Ubuntu "Memberships" Questioned

mxh83 writes "Apparently if you have 'sustained' and 'significant' contributions to Ubuntu, you can become a 'Ubuntu Member' and get some freebies. 'While there is no precise period that we look for, it is rare for applications to be accepted from people contributing for less than 6 months. It is vital to be well prepared for the meeting. You need to convince the membership board that you have contributed to Ubuntu.' Have they thought this incentive through? What about recognition for smaller contributors? And who judged what is a 'significant' contribution to a community project?" Update: 01/06 20:33 GMT by S : Changed the title to reflect the fact that Ubuntu memberships have actually been around for a few years now.

Comments

Let me translate

[Anonymous Coward]

"You've contributed many manweeks of your life improving code. We're here to determine whether you might be worthy of receiving a free t-shirt."

Re:Let me translate

[xtracto]

Well duh, you are supposed to contribute because you like to do it. Whatever they give you back is a plus.

As for who is going to judge what is a significat contribution... I guess whoever is giving you the free T-Shirt (Shuttleworth?)

Re:Let me translate

[lymond01]

We're here to determine whether you might be worthy of receiving a free t-shirt.

I hear you get access to the Ubuntu Awards First Class Download area -- no bandwidth throttling for members!

Honestly, I think it's a good idea to give back to the people who have contributed. It's a little bit like Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the movie does not exist) where you're only allowed to vote if you've served in the military. In Ubuntu's case, you're only allowed to be a member, therefore having access to a long list of very lucrative opportunities and items (kidding), if you've contributed. You don't just pay a fee, but you actually help. It's like working in the soup kitchen versus giving money to the homeless shelter.

Re:Let me translate

[CyberNigma]

Also, if you read any of Heinlein's interviews, you will find that his intention was not that only military service earned citizenship, but ANY federal service, military or not earned citizenship. He did admit that he didn't convey that too well in the book like he had in his mind. Of course the movie, being a bug hunt movie that was converted to Starship Troopers near the end conveys none of that.

Re:Let me translate

[CyberNigma]

The movie had nothing to do with Heinlein's book in the beginning. It was originally intended to be a generic space bug hunt movie until the director became aware of the Starship Troopers IP, read a little bit of it (his own words) and adapted the movie to fit the book a bit. It wasn't a critique. In fact he never read the whole book. It was just a title and minor adaptation.

Plato's Republic was similar but not quite the same. It did have a class of citizens that had a sole duty to look after the rest (for the public), but it also involved lying to them for their own good (baby lotteries) and community families. Both books and ideas are very similar, but still have their unique qualities.

Heinlein most certainly didn't come up with the idea of responsibility in governance, he just put it into book form and made it more palatable :-)

Here's a quote from wiki, but you can check out the commentary if you have it or look up the references:

"There is a vast divergence between the original book and film. A report in an American Cinematographer article around the same time as the film's release states the Heinlein novel was optioned well into the pre-production period of the film, which had a working title of Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine; most of the writing team reportedly were unaware of the novel at the time. According to the DVD commentary, Paul Verhoeven never finished reading the novel, claiming he read through the first few chapters and became both "bored and depressed."[4]"

The second and third movie installments were most certainly social commentary and critique. The animated series has more to do with the book than any of the movies.

Re:Let me translate

[nxtw]

You don't just pay a fee, but you actually help. It's like working in the soup kitchen versus giving money to the homeless shelter.

I would imagine paying for Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SUSE Linux Enterprise has a much bigger impact than helping Ubuntu directly. Red Hat is a big contributor to extremely important projects such as the Linux kernel, GCC, glibc, Gtk, and GNOME. They (or companies they have since acquired) created GFS, LVM2, and KVM, and they maintain a lot of other projects that make up any modern Linux distribution.

I can't find a similar list for Novell, but they are the second biggest contributor to the Linux kernel.

Re:Let me translate

[Hognoxious]

But that's the point. Once you start recognizing certain contributors more than others and giving them status symbols - especially where the difference is small and/or largely subjective - you risk creating a "them and us" situation.

Next phase is that the "them", who are probably more numerous and contribute more, feel rejected and decide to tell the clique to stuff it.

Re:Let me translate

[Magic5Ball]

And then contributors will be able to level-grind to earn more achievements. Let's just hope that they don't turn into one of those corporate situations where internal wiki edits and rcs actions count positively in the performance review regardless of substance.

Exclusivity for envy.

[brycethorup]

I think this is a good move on Ubuntu's part. It should create envy in those who don't meet the criteria to contribute more and work towards a goal. I think this may help increase interest in wanting to contribute. I know it has for me.

Re:Exclusivity for envy.

[Scopeuk]

or drive away people that feel that they're being unfairly excluded from the program despite making only a marginally different contribution to those accepted or worse yet, seeing that their area of contribution seams to be less credited that other "pet areas", all in all a great way to drive a deep wedge into the community.

Re:Exclusivity for envy.

[mackyrae]

Code has nothing to do with it. I became an Ubuntu Member a few weeks before I submitted my first patch--which wasn't to Ubuntu. My contributions were things like:

• helping people on ubuntuforums.org
• helping people in #ubuntu on IRC
• organizing an installfest
• volunteering with the local community team

Technical contributions are not the only sort of contributions. For that matter, someone wanting membership whose only contributions are code-based will be told to simply apply for developer status as developers are automatically granted member status. Direct membership application is for community-based contributions. Advocacy work, tech support, writing documentation, working on translations, etc. are what are looked at.

LOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which marketing department dipshit thought this stupid idea up?

Wow.... things have *really* gone downhill

[schon]

You need to convince the membership board [...] And who judged what is a 'significant' contribution

This is amazing... we've gone from people not reading the articles, to not reading the *summaries*, to the *submitters* not reading what they themselves wrote!

CmdrTaco, I know it's tradition for editors not to read the summaries, but isn't it taking it a bit far to not read ones you wrote yourself?!?!?

What?

[symes]

It sounds like one of those dreadful golf clubs - surely there is a better way of recognising significant contributions without the potential for "membership commiittees" screwing things up?

Re:What?

[TheGratefulNet]

It sounds like one of those dreadful golf clubs

sounds like you've done driver development, before..

I wouldn't want to be part of any club...

[filesiteguy]

...that would have me as a member. :)

I like the quote in the article, "Instead, people should set a goal of making substantial and sustained contributions to Ubuntu. By doing this, the focus shifts from working hard in order to get one of the Membership benefits to working hard in order to make Ubuntu a greater distribution and improve the community,"

You know, people are going to want the benefits.

I wonder if bitching about the GUI or how I don't get to sync my blackberry using a GUI I like counts.

Why not?

[drinkypoo]

You already have to [digitally] sign a document and agree to a code of conduct in order to become an "Ubuntero", which among other minor benefits is necessary in order to get access to the PPA system. This is just another layer of evaluation for another icon next to your name on Ubuntu sites and... whatever it was they're giving you. In return, they give you the right to represent yourself as a "member" of Ubuntu, kind of like an employee except you don't get paid :)

Re:Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Releases which are stable and are not shipped in a broken state would seem to distinguish Debian from Ubuntu rather clearly.

On a broader level to say Debian doesn't have anything to distinguish itself is foolish. It runs a Linux kernel on at least 11 different architectures and can also run a FreeBSD kernel on i386 and amd64. Debian is the origin of the APT package management tools widely used by derivatives and others. It has a Social Contract. Etc. etc. etc. To see it as undistinguished or having nothing to distinguish it says more about of the person making the comment than it does about the object of his/her derision.

Re:What about money contribution?

[symes]

What about money contribution?

Sorry but no - protestantism allows you to buy your way to heaven, not FOSS

Not news

[flimm]

Ubuntu membership has not been introduced recently, it has been around from before I started Ubuntu (2006), at least. This is not news. The title needs changing.

Ubuntu members get @ubuntu.com addresses, their blogs syndicated on planet.ubuntu.com, a free subscription to LWN, and they vote for certain things.

Re:What about money contribution?

[Kell Bengal]

I thought it was scientology where you had to buy upgrades.

Re:Reminds me

[Kell Bengal]

Well played, sir. Well played.

Re:Reminds me

[Itninja]

I don't know if I have ever 'made Slashdot great' or whatever. But NoScript and ABP give me the same result.

DD

[bfree]

I wonder if a Debian Developer who has uploaded a new package version to unstable since Ubuntu first forked would be approved? Or upstream developers? I presume not and this is just about recognising contributions exclusively for the benefit of Ubuntu.

I'll resist a rant and simply offer a link to Greg Kroah-Hartman's speach at the 2008 linux plumbers conference to show why I for one value contributions to Ubuntu as next to worthless http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3385088017824733336

Re:DD

[Beuno]

I am a member of one of the membership boards (Americas board)
No, Ubuntu Members are people who contribute to Ubuntu directly, not indirectly. There is a lot of work involved in getting Ubuntu out the door every 6 months, and membership recognizes the people who help do that in a direct way.
That said, upstream developers and Debian developers have the advantage of already knowing how a lot of things work, so they will probably have a higher chance of getting through than anyone else (there are separate councils for community involvement and technical involvement).

Re:What about money contribution?

[Praeluceo]

I thought it was Catholicism where you had to buy indulgences?

...chewie

[boyko.at.netqos]

I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Like, okay, you know in Star Wars, when Leia hands out medals to Luke and Han, but Chewie's just standing there on the podium - he doesn't get a medal?

Well, here's the thing, if you're an Ubuntu contributor and you're chosen for membership, it's like getting those medals. But if you're an Ubuntu contributor, and you're not chosen for membership, you're like Chewie - no medal. But that's not a bad thing, because, you know what? Chewie is standing up there on the podium too, and you know what, it doesn't matter if he gets a medal - because Chewie is a frickin' bad ass, and Chewie knows it.

Hell, the only reason Chewie doesn't get a medal is cause he's got like 20 or so of his own from back in the day. Let the noobs have some fun, you know? Besides, if he wanted too, he could take that medal from whiny-boy or smirk-merc. Lightsabers? Blasters? They're no use when you fuggin' rip their arms out of their sockets.

Re:What about money contribution?

[Attila Dimedici]

What about money contribution?

Sorry but no - protestantism allows you to buy your way to heaven, not FOSS

Actually, indulgences (buying your way into heaven)was one of the practices of the Roman Catholic CHurch that the Protestants were protesting.

Re:Is there a suggestion box?

[DragonWriter]

Do I get to complain about lame mono apps being included in favor of better gtk or KDE ones.

If you want Ubuntu with KDE environment and apps as "standard", Canonical has a distribution for that.

openSUSE members

[Enderandrew]

openSUSE has had a very similar program for some time.

http://en.opensuse.org/Members

Members get to vote on the board, and get a free boxed/retail copy of each openSUSE release.

Re:What about money contribution?

[CannonballHead]

I've heard this touted many times, and that Catholicism was non-works-based and Protestantism changed all that with the Reformation, turned it into a money thing, etc. Don't you guys read history?

The major reason for the Reformation... Martin Luther could not stand indulgences. That was a major player in it. And he didn't think salvation, as laid out in the Bible, is based on human effort - as he was taught as a monk. And tried to accomplish.

Protestantism's very start was because of the corruption of the Catholic church and them trying to sell the way to heaven, not vice versa....

(Note: Protestant denominations today may or may not reflect Protestantism of the 16th century. :) )

Re:What about money contribution?

[SterlingSylver]

They retconned that. Now you're just supposed to give money if you want your church to stay open.

Re:PulseAudio

[geminidomino]

And the decision to use a BETA of Grub2 that even the developers say isn't ready for production use? Was that upstream at gnome too?

What's Significant?

[DakotaSmith]

I know how to tell if my contribution is significant. It's really very simple: I get paid.

They should

[jimpop]

They should initially include any and all Debian contributors.

Re:Reminds me

[Blakey Rat]

I'm pretty sure I make Slashdot significantly worse.

Penis penis penis penis penis.

Membership is not that difficult

[duncan]

I'm a member and I've never contributed a piece of code.

I do a bit of bug triaging and reporting on Launchpad. I work with the Loco here and people locally to get involved and educated in free software using Ubuntu.

If you ask me the membership doesn't do much overall. The major reason I went for it was to get the @ubuntu.com email address that l think helps on the advocacy front when I give someone my business card. Makes it seem more legit in some way.