Google just announced the projects that were accepted. So what’s next?

If your project is on the list, you’re now entering the community bonding period (until May 24th). This means that you’re not expected to hack on the project right now, but get to know the project and how it works. This is how Google puts it: “Rather than jumping straight into coding, you’ve got some time to learn about your organization’s processes – release and otherwise – developer interactions, codes of conduct, etc. We also figured it would be easier to socially engage with your fellow developers when the pressure to ship isn’t looming in your vision. I know few folks who didn’t lurk in a project’s IRC channel for weeks or even months before submitting their first patch, let alone saying hello and getting to know the other folks in the channel.”

If you’re a mentor or student, make sure you read this: http://en.flossmanuals.net/GSoCMentoring/MindtheGap

Here’s the Ubuntu Summer of Code projects that were accepted by Google.

• The Great Clipboard Fixing Galore Project
  Student: Sarah Strong
  Mentor: Ted Gould
• Android U1: Ubuntu One client for Android
  Student: Michal Karnicki
  Mentor: Stuart Langridge
• services-admin configuration and Upstart-ification
  Student: Jacob Peddicord
  Mentor: David Bensimon
• Harvest user interface improvements
  Student: Dylan McCall
  Mentor: Daniel Holbach
• USB-creator Improvements
  Student: Dmitrijs Ledkovs
  Mentor: Evan Dandrea
• Home user backup solution/Deja Dup improvements
  Student: Urban Skudnik
  Mentor: Michael Terry
• Bug Triaging Improvements for Launchpad/Arsenal
  Student: Kamran Khan
  Mentor: bryce harrington
• Ubuntu One for the KDE workspace
  Student: Harald Sitter
  Mentor: Jonathan Riddell
• Testdrive Front End
  Student: Andres Rodriguez Lazo
  Mentor: Dustin Kirkland
• Software Center Improvements
  Student: Peter Gardenier
  Mentor: Matthew Thomas

We are going to extend the nomination period for the Regional Membership Boards Asia/Oceania and EMEA until Friday 30th April 12:00 UTC. (The Americas Board is all set in terms of nominations.)

On 2010-05-05 the terms of the following members of the Regional Membership Boards will end:

• Asia/Oceania: Andi Darmawan, Emmet Hikory, Luke Yelavich, Melissa Draper, Robert Collins, Zak B. Elep, ??????? (amachu)
• EMEA: Alan Pope, Dennis Kaarsemaker, Mark Van den Borre, Matthew Helmke, Stéphane Graber, Szilvester Farkas

You can either nominate yourself or somebody else. Please add some information about yourself to the mail. (Expiring members can be re-nominated too.)

To nominate, please send a mail to the board you are nominating for. Try to explain your nomination. All nominations will be forwarded to the Community Council who will make the final decision.

• ubuntu-membership-board-emea at lists.ubuntu.com
• ubuntu-membership-board-asia-oceania at lists.ubuntu.com

We have the following requirements for nominees:

• be an Ubuntu member
• be confident that you can judge contributions to various parts of our community
• be available during typical meeting times of the board in question
• insight into the culture(s) and typical activities within a geographic region covered by the board is a plus

Here a slightly longer version that explains a bit better what kind of community members we are looking for: Those sitting on membership boards are people who are insightful. They are current Ubuntu Members with a proven track record of activity in the community. They have shown themselves over time to be able to work well with others and display the positive aspects of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. They should be people who can discern character and judge contribution quality without emotion while engaging in an interview/discussion that communicates interest, a welcoming atmosphere, and which is marked by humanity, gentleness, and kindness. Even when they must deny applications, they should do so in such a way that applicants walk away with a sense of hopefulness and a desire to return with a more complete application rather than feeling
discouraged or hurt.

Thanks in advance to you and thanks a lot also to the dedication everybody put into their jobs as board members.

Nigel announced it already: Patch Day is going to happen on May 5th, but today we’ll have a test-run for reviewing patches using the new process. We’re very keen to hear your feedback about the process: how it works for you, what kind of documentation we still need and whatever else you can think of.

Join us in #ubuntu-reviews on irc.freenode.net.

We have a lot of open bugs with patches.

There are many many reasons for this:

• Some of the patches are just random files and not real patches.
• Some of the patches change huge amounts of code and nobody wanted to make the call “this is good to go into Ubuntu” yet.
• In some cases it’s not clear where the patch came from.
• etc.

We are going to attack this problem soon and Nigel Babu and others spearheaded the effort by putting the “Ubuntu Reviewers Team” in place and setting up a process how best to handle those patches.

For May 5th we are planning to have a Patch Day and I’m sure that over time we’ll refine the process and how the team works.

For now we’d need your help reviewing the docs and testing the review procedure. Please give nigelbabu at ubuntu dot com (or me – dholbach at ubuntu dot com) feedback about your experience with the process or your questions about the procedure.

You can also have a chat with us in #ubuntu-reviews on irc.freenode.net

In just a few days we’ll see another member of the Ubuntu menagerie to the door: the Lucid Lynx. Time for us to celebrate our good work as a team.

If you’ve never run a release party before, check this guide out. It should make a lot of things a lot clearer.

Once you and your team are clear on where to have the party, who to invite and what to do, head to the LoCo Directory and add the venue and the event there. Party people will be able to comment the event and add their RSVP information.

Awesome! I’m looking forward to seeing lots of parties from all around the globe on there. Seems like there’s 14 already registered, I’m sure there’s a bit more possible.

One thing I always loved about the Ubuntu community is that whatever you did to contribute to Ubuntu, you could become an Ubuntu member and be part of the big circle of friends quite easily. In the earlier days of the Ubuntu project the Community Council was handling the approval of Ubuntu membership and I loved meetings where you heard inspiring stories of what people had contributed to Ubuntu.

Over time those meetings, inspiring as they were, got a bit long. It got up to four hours every now and then. That’s why we set up the Regional Membership Boards who take care exlusively of membership approval and they are doing fantastic work.

Now the first term of many of the RMB members is coming to an end.

• Americas: Cody A.W. Somerville, Elizabeth Krumbach, Mike Basinger, Pedro Villavivencio, Richard Johnson
• Asia/Oceania: Andi Darmawan, Emmet Hikory, Luke Yelavich,Melissa Draper, Robert Collins, Zak B. Elep, ??????? (amachu)
• EMEA: Alan Pope, Dennis Kaarsemaker, Mark Van den Borre, Matthew Helmke, Stéphane Graber, Szilvester Farkas

We’re looking for new members! (Old members are welcome to re-apply too.)

If you are interested in helping those boards out, read this post carefully and send your RMB an email:

• ubuntu-membership-board-emea at lists.ubuntu.com
• ubuntu-membership-board-asia-oceania at lists.ubuntu.com
• ubuntu-membership-board-americas at lists.ubuntu.com

If you like Open Source software you’ll very quickly find your attention drawn towards certain projects, certain packages, certain tools and pieces that make the Open Source world so great. I guess there’s only a very few people who find themselves attracted to *everything* and treat *everything* with the same attention.

If you were always wondering, how you can help the Open Source world and help Ubuntu, here’s an idea: there’s millions of users of Open Source software (most use one of the big distributions), there’s thousands of Open Source projects. What would you think about acting as a tie between the two gigantic groups.

It’s exactly why we set up the “Adopt-An-Upstream” initiative. We want you to act as a tie between an Upstream project and Ubuntu and its users. We both have a lot to gain from each other and together we make the lifes of a lot of users a lot easier.

So if you already

• read changelogs of an upstream project
• are addicted to blog posts about your favourite piece of software
• build the newest upstream source regularly
• know bug numbers of the projects by heart
• (or if you’re on the way to saying YES! to at least one of the above)

we want you.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Upstream/Adopt is an excellent guide to finding out how to be an ambassador, a tie, a bridge, call-it-what-you-want between two projects.

Help us out! Stay awesome! Make the world a better place!

We have two heroes of Free Culture who will have their pieces of art released on the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS CDs. Without further ado let me present you the two winners of this cycle’s Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase and what they have to say about themselves, their work and Ubuntu:

Audio: Colin Ross – Frustration Blues

Colin Ross

I’ve been playing music since my dad started training me in classical piano at 5, and I’ve been making a living playing music–sometimes just barely–since I was a teenager. These days I play original jazz, blues, and new age music, as well as a lot of classic jazz and blues: standards and a lot of early folk and American roots music (the kind of stuff, like Robert Johnson’s, that is part of the public domain every way except legally). I live in Reno, Nevada and tour regularly in the Northwest and the northern Rockies. I’m also increasingly involved in palliative care-using music to touch, comfort and entertain people who are dealing with pain, cognitive problems, and other challenges.

I’ve recorded 5 albums, including two with my band. Frustration Blues is from Refried Boogie, an album of original piano blues that I recorded in my home studio on my vintage Steinway in 2005. I’m really excited to have my work go out to so many people. Once I realized what the web is for, from an independent musician’s
perspecitive–finding new listeners and serving as an interactive business card to help book more and better gigs, rather than selling music to the masses–it’s really helped me move to a new phase of my career, where I get to play the kinds of music *I* want to play, and earn an audience based on that (rather trying to fit into a “lounge act” mold or the like).

My son is the Ubuntu user and he put me up to this. But one thing I like about the Ubuntu philosophy is the same thing I like about the Internet, that it gives people the freedom to do what they want to do rather than what other people think they should be doing.

Video: Andrew Higginson – Ubuntu Is Humanity

Andrew Higginson

Andrew lives in England and from a very young age was drawn to Ubuntu by a stroke of luck. Although he is only 16, he has been using Ubuntu and Free Software for 4 years, thanks to taking a risk and moving away from proprietary software – he has not looked back since. Andrew appreciates Free Software because it allows him to do great things with very little. This donation of time and energy in the form of Free Software is something that Andrew tries to pay back, whether it is through producing artwork and media, or through the small bit of Python coding here and there. Although Andrew is currently busy with GCSEs, however between exams he likes to (occasionally) write on his blog and move from project to project, helping wherever he can.

About the entry:
“I always try to contribute to the Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase and not being any form of director or cinematographer myself, I try to experiment with new techniques, rather than going for ‘mouth-watering composition’ or ‘emotional yet dramatic lighting’ (since I don’t know how to do these things!). This year I was inspired by a few videos I saw and I decided to create a video that had a simple message and used simple techniques. Well it looks like it turned out okay and so I hope you enjoy it!”

Thanks a lot to the jury and everybody who participated. You all ROCK!

A lot of you noticed already that Ubuntu is going to participate in Google’s Summer of Code!

This is an awesome opportunity for students learning more about open source development and life in a Linux distribution and for the open source world as a whole.

If you want to participate make sure you generally

• take a bit of time and read the documentation very carefully
• join the ubuntu-soc mailing list and introduce yourself
• join the #ubuntu-gsoc irc channel on freenode

As a mentor:

• do all of the general steps above
• read the mentors instructions again
• add yourself to the list of mentors
• if you have a project idea, add to the list of ideas
• register at Google

As a student:

• do all of the general steps above
• read the students instructions again
• create a profile on the wiki and write up a more detailed spec for your project
• register at Google

And now over to a more selfish part of the blog post: I handed in a project idea myself, which will deal with Harvest. If you know quite a bit about Django and web design and want to work on a great tool that will make contributing to Ubuntu Development easier, get in touch with me. I’m sure we can make Harvest rock even harder.

Since the beginning of time… ok since we have UDSes there was the tradition to have a party at the last evening of UDS. At UDS Prague for the first time ever Ubuntu Allstars came together and it ROCKed.

If YOU are coming to UDS in Brussels and you play an instrument, and are interested in rocking out, please join the Ubuntu Allstars team and the mailing list so you can join in on the discussion.

We’re all gearing up towards Ubuntu Global Jam and I LIKE IT! More and more teams are signing up in the LoCo Directory. Once you managed to find a venue, tell a few friends, you’re basically all set. the Jams page has all the information you need.

One thing I’d like to point out specifically is Upgrade Jams. They’re probably the most straight-forward way to help out. Just upgrade, test and report what you find. With Lucid becoming 10.04 we have another LTS that is going to be supported for for 3 years on the Desktop and 5 on the Server, so we’ll have a lot of people upgrading and installing it, so we want to make sure it’s all in tip-top shape. The upgrade process is part of the experience.

I love to say this: straight-forward just got easier. One problem you’ll have with an upgrade jam is that you need lots of bandwidth. If you don’t have that you might want to set up a proxy or mirror or cache or something. The easiest I could find is squid-deb-proxy (a new feature, by Michael Vogt, in Lucid).

Basically on the server (or cache machine) you run:
$ sudo apt-get install squid-deb-proxy

And on the client (where you do the upgrade) you run:
$ sudo apt-get install squid-deb-proxy-client

Done.

As this feature is not in karmic yet, I backported it:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dholbach/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update

and install squid-deb-proxy or squid-deb-proxy-client.

I found it too hard to backport for hardy (which we support upgrades to ?lucid too), so for a hardy upgrade you will have to set up the proxy information in “System ? Preferences ? Network Proxy” manually.

This is going to be awesome!

I’m very happy the Berlin team is going to participate in Lucid’s Ubuntu Global Jam.

We’ll meet on Saturday 27th March at 12:00 in Berlin’s c-base and have a great time working on all the things that make Ubuntu great, so if you like to hang out, test Ubuntu, ugprade Ubuntu, translate Ubuntu, document Ubuntu, hack on Ubuntu, triage Ubuntu bugs or do anything else, we definitely want you there. Also if you are working on Debian, join us so we can learn to cooperate better and learn from each other.

This is all about having a good time, so head to the LoCo Directory entry, login and tell us that you’re coming.

You want to know what the  Ubuntu Global Jam is all about? It’s easy.

Any of the Ubuntu Jams is a session where people get together locally (yes, in real time and in a real place) and do something to make Ubuntu better and have lots of fun. At the Ubuntu Global Jam we are going to have lots and lots of different kinds of jams around the world for a whole weekend. Make sure you add 26th to 28th of March to you calendar.

Part of our menagerie of Jams are:

• Bug Jams
• Packaging Jams
• Translation Jams
• Doc Jams
• Testing Jams
• Upgrade Jams

It just depends on what you really enjoy doing.

It doesn’t matter if it’s just you and your friends meeting at your house for a jam or if you get together a giant LoCo team to rock out and jam, in any case, we want you to add yourself here.

If you’re all new to organising jams, you might want to do one or more of the following:

• talk to the fine people in #ubuntu-locoteams
• mail the fine people on loco-contacts and/or ubuntu-event-planners
• attend the fine Ubuntu Global Jam tuition sessions (#ubuntu-locoteams: 12 March, 9:00 UTC: Packaging Jams, 16 March, 9:00 UTC: Translation Jams)
• blog about it and let your friends know!

There’s a lot of people planning their participation right now. If you’re not on the list yet, have a look what others are planning to get some inspiration:

• Manchester (England, England), UK
• Montréal, Canada
• Waterloo region, Canada
• Budapest, Hungary
• Århus, Denmark
• Prague, Czech Republic
• and there’s lots and lots of others planning and discussing it.

Just hop on #ubuntu-locoteams on irc.freenode.net and discuss it there. At 21:00 UTC today (10th March) Jorge Castro will give a session about to run YOUR jam. Awesome!

More good docs here and here.

I meant to blog about Harvest a long time earlier already. With the help of fantastic people like Paul Hummer, James Westby and Dave Walker, we got to the point were almost all of the ideas we wanted to have in the new design are implemented:

• Commenting,
• marking opportunities irrelevant,
• package set based information
• lots of others things

It’s going to be online soon, but there’s still a few things that would be nice to have resolved. If you know a bit about Django, Web UIs, python or want to dive right in, I’d appreciate your help with making Harvest rock.

1. $ bzr branch lp:harvest
2. $ less harvest/INSTALL
3. follow instructions
4. help make Harvest rock!

Did you ever have to deal with source packages and found the variety of patch systems simply mind-boggling? I certainly have.

Enter: the unstoppable Michael Vogt.

If you are running lucid and don’t have ubuntu-dev-tools installed, install it now. Forget about all the crazy stuff and incantations you might need for random patch system X, Y or Z (it supports cdbs, dpatch and quilt at the moment), just type:

edit-patch <name-of-patch>

and it will do the rest for you, even remind you do make use of the patch tagging guidelines.

Michael simply rocks! Give him a hug and if you find bugs in edit-patch, file them.

If you haven’t heard about the Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase yet, here’s what it’s all about:

The Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase is an opportunity to show off high quality free culture content in Ubuntu. At the heart of Ubuntu’s ethos is a belief in showcasing free software and free culture, and with each development cycle we open the opportunity for any Free Culture artist to put their work in front of millions of Ubuntu users around the world. Although the space restrictions are tight, and we are limited to how much content we can include, this is an excellent opportunity for artists everywhere.

The deadline for submission is 28th February 2010.

If you’re into Free Culture and your submission is not on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase add it now! If you have friends who are totally about Free Culture, let them know today!

ROCK ON everybody!

I’m very excited about Ubuntu Global Jam this time around because for many people around the globe it will probably be the first time they get their hands dirty with doing actual work on Ubuntu and actually make Ubuntu itself better. In addition to that Lucid is going to be an LTS, so this time it’s personal!

Definitely Going!

The great thing is we have a number of sessions lined up to share tips and advice about holding jams. We will meet on IRC in #ubuntu-locoteams and try to answer questions and think of creative ways to get more people together, have more fun and make Ubuntu even better. Stay tuned for more!

• 26 Feb – 2100 UTC How to run a jam
• 03 Mar – 1500 UTC How to run a translations jam
• 04 Mar – 1500 UTC How to run a packaging jam
• 06 Mar – 1900 UTC How to run a jam
• 10 Mar – 2100 UTC How to run a jam
• 11 Mar – 0900 UTC How to run a translations jam
• 12 Mar – 0900 UTC How to run a packaging jam

Brian Murray has spilled the beans about it already: we’ll try to put more work into getting patches into Ubuntu. The regular sponsorship process is working well and hundreds of patches get reviewed every month. The problem is that many patch submitters don’t know about the process, so patches or workaround sit there for a longer time.

If you have a look at our code review pages, you’ll see that we have a two-step process in which we’ll try to attack the problem:

1. take a look at the bugs of the ubuntu-reviews team, make sure the patch is a genuine patch, have a look at the current discussion and either upload it (if you can) or
2. pass it on to the sponsors, who will review the patch and upload it.

For step 1 you don’t need to be a package uploader, but if you know about bugs and patches, you can still help out and make a valuable contribution.

Let’s try to get a dent into this graph and all the improvements into Ubuntu!

YES! It’s that time of the release cycle again! Ubuntu Global Jam is around the corner and will happen from 26^th to 28^th March 2010.

You’re wondering what Ubuntu Global Jam is? It’s an event where people around the world come together, meet in their cities and experience how great it is to work on Ubuntu together.

We have a big ménagerie of Ubuntu Jams already:

• Bug Jams: you work together on Ubuntu bugs, fix them, triage them, improve them, …
• Packaging Jams: learn packaging of Ubuntu software, work on some small packaging bugs,
• Translation Jams: translate software, make Ubuntu usable in lots of languages,
• Doc Jams: have a look at Ubuntu documentation, fix it and improve it,
• Testing Jams: put the new Ubuntu version to the test, check it out and test-drive it,
• Upgrade Jams: upgrade to the newest Ubuntu version and give it a spin!

How does it sound to you? I’m sure there’s something for your team too.

Don’t feel bad if your team does not offer everything. Ask your team mates now and see what you can pull off together. The most important thing is that you have fun and enjoy it. As long as you get to meet your Ubuntu friends and get the feeling that you can achieve something as a team, that’s cool!

One thing I’d specifically like to highlight is the Upgrade Jams. Because the next release will be a long-term suppport release, it’s important we get the upgrade right and take our applications to the test. Particularly for new contributors this might be a great start to get involved.

In any case make sure you read the general instructions for setting up jams and you and your team should be fine. Also once you decided to be part of this time’s Ubuntu Global Jam, add yourselves to this page.

Definitely going!

This Ubuntu Global Jam is going to be awesome and I hope you’ll be part of it.

PS: We’ll announce some planning sessions on IRC for the Global Jam.