Earlier this week at GUADEC, the always affable Dave Neary presented his GNOME Census work. Unfortunately, I was not there to see it, but I read his excellent post on the topic.

One of the reactions from the survey was that Red Hat are responsible for 16% of the contributions to GNOME whereas Canonical are responsible for a measly 1%.

Of course, this has generated some flame, such as a particularly angry post from Greg DeKoenigsberg and the rather pithy response from Jeffrey Stedfast. Greg is clearly pissed, and Jeffrey is clearly pissed at Greg being pissed, and I suspect Greg is going to get even more pissed at Jeffrey being pissed. The worse thing is that they are both going to be pissed at me for this blog post.

First I want to put these figures in perspective and then I want to talk about how we read the figures we do have.

I think the GNOME Census report is excellent, and it provides some excellent visibility into contributions in GNOME, but it only takes into account upstream contributions to GNOME itself. What the report doesn’t take into account are upstream contributions that are built on the GNOME platform but (a) not part of official GNOME modules, and (b) hosted and developed elsewhere, such as Launchpad. As such, while the report is accurate for showing code and contributions accepted into GNOME, there are also many projects built on GNOME technology that are not taken into account due to non-inclusion in GNOME modules or being developed outside of GNOME infrastructure.

As a general rule, Canonical staff develop inside Launchpad. The reason is simple; Launchpad and Bazaar provide a powerful development environment that was also built by Canonical and we therefore have lots of internal skills and best practice based on these tools. Launchpad is also a fundamental component in Ubuntu development and all the software we develop ultimately ships in Ubuntu, so using the same development forge makes sense. Finally, the site is a Free Software and Open Source project, so there really no philosophical reason to move, testified by the 18,000+ Free Software projects happily using Launchpad already.

Canonical is actively developing upstream desktop software, but doing it in Launchpad. Some examples include:

• notify-osd
• Messaging Menu
• Application Indicators
• Indicator Applet
• Indicator Date Time Applet
• Sound Indicator
• Me Menu
• Indicator Global Menu
• Unity

This is by no means the full list, and is other work such as Simple Scan, the Hardware Drivers tool, Computer Janitor, and more. Many of these contributions (such as Application Indicators and Simple Scan) could bring real value to GNOME, but they have not been accepted. I know that the Canonical engineers who work on them would be delighted if they were included in GNOME.

The above list also doesn’t include significant upstream investment in other areas such as Upstart, Bazaar, Launchpad, and a full team building Ubuntu. I don’t want to turn this into a “who contributed more” competition, but I think for some to suggest Canonical is a bad citizen who is not contributing upstream code is unreasonable. To suggest that Canonical has limited code inside approved GNOME modules is fair.

So that was the first thing I wanted to clarify; Canonical does invest heavily in upstream work, but GNOME is not the only home for upstream contributions.

If there is one thing that the GNOME Census has really outlined is that we should all be proud of Red Hat and their contributions to GNOME. You only have to take a look at all the red items on this image to get a feeling for the wonderful work that Red Hat is doing inside GNOME. Novell too. Look the green items in there; Novell has done a wonderful job maintaining many modules inside GNOME. In fact, there are many companies investing inside GNOME modules and inside GNOME infrastructure. I don’t believe it would be fair to undermine these contributions in any way; they are testament to the ethos of those companies and their commitment to GNOME. All of the people working at those companies are doing good work within the spirit of Free Software.

Likewise, I don’t think it is fair to undermine Canonical’s contributions just because many of them exist outside of GNOME. Our engineers are also doing good work within the spirit of Free Software. I have never claimed for a second that Canonical are equal to Red Hat and Novell in terms of our accepted contributions in GNOME; it is clear that there are far few contributions from Canonical staff inside accepted GNOME modules, but this does not for a second mean that Canonical is not (a) producing upstream contributions and (b) heavily invested in the GNOME platform. Ubuntu, our primary product is a GNOME desktop, and the vast majority of our engineers are GNOME users and developers and they work every day on a GNOME based product.

So in a nutshell, this is my take: both Red Hat and Canonical invest heavily in Open Source development, but they do it in different ways and different places. The GNOME Census clearly outlines that within GNOME modules, Red Hat are doing far more, but that doesn’t mean that Canonical are sitting on their thumbs and doing nothing, far from it.

Do you want to be part of the Ubuntu News Team?  Do you want to be part of a long standing and growing part of the Ubuntu Community?  Looking for a place to contribute. Then the Ubuntu News Team is for you!

The Ubuntu News Team via the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter boasts of bringing more than 200 Issues full of what’s happening in and with Ubuntu and the community that surrounds it. This happens as we gather and summarize those happenings a week at a time to record as well as report how Ubuntu matures through all it’s growing pains and we want you to be part of the team!

First let me say we have some wonderful people who continue to donate many weekend hours to producing the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter but we could always use more help.

In a perfect world we would have all the summaries written by Friday afternoon and all that would need to happen on Sunday would be adding the Stats, Updates and Security portions along with the editing.  As it is right now myself and a few others spend upwards of 10-15 hours each Sunday to get UWN out the door. In the case of weekends when I’m traveling on Sundays then there are times when the newsletter often goes out a day or two later than our announced published dates. (Sorry about that by the way)

Take a look at Issue 200, 201, 202, and 203 to get an idea of what we are writing about and in the meantime let me tell you a little about each section and how you can help.

We often get asked about people writing original content for the newsletter.  The newsletter right now reports and summarizes posts that have been added other places.  However in the near future you will be able to submit original content to the Fridge.  - More about the Fridge in another post though.

LoCo News – Do you like to find out what is happening with all the LoCo Teams.  Would you like to report and summarize what the various teams are writing about?  This section is just as it sounds – we report on what the LoCo Teams are doing.

Launchpad News – This comes from the Launchpad (LP) Team blog.  Most of the time these posts are short enough to include in there entirety sometimes we have to summarize them, but Matthew Revell and the other LP team members usually write very clear and concise items to share with the world about what’s going on with LP.  So if you want to check for Launchpad news and be responsible for adding it to the news letter lets talk.

The Planet - This section is a little tricky but we’re all smart so it’s easy to figure out.  Depending on what people are writing about this could be added to The Planet, General Community News, Blogosphere, or even In Other News sections of the newsletter.  However If you feel like you want to search Planet Ubuntu each week and add the summaries to the planet section we can work it all out.

In The Press – This section is where we post those articles that have been written about Ubuntu in the Press.  This usually means those print publications that also have a web presence.  However there are some exceptions and again  - if it’s a good story then we can figure out where it needs to go

In the Blogosphere – these are blogs that are main stream but may not have a print publication, or commercial backing behind it.  However, blogs from the planet often get included here as well.

In Other News – this is about those items that are related to Ubuntu  - such as great Linux Stories, Canonical press releases, Canonical Partners who write about Ubuntu or other Corporations that discuss Ubuntu.  However, those really quirky and fun stories that are related to Ubuntu in some for or fashion that doesn’t really fit in any other area can go here as well.

Featured Podcasts – this is summaries of podcasts/videocasts such as the Ubuntu UK Podcast, Full Circle Magazine Podcasts, Ubuntu Podcasts, At Home with Jono Bacon Community Q&A UStream TV casts.  If there are other Ubuntu related casts that should be on the list we need to know that as well.  So if you are interested making sure these casts get included in the newsletter that would be great!

Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings – We try to offer the meeting minutes for the Development teams that are list on the Fridge Calendar.  While some teams don’t really have formal meeting minutes some teams do.  If you would like to verify the links each week and make sure we aren’t missing any teams then this the section for you!

Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu - If you are on one of these teams we could always use your help to make sure we include the current news about these derivatives as well.

Currently we have people working on summarizing links or posting to some of the areas but it is the same people giving up part of their precious weekends and while all of us enjoy and like being part of bringing this to the community – the quote – “many hands make light work” really rings true here and if we could get a couple dedicated people per section then people could trade off what weeks they can cover and make the whole process an even more enjoyable one for everyone.

We are also looking at adding an HTML version of the newsletter to be sent to folks via a mail service like mail chimp.  Right now we don’t have true matrix for what people are reading or clicking on 1st for the newsletter.  It would be nice to have those figures.  So if you are interested in being part of this test HTML newsletter please email me and let me know   – akgraner * ubuntu * com.  This will also allow us to include photo’s, videos and some formating that the current plain text version does not.  The plain text, and the wiki versions will still be available.  If you want to help with this process please let me know that as well.

I have to thank all those folks who currently give of their time to make the newsletter what it is – Lizar Siri, J. Scott Gwin, Penelope Stowe, Mike Holstein, Nigel Babu, Daniel Caleb, Jonathan Carter, Nathan Handler, and all the folks who continue to write about Ubuntu so we can bring you UWN each week!

Here are some links to help you learn even more about the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.  Thanks in advance for your continued support and help in making this an even better source of information for the busy Ubuntu user/contributor/developer.

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Wiki – https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/

Checklist and Editing Policy Wiki – https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/EditingPolicies

HowTo Guide for the Newsletter – https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/EditingPolicies/HowToEdit

Newsletter Publication Schedule – https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Schedule

Section Guidelines and Suggestions – https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/SectionGuidelines

We also have a googledoc, wiki page and ietherpad areas for you to work on the newsletter at as I am aware that some people prefer to work on UWN in places other than the wiki.  This also keeps editing conflicts down to a minimum on Sundays when everyone is working together on UWN.

So stop by #ubuntu-news on freenode or email me and lets get you started on your way to contributing to UWN.  Looking forward to hearing from you!  Many Thanks!

Are you good folks aware of what is happening on 27th – 29th August 2010. But of course, it is the Ubuntu Global Jam!

In the last few cycles we have organized and run an event called the Ubuntu Global Jam. The idea was simple: encourage our awesome global Ubuntu community to get together in the same room to work on bugs, translations, documentation, testing and more. And they did, all over the world, as can be seen here.

To make the event as simple and accessible as possible, we have picked five topic areas and we are encouraging you lovely people to organize an event with one or more of them:

• Bugs – finding, triaging and fixing bugs.
• Testing – testing the new release and reporting your feedback.
• Upgrade – upgrading to Maverick from Lucid and reporting your upgrade experience.
• Documentation – writing documentation about how to use Ubuntu and how to join the community.
• Translations – translating Ubuntu and helping to make it available in everyone’s local language.
• Packaging – packaging software for Ubuntu users to install with a clock.
• Other – other types of contribution such as marketing and advocacy etc.

With six primary methods of getting involved, there is something for everyone in this rocking global event.

One thing that I am keen that everyone remembers: you don’t have to be an official developer, packager or programmer to take part in the Ubuntu Global Jam. Also, lets not forget that Ubuntu Global Jam events are a fantastic place to learn and improve your skills: you can sit next to someone who can show you how to do something or explain something in more detail.

If this is all sounding right up your street and you fancy organizing an event, go and read this page and then add your event to the LoCo Directory by following these instructions.

Rock and roll: let’s make this one to remember. Start your engines, folks…