On being an Ubuntu member – Daniel Holbach's blog

What does being an Ubuntu member mean to you? Why did you do it back then?

I became an Ubuntu member about 10 years ago. It was part of the process of becoming member of the MOTU team. Before you could apply for upload rights, you had to be an Ubuntu member though.

That wasn’t all of it though. For me it wasn’t the @ubuntu.com mail address or “fulfilling the requirements for upload rights”. As I had helped out and contributed for months already, I felt part of the tribe and luckily many encouraged me to take the next step and apply for membership. I had grown to like the people I worked with and learned from a lot. It was a bit daunting, but being recognised for my contributions was a great experience. Afterwards I would say I did my fair share of encouraging others to apply as well. 🙂

Which brings me to the two calls of action I wanted to get out there.

1) Encourage members of your team who haven’t applied for Ubuntu membership!

There are so many people doing fantastic work on AskUbuntu, the Forums, in Flavour teams, the Docs team, the QA world and all over the place when it comes to phones, desktops, IoT bits, servers, the cloud and more. Many many of them should really be Ubuntu members, but they haven’t heard of it, or don’t know how or are concerned of not “having done enough”.

If you have people like that in a project you are working in, please do encourage them. In an open source project we should aim to do a good job at recognising the great work of others.

2) Join the Ubuntu Membership Boards!

If you are an Ubuntu member, seriously consider joining the Ubuntu Membership Boards. The call for nominations is still open and it’s a great thing to be involved with.

When I joined the Community Council, the CC was still in charge of approving Ubuntu members and I enjoyed the meeting (even if they were quite looooooooooooooooooooong), when we got to talk to many contributors from all parts of the globe and from all parts of the Ubuntu landscape. Welcoming many of them to Ubuntu members team was just beautiful.

Nominate yourself and be quick about it! 🙂

Paul White

There are a quite a few members of Ubuntu Forums who have clearly contributed enough to become Ubuntu Members but don’t seem to be interested in applying. I know that they have contributed far more than I have and over a much longer period of time.

I got my Ubuntu Membership primarily for my contributions to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. If I can become an Ubuntu Member then so can dozens of others as well. They just need to be prompted and encouraged.

However, I do feel that some really don’t want to. May be they feel that they would lose their independence and their right to speak out against Ubuntu/Canonical ?
- dholbach
  
  I’m working for Canonical and have spoken out against decisions of the company or Ubuntu members. Even as an Ubuntu member you still are an independent person. 🙂
  
  Maybe the Forums Council can raise awareness of the possibility to become an Ubuntu member again? https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Forums/Membership
  - Paul White
    
    May be some Ubuntu users think that as an Ubuntu member you can’t speak out against Ubuntu or Canonical?
    - dholbach
      
      I don’t see why. Quite a few Ubuntu members do and I think that’s healthy.
James Tait

I’ve worked for Canonical for going on five years, but what’s stopping me applying for membership is that the majority of my work here has been closed-source server-side stuff: Ubuntu One (Files and SSO), Click Package Index, Software Centre. I occasionally answer questions on IRC, Google+, askubuntu, mailing lists and elsewhere, but it’s so infrequent I don’t really equate that to “significant and sustained contribution”.
- dholbach
  
  You’ve done a lot to keep the whole packages/app infrastructure moving and helped create an ecosystem around Ubuntu. That’s super important to what Ubuntu is today.
  
  You also help people on IRC whenever you can. Maybe you have to explain your work and how it’s relevant a bit more than others who apply, but I have no doubts that you can become an Ubuntu member.
  
  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership