Recently, on another site, someone suggested that the development and marketing of Ubuntu was done by paid staff of Canonical.  Having been actively involved in the Arizona Team for 8 months I would like to say that I really doubt that the suggestion can be taken seriously by anyone who knows a little about Ubuntu.  I am tempted to consider such a comment to be FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) fostered for the sole purpose of disparaging against Ubuntu and the people that make it work.

I would call your attention to the tremendous volunteer effort that goes into Ubuntu. Not all development is done by paid staff of Canonical. The repositories are Universe, Multiverse, and Restricted. The people who manage those repositories are called MOTU’s (Master’s of the Universe, a nice little inside joke) and are volunteers that are acknowledged to the title for their demonstrated commitment to Ubuntu and it’s principles.  This demonstrated commitment is in the form of the work that they have performed in upgrading programs, fixing bugs and in general making Ubuntu run smoother and perform with greater security.  It takes a great deal of work – a large amount of manpower – to not only supply these updates and security to one release, but to do it for 4 releases PLUS the proposed upcoming release.  These can  be seen in the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, such as Issue #86 (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue86), and they are linked back to the full notifications of the work performed.  By the way, by tracking back through the Newsletters, you can see that this portion of the Newsletter has been an ongoing submission, not a one time effort.

As for marketing, Canonical does supply some support, such as the ShipIt disks available for free or nominal costs (depending on situation and volume requested), and certain items like banners and etc offered to approved Local Community Teams (LoCo’s) for presentations and conferences. But the bulk of the work is done by volunteer members of the LoCo’s, not by paid staff. If that marketing is more effective, it is due to those volunteers that get out there and promote Ubuntu, and support it locally.  I cannot speak to all the volunteer efforts that go into making Ubuntu what it is, but only to the ones that I’ve actually seen or participated in.  LoCo teams put on parties to celebrate new releases, and install fests to actively help people install Ubuntu on their computers.  They are also involved in larger conferences and presentations in an effort to promote Ubuntu.  These LoCo teams are manned by volunteers, not by Canonical staff.  Likewise, the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is manned by volunteers that gather information from all over the net and report it.  And then there are the volunteers that translate the UWN (and MUCH more) into other languages.  Even the individual releases are translated into other languages.  Now consider, 4 versions of any one release (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and server) times 4 currently supported releases times all the languages they are translated into is a LOT of translation.

Then there’s the Ubuntu Forums (http://ubuntuforums.org/).  People helping people.  Yes, other Linux distributions do this.  Even some proprietary software has forums.  But I’ve got to say that this is the friendliest one that I’ve ever participated in.  Launchpad (https://launchpad.net/), the Ubuntu bug tracking system and project registration website, where anyone can report a bug in a program.  There is even a program inside Ubuntu to help automate the process, and compile the necessary information that programmers and developers need to understand the bug in order to fix it.

Yes, Canonical provides some support to the volunteers.  They also do some marketing on their own.  But the bulk of the work is actually done by people who simply see Ubuntu as a viable alternative to the proprietary operating systems and distributions that are out there, and want to help.  These volunteers aren’t recruited.  They come into the organization because they see it as a way of participating in something much bigger than themselves.  And as their level of participation increases, so does their level within that volunteer organization.  There’s the LoCo Team level, which is easy to join and doesn’t require much in the way of participation.  Then there’s the Ubuntu Member level, where one who has demonstrated a larger contribution to the community over a period of time (a commitment to actually working) is recognized.  For programmers/developers, above that is the MOTU level, that recognizes the commitment to helping improve the programs, themselves.  All in all, there’s a tremendous effort going on.  And if I haven’t mentioned areas of volunteer effort in Ubuntu, it’s only because I’ve not been actively involved or aware of them.  Feel free to salute yourselves by mentioning them in a comment.

And here’s to you: the volunteers that make up the Ubuntu Community, and make it what it is.  I salute you all.