Resolving Tension

A post on the Fridge today claims “both councils collaborated and resolved any tensions together”.  The Ubuntu Community Council bullied me for asking questions that made Canonical feel uncomfortable and this is the only response to that.  That bullying someone until they leave a project is the UCC way of resolving tensions leaves me speachless.  That nobody else has commented in the Ubuntu project in public (I’ve had people in private tell me they’re wanting to leave Ubuntu and/or Canonical) confirms to me the project has a culture of fear.

Canonical still claims restrictions on Ubuntu software which do not exist and which are against Ubuntu policy.

 

15 Replies to “Resolving Tension”

  1. Hi Jonathan..
    Sorry to hear all this. I don’t know what kind of nda’s you have signed if any, but it seems your burned and have little hope going back after the 1 year involuntary hiateus. Could you please get in contact with Joe Ressington again and do an interview where we can get the whole story? I know there might be concerns about your remaining mates at kubuntu but I think the ubuntu community and linux community at large needs to hear whats happening in secret, warts and all.

    Have a nice day.

  2. Yo Riddell! It was always a pleasure working with you on releases. This whole situation makes me sad for you. I wish you the best in the future!

    Steve (vorian)

  3. I for one am happy you left ubuntu. The license issues, the developer waiver, the nih-syndrome.. Your talents will be welcomed in and useful to a lot of other projects and communities.

  4. I am an happy user of archlinux now. I didn’t appreciate what happen with you and refuse to support and promote a distribution where the people in charge can behave like that.
    Take some breath and look forward, forget them they are not worth it.

  5. I wish you the best in the future. It’s good to see someone who isn’t afraid to take a stand for what they believe is right, even if they end up losing their position.

    You clearly have the skills to succeed in whatever you move on to next.

  6. I’d be happy to speak to you again Jonathan, ideally with a better connection than last time. I’m sure the other Luddites would also welcome you back onto the show to hear your side of this whole story and clear up a lot of the ambiguities.

    Feel free to get in contact.
    Joe

  7. I second Jay. It seems to me you have a lot of talents that other projects are craving for, while kubuntu now needs bridge builder. Let’s all hope this situation turns out best for all parties.

  8. Thank you Jonathan for all you have done to bring software freedom to more people. I’m sad to see you go but I’m pretty sure that you’ll find your “next big thing” and I’m looking forward to hearing all about it.

    Cheers,
    Randall.

  9. Happy to see you move completely onto Debian. Unfortunately not the best resolution, but at least it is an option.

    I haven’t been part of any projects, but I certainly lost at least three very significant years of my life for something that is now ruled by self-obsessed bullies I can’t stand.

    Debian community also seems to have been divided due to systemd issues, but at least it doesn’t seem to be an empire of dictators and bullies so far. Whatever direction it takes, I hope it won’t get nearly as bad as the domain of ubuntu has become.

    Ubuntu policy and philosophy? ‘Bad Joke’ is what they are now.

  10. A question, which I ask with complete diffidence. I am not trying to advance a position, but to understand.

    I have seen what you and the Ubuntu Council have said regarding the substance of the disagreement that arose between you. If I am understanding things (and perhaps I am not) their position is somewhat similar to that of Mozilla, who says that while the code for Firefox is open, you cannot change and redistribute their browser and still call it Firefox without getting their permission. Leaving out some complexities, it was this policy that caused Debian to rename the browser IceWeasel.

    Is this more or less analogous to what Ubuntu is doing or do I have it wrong? If so, do you feel the same way about Mozilla/Firefox as you do about Ubuntu?

    1. Mozilla have a trademark on Firefox and Canonical have one on Ubuntu, nobody disputes this and it’s all pretty sensible. Anyone making a derivative of Ubuntu is free to do so but needs to remove the branding if they want to trade with it.

      The problem is that on top of this Canonical claims that the binary files in Ubuntu are not free to copy, share and modify. This is incorrect as it is contrary to what the copyright holders have licensed to Ubuntu and it is contrary to Ubuntu policy. The Ubuntu Community Council should defend upstream licences and Ubuntu policy but have chosen not to.

  11. It’s actually good that you left because of all the sh*t that happened to you, and shame on the UCC for that.

    I switched to Debian because of that as for me the future of Kubuntu is severely compromised. And when Canonical’s Mir is out it will be even worse for non-Unity *buntu flavors.

    Anyway I wish you can go to some other OSS project like… Debian ! 🙂 I’m extremely happy with it, even more stable than Kubuntu LTS when you use the stable branch + backports.

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