Loudmouthman

In the fourth part of my discussion on the Ubuntu Code of Conduct we reach an issue that I feel goes to the heart both the benefits and drawbacks in open source development and community invovlement.

When you disagree,consult others.
Disagreements, both political and technical, happen all the time and the Ubuntu community is no exception. The important goal is not to avoid disagreements or differing views but to resolve them constructively. You should turn to the community and to the community process to seek advice and to resolve disagreements. We have the Technical Board and the Community Council, both of which will help to decide the right course for Ubuntu. There are also several Project Teams and Team Leaders, who may be able to help you figure out which direction will be most acceptable. If you really want to go a different way, then we encourage you to make a derivative distribution or alternative set of packages available using the Ubuntu Package Management framework, so that the community can try out your changes and ideas for itself and contribute to the discussion.

The inspired concept within this section of the Code of Conduct is the defining principal of open source development. To create, contribute and to demonstrate an idea. Allowing the community to decide if the idea is worthy or not. To be able to step back and gracefully concede a point to enable an idea to progress would be the better path and the more Ubuntu path to follow.

I can think of one situation recently which occured within one online community that very clearly divided into technical rightness versus effective communication. This dispute would only be resolved by acceptance or rejection of the change request. It was Steve Dobson who once very sagely put it that “If an idea or contribution can be added to the code without breaking the functionality of the code or detracting from its performance then it should be implemented.” Likewise in all our activities, from Email to Irc we need to consider if we should be dictating and admonishing people for small infractions of what we consider to be “Netequitte” if their actions are not harming or damaging the overall contributions of the group.

There will always be ideas and concepts that will aggravate and annoy us, sometimes we will need to seek the advice of a community leader and other times the advice of the community.

The third way though will be to consider if there is really an issue to be disputed in the first place.

Thanks for reading.

Part three in my review of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct takes me to yet another word beginning with C. Having spoken often about community, commitment and creativity tonights post is about Collaboration. So lets review the 3rd article of the code of conduct.

Be collaborative.
Ubuntu and Free Software are about collaboration and working together. Collaboration reduces redundancy of work done in the Free Software world, and improves the quality of the software produced. You should aim to collaborate with other Ubuntu maintainers, as well as with the upstream community that is interested in the work you do. Your work should be done transparently and patches from Ubuntu should be given back to the community when they are made, not just when the distribution releases. If you wish to work on new code for existing upstream projects, at least keep those projects informed of your ideas and progress. It may not be possible to get consensus from upstream or even from your colleagues about the correct implementation of an idea, so don’t feel obliged to have that agreement before you begin, but at least keep the outside world informed of your work, and publish your work in a way that allows outsiders to test, discuss and contribute to your efforts.

Recently , as the UkTeam headed towards the Linux World Expo in London ( yes I am more repetive than Dvorak ) the UKTeam for Ubutnu recognised the need for a new logo that could be used to represent their Loco Team. In this case a number of graphically talented individuals rose to the Jono set challenge to create the Ubuntu-UK Team Logo. As is the way in things Community driven the Logos were presented for inspection, comment and review. Certainly a number of revisions went on and comments and criticisms ( more words that begin with C ) aided in the creation ( another C ) of the new Ubuntu Uk Team logo that is visible here.

Whilst part three discusses the issues of Collaboration in terms of code contribution it is clear that this section extends into more areas than SVN , or CVS repository update. It is about communication, co-operation and collaboration all aspects of which the creation of excellent and effective software like Ubuntu cannot be achieved. Congratulations to Schwuk for the final design .

How does this affect my view on the code of conduct? I would say that having been involved in the community for several years now the real changes are made not through force of will or personality but by providing the community with an answer and then by working to implement it through collaboration. The logo design in my mind was a working example of collaboration in action and one more reason to be committed to the code.

Thanks for reading.