with just Ubuntu installed.
I can install Ubuntu very quickly from the command line if I just have Ubuntu installed.
And so it's upsetting.
And so then I heard that the Intel made an internet stick recently that had Ubuntu on it and it was like, OK, and I looked at the specs.
I added a processor, Gigabyte RAM, a Gigabyte thing.
And what they didn't tell you about the stick is that they put the recovery images on the stick so that 1.4 or 1.5 Gigabytes of space on the stick is for these recovery images.
And so then with this 1.5 Gigabyte RAM, somehow they set it up to where this thing is pushing 1.5 Gigabyte out the door.
And so you really have to redo everything to make it work.
So I had to first kill the swap because I just wasn't enough memory.
I had to kill the swap and I had to get a 64 Gigabyte microSD, put a swap on there, set up all the stuff.
And of course it was news because I used the UID versus the old way in the FStab.
So I had to learn out of you all that.
So the learning process probably worth the money I paid for the stick in and of itself just to get it to work.
But my god, canonical.
When somebody, like when a company like Intel is going to put your product and their stuff, why don't you check it to be sure it's not a pile of dark crap.
And before I go and buy it because it's got canonical in it.
And it just makes me feel bad.
I buy something that's going to certified or has the Ubuntu trademark on it.
And it runs like dog crap.
It's just very, very upsetting.
But if that's a little bit of a rant, so let's get back to the main subject.
So how do other people do this?
So how does Fador do this?
So Fador does it different.
And just a second.
I'll read you about how Fador does it.
So I went to the thing and asked Fador if they ask about donations.
And so the way that you do donations with Fador is that you go to their store and you buy their stuff.
Same thing with OpenSus.
I used to think that OpenSus was a separate thing.
And it used to be under OpenSus International.
But I look now in the same thing.
If you're going to donate, you got to go buy their stuff in both places.
And both places clearly put their relationship.
Fador says that it's sponsored by Red Hat.
And the same thing with when you go to the OpenSus page.
Now, and they don't do the donation things.
The donation thing is something that canonicals do.
And since I sell all three in my professional life, it's really, it's really, really different.
I'm pretty sure that canonical is much smaller than Susa or Red Hat and the big scheme of things.
But I don't know.
I don't think that the other guys are selling t-shirts and you're asking for money.
So that doesn't really sit well with me.
And let's compare it to Davian.
How Davian does things.
Now, with Susa, the difference between Fador and Susa was that Susa takes donations of hardware.
And they get some money from AMD to sponsor them as well at the bottom of the page.
It has a list of open Susa sponsors.
Now, the Davian page, its donations are managed by the Davian project leader.
Okay, so that guy gets elected by the community.
And I just came back with Boston.
They had a big thing about, you know, Ian Murdoch and how that works.
And that's pretty impressive.
That's pretty impressive.
And they have a bunch of ways.
And they also just like open Susa, you can donate hardware.
That's your thing.
And they have a bunch of different things.
You can donate to Davian friends, Davian CH.
You can do equipment time or other.
And they have other organizations hold assets in Davian's name.
So, you know, that's a clear, a clear thing.
And they do something with software and the public interest is attacked at nonprofit corporation in the United States,
funded by Davian people in 1997.
So they are a nonprofit in the United States.
So, you know, that if you're looking to give money and you want to give to a nonprofit,
Davian seems to be the one place where you can really do your money and give there,
because it is a nonprofit.
And it's really set up that way.
Clearly, I checked it out.
I'll click the link.
It's exactly that way.
Now, whereas if you donate to canonical, they can do whatever they want with it.
They're a corporation.
They don't have to abide by anything there.
And I mean, they have that report and it looks above board.
And they did help with Og Camp a little bit there.
And I was there at Og Camp.
I had a great time.
So, thank you, canonical, for that.
But, I don't know.
You know, that's a lot of money.
The $12,000.
You know, for...
Something's not right there.
And they need to make that crystal clear.
And even though it said that they didn't want to donate to a flavor,
I didn't see it.
Shout out to Mardel said that something was there.
I didn't see it.
I didn't see any mention of the word flavor on the donate page.
So, I don't know.
Sort of like a mountain.
I don't know.
Maybe...
Still, I don't emotionally feel right about it.
All right.
Let's move on.
So, in looking more at the Subuntu Council thing,
they...
They don't delegate some of their things.
IRC...
Forms...
Ubuntu has a separate governing organization.
If you click on the Subuntu meeting,
it's not a...
It says...
It says next meeting.
So, there is no schedule meeting at the moment.
Please fill in when a schedule meeting.
So, they're not scheduling meetings or doing anything.
It appears that...
Please read the how to before adding yourself when you can make a request.
So, membership to this page...
It says...
It looks like somebody named Claus Christian...
...send added himself.
But I'm not for sure how that works.
It's...
It's not crystal clear.
For sure, not a governance kind of way.
This...
The...
In particular, the leadership of...
Ubuntu...
Coming off from the Ubuntu Council, that...
That's not clear.
If you look at the page, it's just not enough information.
So, that really does it, I guess, you know.
And...
So, no, I'm not a fan of the donation page.
The donations...
From the history, it didn't look like...
Like they...
They were organized very well.
The donations...
The donations...
If you look at it, what they did with the money...
You know, it was okay.
Like I said, there was a donation for all camp.
And there were some other events that were fine.
And some guys, guys in Miramar got money.
But it didn't look like...
They were really supporting, you know, something critical.
And in the thing, like if you wanted a full-time...
If you wanted to pay for a specific thing in Ubuntu,
it didn't look like that was happening.
And there was no mention of the flavors.
Of the flavors.
I didn't see anything with flavor donation there.
That could have changed.
That being said, no report has been published since...
This fiasco with the donations happened.
So, I'm very curious about when the next report will be published.
There isn't email address.
I may email that lady and ask her, you know,
Hey, it's been a while since the last report was published.
Can you let us know when that is?
So, overall, you know, with a canonical in community...
I don't know.
It was a mixed thing, my research.
I was great to see that biologist on the board.
It looked like that biologist was a real user of things.
And that was good.
It was surprising that the community manager wasn't on the Ubuntu community boards.
I was really surprised.
You know, I've had a chance to meet all three of the big ones.
The community, guys from OpenSUSA, Fedora, and Canonical.
And I have to say that each of the companies they handle it extremely differently.
I mean, in particular, canonical hands are very differently than Fedora or OpenSUSA does.
I mean, the presence at Fostam of Fedora was just a really magnificent.
And, you know, you didn't see anyone from Canonical there at all.
I mean, I was like really shocked that they weren't there.
And they weren't contributing at Fostam.
And then you have OpenSUSA and they were there, not as big a player.
But OpenSUSA does a lot of different kinds of events.
And I went to a handball stadium where they play handball, a racket ball, a racket state.
Well, more or less a workout gym last year in the egg.
And talk for two days or listen to talks for two days about what's going on in OpenSUSA.
So that they manage it really different than Canonical doesn't.
And maybe Canonical does it in some of their logos.
You go to a Canonical logo and that's where you get your taste of community.
And you look at all the geeky stuff that's going on with them in the big scheme of things.
All right, hey guys, well, this is me.
And again, this is my opinion.
It's not my opinion of my work because I saw a lot of OpenSUSA with Canonical.
And it's a wonderful thing there doing that, doing that with them.
And it's just that they're so small compared with the other guys that they play against.
It makes them pretty, pretty unique.
But in that OpenSUSA space where I work, they do a really good job.
And it's well worth the support contract to get help from them.
All right, guys, if you need anything or if you want to comment, it's JWP5 at hotmail.com.
Your guys have a nice day.
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