Ubuntu would benefit from a route to contribution that filtered interested and committed third parties capable of significant contributions. An excellent example of filtered contribution would be the recent article on kernel patching in Linux Format magazine (http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/archives).

How does Brainstorm interact with the established Ubuntu release planning process? Are leading popular ideas from Brainstorm brought forward to be turned into workable specifications at UDS? Do active Canonical developers seed Brainstorm with ideas looking to see how popular they are? Or is Brainstorm being actively ignored in the planning and design process?

I think in this case Canonical should start to push Python (and probably C) as their main programming language and possibly even go as far as offering paid support for it or training workshops.

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/23449/

I bet there are lots of people who’d like to help out, but would rather donate money than time.

I’m kind of old. I did machine language, assembly and BASIC in the late-70s/early-80s during high school and university, but didn’t do much of anything outside of some database and web stuff after that.

Although I have a full-time non-programming job that keeps me busy, I’ve tried several times in the last couple of years to get started with Python on Ubuntu in my spare time, but have been stymied by out-of-date tutorials where even cutting and pasting code failed to work for me. What libraries are still supported? I’m STILL not sure about Glade vs. GTKBuilder.

I have never developed for either Windows or OS X (my programming pre-dating them), but looking at the developer pages for both system, those platforms offer me tutorials and videos on how to get started. The Ubuntu Developer page tells me about packaging and some governance information. I’m left to Google for … what … PyGTK? Seed? Vala? C? GTK#? (I know that Shuttleworth prefers Python because I remember his announcements after 4.10 about Canonical’s prefered language for development, but no new user would know that information.)

You can read my post here: http://blog.ibeentoubuntu.com/2010/02/making-myself-clear-about-ubuntu.html
In light of your post, you can disregard anything I say and I won’t feel at all upset or threatened.

p.s. I also posted a month or two ago about how Ubuntu was doing _exactly the right things_ in planning for Lucid’s release.

However, this kind of support is more geared towards solving a specific user’s problem with any means possible, rather than prioritizing development work.

In traditional proprietary software, users are the source of value in the form of cash which they pay for software that meets their needs. This cash covers the cost of the developer salaries to write the code that increases the software’s value for those users. Since the code has to be written before the users can buy it, a businessman has to front the cash in speculation that his appraisal of what users need is correct and that he’ll make a handsome profit. He believes that making the software closed source could help him reduce risk of competition. Once the money is paid, the businessman may not have an incentive to add any more features since it would add to his costs without enhancing the profit.

So, every user who pays for the software is indirectly part of the value flow in the proprietary software model. They can have some influence on the development, if they express their needs early and clearly enough, but no control.

With open source, it works much differently. Patches or other contributions directly enhance the software’s value for the people who made the contribution. Users who make contributions like these are thus directly in the value flow. They have strong influence and (shared) control over the development. Users who can’t or don’t make contributions are not part of the value flow, and do not have control and quite minimal influence.

There are lots of ways to contribute to an open source project. Software patches are the most obvious way, but not the only way.

Yeah, that’s irritating. It’s basically a silly form of extortion, which aside from being quite rude to the developers is also completely ineffective. Users need educated to not do this. If anything it tends to achieve the opposite of their objective, because it turns the developers off.