/srv/irclogs.ubuntu.com/2013/07/18/#ubuntu-meeting.txt

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* pleia2 waves17:04
czajkowskialoha17:04
cprofitthello17:04
pleia2#startmeeting Community Council17:04
meetingologyMeeting started Thu Jul 18 17:04:43 2013 UTC.  The chair is pleia2. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/meetingology.17:04
meetingologyAvailable commands: #accept #accepted #action #agree #agreed #chair #commands #endmeeting #endvote #halp #help #idea #info #link #lurk #meetingname #meetingtopic #nick #progress #rejected #replay #restrictlogs #save #startmeeting #subtopic #topic #unchair #undo #unlurk #vote #voters #votesrequired17:04
=== meetingology changed the topic of #ubuntu-meeting to: Milestone Targeted Work Items (ogasawara) | Community Council Meeting | Current topic:
pleia2is anyone here from the Developer Memebership Board?17:05
tumbleweedo/17:05
tumbleweed(at the pub, so excuse my half-attention)17:05
pleia2#topic DMB check-in17:05
=== meetingology changed the topic of #ubuntu-meeting to: Milestone Targeted Work Items (ogasawara) | Community Council Meeting | Current topic: DMB check-in
ScottK\o17:06
YokoZarForgive tardiness :)17:06
ScottKA few of us are around.17:06
pleia2so this is just a check-in to see how things are going with the DMB17:06
pleia2any issues, concerns, etc?17:06
tumbleweednot enough applicants atm?17:07
tumbleweedotherwise things seem calm17:07
ScottKIt does seem that almost every time we turn someone down, someone gets upset and suggests criteria should be more objective.17:08
YokoZarDo you think we've leveled off in terms of growth of developers then?17:08
ScottKIt hasn't happened lately, but it's an ongoing issue.17:08
ScottKI don't think it's particularly solvable.17:08
tumbleweedYokoZar: I haven't seen any new blood in a while, but I've also been getting less involved myself, so hard to know...17:08
ScottKMy personal opinion is fewer people outside Canonical see Ubuntu as a worthwhile place to invest their free time.17:09
tumbleweedthe developer advocacy people are probably in the best place to answer that17:09
czajkowskiScottK: that sounds rather pesamesitc17:10
czajkowski*pessimistic17:10
tumbleweedI don' tthink it'n entirely untrue though17:10
cprofittScottK: that is troubling17:10
ScottKI think many people who are technically ept enough to get involved in development are also people interested in advancing the broader FOSS community.17:10
ScottKThe more Canonical pushes Ubuntu in a unique direction, the less interesting it is in that regard.17:11
pleia2is this a topic that has been brought up with the tech board?17:11
YokoZarAt some level, we compete with our own upstreams in terms of attention17:11
pleia2(this is more their area than ours I think)17:11
pleia2or at least a dialog that they should be involved with :)17:12
tumbleweedpossibly given the new directions of ubuntu's public image (towards the phone) there are new developers that we simply aren't seeing17:12
Laneyhi17:13
ScottKtumbleweed: There are, but they aren't distro developers.17:13
tumbleweedScottK: true17:13
Laneythere are "app" developers17:13
LaneyI don't think the Ubuntu developer community is getting larger17:13
LaneyAnd that does indeed reflect what the company is doing17:13
* pleia2 nods17:14
ScottKQuite a number of long time Ubuntu developers, including me, are increasingly working on Debian rather than Ubuntu directly.17:15
pleia2yeah, I do keep seeing familiar names pop up in debian17:15
ScottKAll that said, I think the current situation is better than if Canonical had decided to do all the phone work outside the Ubuntu archive.17:16
ScottKSo given where they've decided to invest, I don't know that it could be a lot better.17:16
pleia2as I understand it, app developers typically wouldn't come to DMB, right?17:16
ScottKNo.17:16
ScottKWe don't have anything to do with package archives outside the distro.17:17
pleia2thakns17:17
LaneyOur last new core-dev appears to have been on 2012-11-01 - MOTU has had 5 or so this year and PPU 6 including two new flavours17:18
pleia2Laney: ouch17:18
pleia2has there been a change in the types of people applying?17:21
* bdrung appears17:21
tumbleweedrecently there was a batch of long time canonical employees, if my memory serves me17:21
pleia2canonical vs volunteers vs other companies17:21
pleia2tumbleweed: that's my memory too17:21
ScottKMore Canonical, less anything else.17:22
LaneyDon't know how much that's a change over recent history17:22
pleia2Laney: how recent?17:22
LaneyIt doesn't feel like the mix of people has changed so much in my time anyway17:22
YokoZarI suppose Canonical's rate of growth has outpaced things17:22
Laney2 years or so17:23
* pleia2 nods17:23
LaneyIt's just the numbers17:23
ScottKAlso, over the last 4 years or so, Ubuntu is less and less where the cool kids that want the crazy bleeding edge stuff hang out.17:24
ScottKI'm not sure where they went, but I've seen a big change in the feature freeze exceptions the release team gets in that time.17:24
tumbleweeda large chunk certainly went to OSX over the last decade17:25
tumbleweedno idea about any growth in other distros17:25
ScottKArch seems a good candidate for a locus of insanity, but I may just be biased because they thought pointing /usr/bin/python at ./python3 was a good idea.17:26
pleia2I'm sure a lot of factors are in play here, one of which is I'm seeing more talented devel-type people being hired faster, less time for hobbiest work17:26
YokoZartumbleweed: I'm pretty sure we've still been growing in terms of users at least.  Which I suppose implies a smaller percentage of our users are developers.17:27
bdrungdistrowatch says that mint has a big user base, but i don't get the impression that many packagers went there17:27
tumbleweedYokoZar: I'd assume so17:27
czajkowskibdrung: not sure how much I pay to distrowatch :)17:27
LaneyAnyway, it's definitely not a bad thing if people move to whatever upstream17:27
YokoZarbdrung I think http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm  a much more reliable popularity contest ;)17:29
pleia2Laney: yeah, it still trickles down to us pretty directly17:30
LaneyStill, we were never at a level of having run out of work to do17:31
ScottKUbuntu developers moving "up" to Debian has been a significant source of DDs in recent years, but if the Ubuntu pipe is drying up, it's not good in the long run.17:32
LaneyWe've had some meetings at UDS about this but we never found a way to find new people reliably17:33
bdrungYokoZar: assuming distrowatch attracts more technical people, Ubuntu seems to get more widespread by regular users.17:33
czajkowskiLaney: do you guys actively go looking ?17:33
czajkowskiapprroaching people directly ?17:33
Laneymaybe flavours have a role here - they seem to do well for sustaining non-C contributions17:33
ScottKI think that given Canonical's direction, it's not a solvable problem.17:33
ScottKLaney: to the extent they are sustainable in the long run, that's true.17:34
Laneyczajkowski: we've done all sorts in the past but not so much at the minute17:35
LaneyI'd guess morale about recruitment is quite low17:35
czajkowskiLaney: bit of a catch 22 then17:36
LaneyAnyway17:37
LaneyWe're making it easier for not-completely-ubuntu people to contribute17:37
Laneyso you don't have to be an out-and-out distribution developer17:38
* pleia2 nods17:38
cprofittIt concerns me that morale is lower17:38
cprofittbut not sure what we can do to resolve that17:38
pleia2so I'm inclined to say that pause and say that this is now on our radar17:40
pleia2not sure of action items though17:40
* cprofitt nods17:40
ScottKI don't think there's anything.  I think it's a function of Canonical's direction.17:40
ScottKFundamentally, there's less room for outside contribution.17:40
ScottKI need to go, so have a good rest of your meeting.17:41
bdrungseeing many articles about Canonical doing stuff, but only few about the Ubuntu community does not attract contributors.17:42
sabdflhello folks17:42
bdrunghi sabdfl.17:42
sabdflsorry to be late, glad i could join though17:43
bdrungI saw bug report with a mindset of users versus Canonical. I don't know whether this is caused by the growth of Ubuntu or the increased impression of Ubuntu being controlled by Canonical.17:45
YokoZarMmm, good to see you17:45
YokoZarThanks ScottK17:45
pleia2I think it's fair to say that the market has changed for linux-focused developers too, most people I know who used to hack on this stuff have "real jobs" and increasingly that takes them away from hobbiest stuff (and isn't always directly on the core os)17:47
pleia2even kids right out college with experience get hired fast17:47
pleia2world needs linux people :)17:47
YokoZarpleia2: I think it good for us that Ubuntu experience is a very marketable job skill ;)17:48
pleia2YokoZar: indeed!17:48
sabdfljust catching up on scrollback (thanks czajkowski)17:50
sabdfli think its inevitable that the big push for a converged UX, and effectively a new DE, has rattled things17:50
sabdflam glad we've seen teams step up to drive KDE and GNOME and other DEs in the Ubuntu archve17:51
sabdflnot sure I put much stock in the suggestion that the whole platform is less relevant to FLOSS though - still feels like the best place to get your fix17:51
sabdflhappy to lose the crazy-edge to Arch, used to be Gentoo, similar gene and meme17:52
sabdflalso, i think looking across the FLOSS landscape, we have fewer participants because bright folks have more layers to play at17:52
sabdflcloud17:52
sabdflmobile17:52
sabdflweb17:52
sabdflnone of those were real things in 1995, and mobile + cloud are both post-200417:53
YokoZarThere's also more upstreams17:53
sabdfli am a bit upset at what i see as pointless undermining of core efforts by parts of the community17:53
YokoZarAnd, frankly, in some sense the less things are broken at the distro layer the less incentive we have to attract developers ;)17:53
sabdfli think some of Kubuntu's posturing re Mir has been aimed at currying favour upstream17:53
sabdfli can appreciate the need for alignment and help and to be popular but it doesn't help to undermine your base :)17:54
bdrungUbuntu on the desktop lost its newness.17:54
sabdflright17:54
sabdflit's hard work too!17:54
sabdflkids these days :)17:54
YokoZarSpeaking personally, what made me a developer was seeing a piece of low hanging fruit in Ubuntu that was a huge problem I knew how to solve17:55
YokoZarwe have less huge problems, and thus less fruit to pick these days17:55
sabdfli would like to know what we can do to get our flavours  to be happy, suggestions welcome17:55
sabdflsaying 'don't move our cheese and can we have more flex on SRUs' isn't it though :)17:55
sabdflYokoZar, agreed17:55
sabdflhowever17:55
sabdflwe ARE seeing exactly that on the mobile front17:55
sabdfllots of gaps and lots of low hanging fruit17:55
sabdfland lots of new invention needed17:56
bdrungScratching my own itch got me involved. Being more stable has the drawback of decreasing incentives to get involved. :)17:56
sabdflmy general expectation is that the whole FLOSS client story really hinges on Ubuntu mobile17:56
sabdflif we get a reasonable share, then it becomes cool to work on the core (and all flavours benefit)17:56
sabdflif not, then after a decade or so I think I'd be ready to say Linux will always be a developer desktop :)17:57
sabdflso, best we crack it open17:57
sabdflin the interim, good, careful governance is a strength, so my thanks to all of you who shape it17:57
pleia2thanks sabdfl17:59
pleia2any other comments?18:00
pleia2thanks for joining us tumbleweed, bdrung, ScottK and Laney, even though I don't see action items right now I think awareness itself helps18:01
ogra_something that struck me a while ago already was if the flavours are actually aware that *they* can be the desktop version on a converged device too ....18:01
ogra_i wonder if it would make sense to make that fact more popular18:01
pleia2kde has a tablet version that they've been putting a lot of work in to, but I think other flavors tend to just lack interest (xubuntu isn't interested)18:02
ogra_im not talking about tablet versions but about what happens if you dock it to a screen and kbd/mouse18:02
pleia2ah, gotcha18:02
AlanBellogra_: you mean Ubuntu Touch QML Unity on the mobile end and another DE over HDMI?18:02
ogra_there will evry likely be phones shipping with ubuntu18:03
ogra_AlanBell, exactly18:03
ogra_it seems to me that many flavour people are not aware of that fact18:03
ogra_and how much more popularity they would gain18:03
ogra_by being an easily pluggable replacement for the desktop mode18:04
czajkowskiany From czajkowski ยท Hide18:06
czajkowskiother comments for the meeting18:07
LaneyO_O18:07
czajkowskidamn  trackpad!18:07
czajkowskipleia2: is there anything else on the agenda?18:08
pleia2I think that's it18:08
czajkowskidoes anyone else have any other topics?18:08
czajkowski#AOB18:08
AlanBello/18:08
pleia2#topic AOB18:08
=== meetingology changed the topic of #ubuntu-meeting to: Milestone Targeted Work Items (ogasawara) | Community Council Meeting | Current topic: AOB
czajkowskiAlanBell: what's up ?18:08
AlanBellwe discussed at UDS surprise announcements :)18:09
AlanBelland there appears to be one in progress, is there anything we should know about it, or could say the IRC operator team get some kind of briefing on where the relevant resources are18:10
czajkowskiAlanBell: not sure what you are refering to tbh, but not sure we can go into it now18:11
czajkowskiwe're very much over time18:11
pleia2I'll make a note to remind myself that in the case of such announcements we should make sure we keep the IRC folks in the loop18:12
pleia2don't want another phone announcement situation :)18:12
sabdflogra_, good point18:13
pleia2AlanBell: thanks18:14
pleia2ok, anything else?18:17
czajkowskinope all good thanks pleia218:17
pleia2ok, thanks everyone :)18:18
pleia2#endmeeting18:18
=== meetingology changed the topic of #ubuntu-meeting to: Milestone Targeted Work Items (ogasawara)
meetingologyMeeting ended Thu Jul 18 18:18:47 2013 UTC.18:18
meetingologyMinutes (wiki):        http://ubottu.com/meetingology/logs/ubuntu-meeting/2013/ubuntu-meeting.2013-07-18-17.04.moin.txt18:18
meetingologyMinutes (html):        http://ubottu.com/meetingology/logs/ubuntu-meeting/2013/ubuntu-meeting.2013-07-18-17.04.html18:18
jono_pleia2, I assure the CC will be fully briefed18:20

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