Mark Shuttleworth | here be dragons

Is it possible to have training materials that are developed in partnership with the community, available under a CC license, AND make those same materials available through formal training providers? We’re trying to find out at Canonical with our Ubuntu Desktop Course.

Billy Cina @Canonical has been making steady progress towards the goal of having a full portfolio of training options available for commercial users of Ubuntu. Companies that want to ensure that their staff are rigorously trained, and individuals who want to present their Ubuntu credentials in a formal setting, need to have a certified and trusted framework for skills assurance.

Most of the work we are doing in this line is following the traditional model, where content is funded as a private investment, and the content is then licensed to authorized training providers who sell courses to their local markets. These courses are usually sold to companies that have adopted a platform or tool and want to ensure a consistent level of skills across the organization. Many companies are moving to Ubuntu for both desktop and server, so demand is hotting up for this capability. We have a system builder course, and a system administrator course are now available from authorized training providers.

But we wanted also to try a different approach, that might be more accessible to the Ubuntu community and might also result in even higher quality materials. We think the key ingredients are:

• Use of an open format (Docbook)
• Content source available in a public Bazaar repository (here)
• Licensing under open terms (CC-BY-NC-SA)
• Working with the Ubuntu doc-team, who have a wealth of experience

The license is copyleft and non-commercial, so that it is usable by any person for their own education and edification with the requirement that commercial use will involve some contribution back to the core project.

It’s already a 400 page book which gives a great overview of the Ubuntu desktop experience, a very valuable resource for folks who are new to Linux and Ubuntu.

We are getting to the point where we can publish a “daily PDF” which will have the very latest version (“trunk”) compiled overnight. So anyone has free access to the very latest version, and of course anyone can bzr branch the content to make changes that suit them.

If you want to have a look at the latest content, try this:

• install Bluefish (useful as a docbook editor)
• make sure you have bzr 1.0
• make sure Launchpad has an SSH key for you

Type:

bzr launchpad-login <your-lp-username
bzr branch lp:ubuntu-desktop-course

The source is huge (712MB, lots of images in a large book), so grab a cup of tea, and when you get back you will have the latest version of the content, hot and well-brewed This is a great set of materials if you are offering informal training. Corrections and additions would be most welcome, just push your branch up to Launchpad and request a merge of your changes.

The good folks at Dell have added DVD playback capability to the image that they preinstall for folks who buy Dell computers with Ubuntu.

Multimedia and DVD are often cited as the biggest things missing from the typical consumer’s expectations of a “fully working system”. Ideally, we could deliver a great multimedia experience in a free software stack but the US patent landscape makes that impossible, so for the moment this requires proprietary software.  My hope is that the content industry will realise that DRM and playback restrictions are harmful to their own interests, and that EMI’s decision to sell MP3’s leads to a broader movement away from restrictive technologies.

So, thanks and congrats to Dell for taking care of this for their customers, there’s one more reason to give someone close to you a virus-resistant, spyware-resistant Ubuntu-based Dell for 2008

Catharina Bethlehem wrote to tell me about her work on the Ubuntu community in Second Life. As you might expect, the free and open source meme is very much alive and well in SL. There is now a group looking to setup an island devoted to FLOSS that brings together members of the whole free software community – multiple distributions and upstreams – for virtual socialisation and collaboration. Sounds like cool stuff indeed!

Speaking of which, is anybody actively working on Ubuntu packages for the Second Life client? It would be great to see “sudo apt-get install second-life” DTRT.

There’s a rumour circulating that Ubuntu is in discussions with Microsoft aimed at an agreement along the lines they have concluded recently with Linspire, Xandros, Novell etc. Unfortunately, some speculation in the media (thoroughly and elegantly debunked in the blogosphere but not before the damage was done) posited that “Ubuntu might be next”.

For the record, let me state my position, and I think this is also roughly the position of Canonical and the Ubuntu Community Council though I haven’t caucused with the CC on this specifically.

We have declined to discuss any agreement with Microsoft under the threat of unspecified patent infringements.

Allegations of “infringement of unspecified patents” carry no weight whatsoever. We don’t think they have any legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any of the wonderful things we could do together. A promise by Microsoft not to sue for infringement of unspecified patents has no value at all and is not worth paying for. It does not protect users from the real risk of a patent suit from a pure-IP-holder (Microsoft itself is regularly found to violate such patents and regularly settles such suits). People who pay protection money for that promise are likely living in a false sense of security.

I welcome Microsoft’s stated commitment to interoperability between Linux and the Windows world – and believe Ubuntu will benefit fully from any investment made in that regard by Microsoft and its new partners, as that code will no doubt be free software and will no doubt be included in Ubuntu.

With regard to open standards on document formats, I have no confidence in Microsoft’s OpenXML specification to deliver a vibrant, competitive and healthy market of multiple implementations. I don’t believe that the specifications are good enough, nor that Microsoft will hold itself to the specification when it does not suit the company to do so. There is currently one implementation of the specification, and as far as I’m aware, Microsoft hasn’t even certified that their own Office12 completely implements OpenXML, or that OpenXML completely defines Office12’s behavior. The Open Document Format (ODF) specification is a much better, much cleaner and widely implemented specification that is already a global standard. I would invite Microsoft to participate in the OASIS Open Document Format working group, and to ensure that the existing import and export filters for Office12 to Open Document Format are improved and available as a standard option. Microsoft is already, I think, a member of OASIS. This would be a far more constructive open standard approach than OpenXML, which is merely a vague codification of current practice by one vendor.

In the past, we have surprised people with announcements of collaboration with companies like Sun, that have at one time or another been hostile to free software. I do believe that companies change their position, as they get new leadership and new management. And we should engage with companies that are committed to the values we hold dear, and disengage if they change their position again. While Sun has yet to fully deliver on its commitments to free software licensing for Java, I believe that commitment is still in place at the top.

I have no objections to working with Microsoft in ways that further the cause of free software, and I don’t rule out any collaboration with them, in the event that they adopt a position of constructive engagement with the free software community. It’s not useful to characterize any company as “intrinsically evil for all time”. But I don’t believe that the intent of the current round of agreements is supportive of free software, and in fact I don’t think it’s particularly in Microsoft’s interests to pursue this agenda either. In time, perhaps, they will come to see things that way too.

My goal is to carry free software forward as far as I can, and then to help others take the baton to carry it further. At Canonical, we believe that we can be successful and also make a huge contribution to that goal. In the Ubuntu community, we believe that the freedom in free software is what’s powerful, not the openness of the code. Our role is not to be the ideologues -in-chief of the movement, our role is to deliver the benefits of that freedom to the widest possible audience. We recognize the value in “good now to get perfect later” (today we require free apps, tomorrow free drivers too, and someday free firmware to be part of the default Ubuntu configuration) we always act in support of the goals of the free software community as we perceive them. All the deals announced so far strike me as “trinkets in exchange for air kisses”. Mua mua. No thanks.

Anybody else frustrated with the state of fonts in Linux today?

It seems there are two distinct issues: the availability of high quality fonts under Free licenses, and the infrastructure for installing, managing and accessing those fonts.

There has been some progress on both fronts. Bitstream’s Vera, and the new Liberation font work (kudos to Red Hat for driving that effort) are steps to provide us with a clean, crisp set of high quality fonts with good hinting that can be installed by default. There is also good work being done by, amongst others, SIL International on a free font license framework, and fonts to go with it. I hope the community can build on these efforts to expand the font coverage to the full Unicode glyphset, preserving their essential character and metrics.

The second problem, the infrastructure and API’s to manage fonts on Linux systems, is more complicated. Here’s a mail to the ubuntu-devel list describing the situation and calling for leadership from the community in helping to address it.

We need a clean, clear way of:

1. Packaging fonts, and knowing which packages to install to get which fonts.
2. Cataloguing fonts, and allowing people to manage the fonts that are immediately accessible to them or loaded by default, everywhere.
3. Making all of this sane in a world where you MIGHT want to read a document in Korean using a French desktop. In other words, where there need to be a lot of fonts available, even if most of those fonts are not used all the time.

Most of the long list of fonts I see in OpenOffice are lost on me, I don’t know when I would choose any of them.

Sounds like a mess, but then again it also sounds like the sort of Gordian knot that the flaming sword of free software can slice straight through, given strong leadership and a forum for the work. Who will step up?

Congratulations to all 5 nominees to the CC, and thanks to all the Ubuntu members who voted to confirm their appointment. We now have a CC of 8 members (one membership will expire in a day or two) that covers substantially more time zones and has experience in more parts of the community. I’m looking forward to working with this team!

I’d like to thank Colin Watson for what can only be described as an extraordinary contribution of wisdom, energy and leadership during his tenure as one of our Founding CC members. Colin has accepted a nomination to the Technical Board, which we’ll act on shortly.

I’ve been on the road solidly for the past 10 days but itching to write about Dell’s announcement of pre-installed Linux for consumers.

This is a significant milestone, not just for Ubuntu but for every flavour of Linux and the free software community as a whole. While there are already a number of excellent companies like System76 offering Linux pre-installed, Dell represents “the industry”, and it’s very important for all of us that the industry sees a future for Linux on the desktop.

Device compatibility is the top issue people raise as a blocker of broad Linux adoption. Many hardware manufacturers don’t yet provide zero-day Linux drivers for their components, because of the perceived lack of market demand for those drivers. The Dell announcement is already changing that. Those manufacturers who are Linux-aware will have a significant advantage selling their components to global PC vendors who are shipping Linux, because those PC vendors can offer the same components across both Linux and Windows PC’s. That commonality reduces cost, and cost is everything in the volume PC market.

I believe that the free software approach is a better device driver development model for component and peripheral manufacturers, and that once they have learned how to work with the Linux community they will quickly ensure that their devices work with Linux as soon as, or before, they work with proprietary platforms. It will take some time to help those vendors understand the full process of working in a collaborative forum with the upstream kernel community, to ensure the widest possible benefit from their efforts. I’ve no doubt that vendors who start out thinking in proprietary terms will, over time, shift towards providing free drivers in partnership with the Linux community. I would credit companies like Intel for their leadership in that regard, it’s great to be able to show how their free drivers make it possible to reach the widest possible audience with their hardware.

The most important thing for all of us is the commercial success of Dell’s offering. A sustainable business in pre-installed Linux in Western markets will give credibility to the Linux desktop as well as providing an opportunity to build relationships with the rest of the consumer PC ecosystem. We don’t have to fix Bug #1 in order to make Linux a top-tier target for hardware vendors – we just need to show that there’s an economic incentive for them to engage with our community.

Ubuntu members, it’s time to expand the Community Council! After much discussion, we have five candidates for the CC-2007. In my capacity as project BDFL I’m nominating each of them for a 2 year term, and need your approval to get them onto the council.

There are 5 separate polls, one for each nomination, and all Ubuntu Members (developers, advocates, artists, forums contributors, whatever their contribution) get an equal say.

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntumembers/+poll/cc2007-dholbach

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntumembers/+poll/cc2007-mdke

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntumembers/+poll/cc2007-mikeb

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntumembers/+poll/cc2007-burgundavia

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntumembers/+poll/cc2007-jsgotangco

I very much hope all of these candidates meet your approval! We will be able to cover more time zones and respond more quickly to community issues with this expanded governance board. That said, the CC is the most important body and you should feel empowered to vote accordingly if you feel a candidate is not suitable. It’s a secret ballot.

The doors are finally open to register for Ubuntu Live, our first global Ubuntu user conference. It is being hosted by O’Reilly Conferences in the prelude to OSCon in the same venue, and exists “to provide a meeting place for Ubuntu users, contributors, and partners–and the Ubuntu-curious”.

The list of sessions is already impressive (we had a phenomenal set of papers and presentation proposed, but had to whittle it down to this initial list). I’m sure there will be some additional sessions too. But the thing I’m most excited about is the list of speakers, so you will find me in the front row for every keynote on those dates.

Let’s meet up in Portland!

I was thrilled to see a slew of new Beryl packages land in Ubuntu yesterday.

There’s been a furious amount of activity from the MOTU and Beryl upstreams to get these packages ready for Feisty inclusion – cleaning up copyright issues as well as getting the packages themselves into first class order. Now the rest of us can test Beryl simply by:

- enabling universe in /etc/apt/sources.list (or, in Ubuntu, just use System->Administration->Software sources)

-  installing Beryl (“sudo apt-get install beryl”)

After I’d done this, I could get Beryl up pretty much immediately by just running “beryl-manager” at the command prompt.

A huge thank you to the folks who worked so hard to get this done in time for Feisty – lupine_85, racarr, imbrandon, pricechild, and others! The MOTU team’s response to this challenge was awesome.