Category: Sociology

People

Waste to the Top

by doctormo

Humans are interesting creatures, we are animals that need a certain amount of resources to survive and then again some more resources after that to make life easier, or just less likely to collapse after a trial.

But on the other hand we’re social beings which brings with it a competition innate to nature as much as hunger which drives us to greater social standing. To prove that social standing is important one only has to look at how stress can be measured by how big your house is compared to the houses near to where you live. Think about it for a second, not your house compared to all houses, but your house compared to your immediate neighbours.

So we have this drive to prove ourselves to our peers. That we’re just as good if not better than everyone. This might explain why most people think they’re better than the average for driving, it’s just a part of the whole ego and social standing system.

We also live in a world of terrible waste. I should say, it’s not the natural world that’s wasting, it’s the human world that is using more earths than earths per year and those earths only furnish a tenth of the people with SUV level consumption.

I think that these two things are linked. The passion for proving your place in the social order and the huge amounts of waste. It certainly makes sense that we’re always hitting the upper buffers of what’s available to exploit and never seem to have enough. Because our frail egos depend on having more and proving more. We’ve encouraged this system of waste, with advertising that targets the social climbing “aspiring nature” of consuming products and the way governments want to keep people happy with more and more consumption… this is especially dangerous with energy.

What’s ironic is how egalitarianism has caused some of this. Think about it, in the past if you wanted social stature, you’d fight for it and earn actual titles and patronage or demonstrate piety, politeness or intellect. But when we dismantled all alternative social standing devices to make everyone equal, what we did was leave the last man standing to dominate. That last man of inequality is of course capital. So money and specifically ability to purchase largess becomes the only way to show others your standing. Not to say largess is a new thing, oh lord no, but now it’s pretty much the only thing.

As an environmentalist this is all frightening. And I’d dearly like to think of ways to change the way we talk about and think about the issues of waste.

And I see some movements over the years. More people take pride in recycling, or reusing supermarket bags.

But I think we have to go further, much, much further. Entire nations have to somehow change what national pride is based on and what each person inside considers important for their social position. A full 180 would be using the amount of resources you’re not wasting as a mechanism, you can see these in those letters you might get from your water or gas company comparing your usage to your neighbours.

But that doesn’t have to be only way to show standing. We could get all the ego buffs we ever could want online, the social standing of being the best, most police, most rational debater. Or the most helpful contributor. Or perhaps the best player in Wesnoth. It doesn’t actually have to matter and you don’t need to get really deep philosophically. It only needs to be something you can compete it, something that’s visible to you and your neighbours and if it includes your actual physical neighbours, so much the better!

What do you think? What would you use to show you’re better than everyone else?

Sincerity of the Pin

by doctormo

This last two weeks I’ve been wearing a safety pin. It’s a small symbol of my personal commitment to support and interfere with public displays of hatred and intolerance.

In the last week there’s been backlash. Some calling it white guilt, others calling it a twitter action and many being critical of the sincerity of people who want to show that they will do something.

The first criticism that this symbol is a matter of white guilt is completely daft. Firstly because it’s a symbol I’ve seen non-white people wearing and also because I’m not guilty that I’ve had privilege thrust at me, I’m angry about it. I know what it’s like to be on the opposite end of that particular stick and moving between my home town in the English north to the USA has turned the way people see me around. From being an uneducated criminal class waste of space to being a quaint English, articulate, sensible Beatles accented gentleman in the space of a six hour flight.

If anything, I would stand up for the working class of any colour or creed. It’s a built in part of me and it will probably get me into trouble. There might be people out there who will wear it as fashion, or guilt, but I see no value in doubting the sincerity of people. And that’s realyl what the backlash is, a disrespectful doubt that the motives or the carry through will not live up to the symbol.

That leads me to that second point. That this is a Twitter action. That is, a re-share of an idea with no substantive action backing it up.

No.

This is something which will remind me to do something, if that means putting myself in danger, calling the police or just comforting the victim. I have made a vow to myself to be that voice if called upon. I know I live in a liberal city where I will not be called upon often, and that habitation does make it less useful. But there is racism here, there is misogyny here. It’s always been in Boston and I’ll always disprove of it.

But now, if it manifests in public, I’ll have to do something about it.

The Dictator’s Handbook is Self Falsifying

by doctormo

I’ve been reading “The Dictator’s Handbook” this week, a recommendation from CGP-Grey (youtube) and a damn good one. It’s a description of how people who want power, get power and how they keep it once they have it. I won’t go into the nitty gritty, but suffice to say that it has a lot of good things to say about murdering people to get what you want.

The idea I want to explore in this blog post is using understanding, and “Life the Universe and Everything”. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of listening to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; in the story we are told:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory mentioned, which states that this has already happened.

This is why in the story the answer to the question of Life the Universe and Everything is “42”, but that the question itself was unknown. Knowing both question and answer would cause the above self destruction/recreation and it’s imperative that the characters never find out both.

The nature of understanding in that universe is thus that it is not just non-understandable, but deliberately evasive. The rules of the game will change as soon as you know the rules of the game. Not in some god like way of keeping you in the dark deliberately, as if the universe had agency, but because somehow what you know is tied to how things work.

So how does this relate to Dictators?

Well the book is so good at explaining the mechanics of the interpersonal relationships in ruling a country or business that it may change the behaviour of people who have read the book. It may change their behaviour enough to actually make the book’s premise false. Not that it’s false when you haven’t read the book, only that it’s false when you have.

But, this make one giant Saturn sized assumption. That it is possible to change how you act in a certain circumstance given this knowledge. If it’s not changeable, then knowing it doesn’t matter and no amount of self-help or ingenious insights into the human condition will change our society. But the book’s preface is that knowing the rules that rulers rule by can help improve society, so it expects behaviour to be changeable and if is then someone somewhere will figure out how to exploit this new behaviour.

Once you have the sort of second order exploit, you get a very complicated dance between people who understand, people who do not understand and people who want to exploit either group.

Hence the mechanism described in the book will “instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable”. Thanks Douglas Adams.

To drive this idea a bit further. This in my mind creates two quantifiably different types of truth. That which is understandable but unchangeable is solid or foundational truth. Like Mathematics, knowing 2 + 2 = 5 and why doesn’t allow you to change it’s truthfulness. Then there is mutable truth, where knowing how and why something is true allows you to manipulate it into falsity. This is especially true in biological and social sciences where adversarial mechanisms are in constant flux.

What do you think?

Free Software Faith for the Long Term

by doctormo

I’ve been an advocate for Free and Open Source Software for a long, long time. When I first got into it, it felt right, just, progressive. I struggle with how to communicate that feeling of freedom to others, to make them understand how important Free Software is.

When we talk of Free Software dialectic conflicts, there are two big fronts; the first is the idea that Proprietary software is a /better/ way to make software. Developers get paid, investors make money, huge profits can be poured into research and development. This is your Microsofts and Apples. Let’s ignore that idea today.

The second battle is practicalism. This idea says that it doesn’t matter how the software was made, just that it needs to work. Let’s explore why this idea is an important conflict. Practical solutions often favour the short term and the local. That is, they are solutions which usually a single person will make a decision about what software to use and the criteria most important is the cost (money, time, effort) to get it working in the here and now.

The conflict comes about because often Free Software is a more expensive proposition in the here and now. It’s more expensive because it takes more time to set up, or it’s tools are not tested as much, or not designed as well, or the more insidious reason: the wider world does not support Free Software causing the Free Software solution to be on the loosing end of a powerful network effect.

But proprietary software often has hidden costs. After the initial purchase costs, these are often either societal or long term costs. Societal and long term are the direct opposite of a practical decision. Thus they are not considered, or not valued highly when making the decision.

There is one parallel which I hate to make. Religion. Here is another societal and long term cultural device. Most religions ask participants to give up the bad behaviours in the here and now and be a little more patient for the better life or better after life. I’m horribly simplifying here so please forgive me. But religions mostly work on faith and their evangelicalism pressures people to consider the societal and long term. This is why I think Free Software advocates are so often compared to religious fundermentalists. It’s a cheap shot; it does not follow that faith in Free Software is faith against evidence. That’s just a bad argument.

But it’s worth considering that Free Software is a hard sell precisely because it’s a societal good that requires powerful network effects on it’s side in order to be fully effective. Having a self-sacrificing religion of one is foolish, but a society of good intentions can be a powerful force. We in the Free Software world often have to invest more, pay more and spend more time to make the Free Software world we want to see, and to see it happen for ourselves and our friends and families. But this will only be the case so long as the network effects are against us and I don’t believe they always will be.

Now consider Ubuntu. Here’s platform that tried to move some of the power away from practicamism by making Ubuntu easy to install, easy to use, a joy to behold. Things that are genuinely empowering to Free Software. As it built itself up, the negative network effects started to weaken and Ubuntu users enjoyed for a time, a level of support from the wider world that had not been experienced before.

But that naturally led to the in-fighting. It’s typical for the front runner to be targeted by all the also-ran distributions. The FSF targeted Ubuntu’s practicalist concessions (even though they were fairly minimal), Other distributions ripped Ubuntu and their community apart, trying to block Ubuntu’s success. I’m not saying they meant to do it, or that it was a conspiracy. But that these other communities did not see Ubuntu’s success as their own success and naturally tried to undermine it as humans are likely to do.

So for very human reasons, we’re here with no real champion for Free Software in the practical arena. Ubuntu has fallen for its own hype and is not able to being the Free Software faith with it, even if it was successful. The societal and long term benefits of Free software remain largely unknown to the majority of the world and we wait patiently for a successor that can try again to change the world.

What do you think? Comment below.

To Parent or not to Parent

by doctormo

I was reading “Leave them kids alone” in my New Scientist last week and thought back to discussions I’ve had with my dear sister about how unhappy or happy our upbringing was and what it might have done to our resulting adulthood.

This is a difficult topic because our childhood contained many horrors, much that was difficult and down right damaging. But speculating on which parts of it have made us weaker and which parts have made us stronger, is just as subjective to us as it would be from anyone from the outside.

Poverty is like that. Not all bad, but not at all good.

But getting back to the thrust of the book review above. The warning there is that modern parents are far too attentive to their children. They structure their lives too much and expect far too much from them.

As someone who came from a family that was too insecure to provide much structure at all, I have to reflect on this. Was my ability to hang out with friends until 2am from the ages of 13, good or bad? Was I ever given too much latitude? Probably.

But then I think to the if the goal is to make your child’s environment supportive and loving no matter what they do, seems to have produced the most positive of my friends and the most well behaved children I know.

I think kids are all different. They’re born different and they grow differently as they come of age and learn. I think natural development of brains mostly shakes out the stupid from most people I know. It might be that we’ve all had experiences that changed us, or I think, it might just be something human brains do.

So in a way, I don’t think we should be too anxious about our children. They’re going to be ok so long as they don’t get injured, or have severely negative mental issues. Letting them play will make them wider and more social individuals, and providing them ways to study will make them deeper and more capable. But only so much as the balance between nature and nurture will allow itself to be bent and even then I think most of the middle class in both the UK and USA have left that balance far behind.

My plan with violet, for as much as I have one at all, is to provide her with as much opportunity as possible without being disappointed if she doesn’t take to any of them. I can only keep her safe in a loving home and that must be my primary goal beyond thinking too hard about her personal development.

What are your thoughts? and do you think the article above should have mentioned Gen-X vs. Gen-Y like it does?

Talking to Friends about things

by doctormo

I have a family who aren’t religious. Some of them might go to church, and if they do, they’ve never mentioned it. Others are spiritual, in that they search for ways to understand the world and try to come to grips with everything through a non-academic social philosophy. This is important for most people, but I think especially important to the poor and working class who quite often see their lives twisted capriciously by unknown forces.

On the other hand, I’m a skeptic. A rationalist who has done a bit of philosophical reading (enough to be embarrassing at least). When I was younger I was much more hard line about my rationalism, anti-god, anti-fairy, anti-mystical thinking. I was righteous as only a neerdy teenager with a degree in wikipedia can be. And it did put a strain on my relationships with family. Although to be honest, most of my family at pretty kind to all sorts of odd thinking and my rationalism didn’t seem mad or anything, just one of many colours available in the pallet of local family philosophies.

As I’ve aged and consumed more understanding about skeptical thinking and pro-social philosophy; the two have often been at an interesting contention. How to be rational enough not to get taken in by gimmicks and snake oil, but social enough not to sneer and demean friends and family who have taken to believe in those things.

Over the years I’ve learned that there is an important factor about humans that is important to understand… we take shortcuts. A lot of them. When I say I believe in science, science based policy or health care, or that I trust the data, this is a shortcut. I haven’t gone into all the data, I haven’t read the papers and done due diligence. I’ve trusted that the network of trust I have between the people involved and the ideas we share is enough that my modest reading with my small contributions in critique is enough to be far more confident than my personal data has any right to make me.

A peer group with a shared set of ideas that embellish trust. That sounds like a tribe, a community of people who have created a in-group. And being part of that in-group makes me feel things, positive things when we socialise and anger when I feel it’s threatened.

But peer in-groups are exactly what my ginseng drinking family and friends have too. Just like me, they take short cuts too. There’s a trust there between the people involved and the understand about how the world works. I might claim that it’s moving away from what is true to what is not true, but that won’t change the social dynamics. And just like me, they will feel good when their ideas are verified and angry when those ideas (or people) are threatened.

So how is it even possible to challenge notion when almost anything you say will result in either anger, frustration or a heavy rolling of eyes? I think it is possible, but only if one focuses on two specific points.

Firstly, the social aspect is important. The closer you are to someone, both physically and kinly, the better the chance is that your reasoning will be seen as helpful and not destructive. Having constructive conversations that aren’t about ourselves being verified as right, but about breaking the ideas down as a social activity between friends and then seeing what results are built back up, can I think go a long way to preserving friendships despite radically different views.

The second is to be stateless. By which I mean, you can’t go riding into battle all kitted out in skeptical pennant banners flying. Your ideas are yours and you shouldn’t stand behind a peer group while trying to discuss a contrary idea. That just turns it into a fight between your self-assigned clans. Which you can’t win, because your tribal leaders aren’t here to make peace or barter terms and you aint no hero ready to let your friendship fall on the sword of truth.

Besides, no one ever changed their mind because someone shouted the truth at them.

What do you think? How do you talk to people with drastically different perspectives?

Men Need to be Feminists

by doctormo

There are many men who believe that they can not or should not be feminists. That is to say, they believe the movement to bring women’s equality in social, legal and economic forums is a concern that is the responsibility of women. Or some kinder and gentler men believe women would not like men to be mansplaining their issues. Forcing their way into a women’s only club with that self-righteous upright chin of the all knowing men.

But, I believe they are wrong and I will explain my reasoning here.

The goals of feminism is fundamentally a problem of and for men. A society of cultural norms and mores which we as men benefit from, but rarely understand. It’s not the job of women to find our inner demons, our abuses and unkindnesses and explain and then campaign for us to change our ways. No. That wouldn’t and doesn’t work anyway.

Any group of people have their ways of doing things. Their memes, their protocols which have been passed down from father figure to son figure. This is what makes us a social group with tendencies and values which while not strictly true, are often just so. Men are a social group, often with ideas about how things ort to be.

It’s our responsibility as men to be introspective and look critically at these and how they reflect in our actions. Our ways of doing things. We need to understand that we are sometimes and often wrong. Women have told us there is a problem, that they suffer in ways that we don’t recognise. That’s really as far as they can take it. And yet, so far, we have refused to take the baton of responsibility from them and carry out a full audit of our social place and the way we act and treat the people around us.

I believe that some of these ideas that many men hold are the ideas that need to change in order for equality to spring forth. These ideas can’t be changed from the outside by women. Instead they must go through the full process of reflection, where one understands there is a problem, discovery where new ideas that challenge the old are sought and found and then a violent battle between the old and new ideas must take place where both are destroyed in a process that gives birth to new, stronger ideas which are internalised.

It’s this processing of new ideas which I can see happening. Sometimes the new ideas are forged in hatred, the wrong idea at the wrong time and result in a symptomatic backlash against the progress of equality. But while some men find hatred others will find their way to greater enlightenment winning their internal battles. It is the men who find peace and fraternity with the goals of feminism who must not let their hard won ideas rest in their heads, but speak out and actively encourage them in other men. Cheat on the test for their brothers by giving them the answers to their own internal equality exam. Not just for those men, but for women, boys and girls too. So we propagate the best of what we have worked out.

In order for this to work, we need not just women fighting for their rights, but men fighting for their own change and their own social group’s change in attitudes and common ideas. Maybe it will take generations to forget the old ways, to uproot the very deep notions and general practices which often were created back when aggressive sexism was the norm. But they must be removed because they are unjust and it is our backyards that these injustices stem.

We are Men and OUR ideas need to change. Help me challenge them.

Platform Money is Key to Free Software Success

by doctormo

Post was drafted Feb 2nd, delayed for review but is published now without finale edits.

Platforms are everything these days. They drive users in specific, and well structures ways and can make or break different ways of production. Take for instance the World Wide Web, it’s a platform that allows anarchy and it fundamentally breaks the traditional media’s economic model of charging for content per user. The World Wide Web does this by delivering content not just more cheaply, but more quickly and more succinctly than ever before.

By comparison consider iTunes which came well after. A platform which like the World Wide Web is built upon the internet with similar technology. This platform provided a more cohesive and contained experience for getting access to content that users could have gotten through the World Wide Web. Even though it was more expensive to do so, users have bought music and other media through the iTunes platform because the platform is more effective at delivering content to users than the World Wide Web’s anarchy.

The iTunes platform could be credited with helping solve a key economic problem that was befalling the music industry. How to get users to pay for music and thus make music creation worth being in involved in.

We Have Failed Here

Knowing this about iTunes, I’m jealous. That platform has achieved something which we in the Free Software industry have failed to do. That is; meaningfully provide the platform necessary to get users engaged in software production. Economically speaking, we need users who do not make code, but who want to use our software. Socially speaking, if we wish to Free users, we must serve their needs and therefore be willing to be told what they need and deliver on their expectant demand.

This isn’t just about making money for developers so they can quit their proprietary jobs and sustain their lives on making Free Software. This is also about the incredible disservice we give to users. Our ignored users. Those people who we SHOULD be serving with every key press but who we don’t pay attention to unless they morph into helpful bug reporters or fellow programmers. Which plenty do, just so they can be a part of the process.

This is a problem that not only hurts people’s perceptions of Free Software projects, but it also makes our industry weaker than it needs to be. Projects exhibit fragility and an inability to grow. Users pick software on existing features and compatibility and not on future prospects. User involvement is suppressed.

Just Saying No

There are many programmers, project leaders, Free Software members, who ask that money never be involved in Free Software production. These people do not know what damage they are doing to their projects. Not knowing how to get user money into a project is a typical problem, but there is a mindset from the leadership in some projects that having users pay developers should not be allowed. I _do_ understand why money is stigmatised, but this is a symptom of a project’s lack of codified user focus which would provide strong definitions of self-serving, charitable and user bought developer attention. No programmer serving his own needs should be jealous of another getting paid by serving user’s needs. We all need to grow up a little here.

What we need in committed Free Software projects is a meaningful service ethos that makes the users of software the firm target of the project. It would supply direction and impetus to many projects that can’t understand why users don’t like their code and provide economic input to drive projects faster towards those user centric goals.

User Focused not Business Focused

“But Open Source is very economically successful” I hear you say. Well, yes, if your a business it’s been great. The bigger your business, the more meaningful relationship you can have with projects by hiring developers. Having developers (or being a developer) is a sure way to have input. Open Source and the OSI have focused hard on making sure the business to business open source industry works.

I always wondered why Open Source was doing so well and yet doing so badly and it’s this: Big business needs are being met, small business and user needs are not. This isn’t good enough. As a developer if you’re not taking money from users then you aren’t serving user’s needs. Follow the money, follow the demand.

Social Justice

And if your thinking that this economic problem isn’t important for Free Software, think instead of all the users who are disempowered. This is what Free Software social justice is all about. A user is a super important component to development and with continuous development strategies and increasing segregation between developers and non-developers; we need to have thought about getting all users in a position where they can truly be a part of our development practices. They’re the core and source, not the periphery to be ignored.

Demand Change

I’ve been involved with two projects where I see a problem. The first is Inkscape, a project with no economic steam and plenty of users who have no idea how the inkscape sausage is made. It has direction, but no growth. Programmers, but no self-serving power left. Users with needs, but no way to meet them.

The second is XBMC plugins. Here there are thousands of tiny self contained projects and they’re all organised into a forum. Go onto any plugin forum thread and the pattern will be the same: “The plugin stopped working”, “It doesn’t work here either, where’s the developer?”, “I hope the developer comes back to fix it”, “I hope someone else comes in to fix it”, “Has anyone got it working yet”. Again and again, users who are putting their time into begging developers for attention. It’s a depressing situation that must put users off and certainly doesn’t speak well of the stability of XBMC when it’s most useful features are plugins which fail all the time from patchy maintenance.

Demand is important and getting user demand focused in a meaningful way has been our failure. Focusing on support models and business to business open source processes has been our distraction. Harnessing the paradime shifting nature of the platform should be out solution!

A Platform Example

The Ubuntu Software Center is a platform. The way it’s been set up is as a clone of Apple’s iOS store and it’s incompatible with the Free Software industrial process. Instead of helping Free Software it’s driving economic sustainability to proprietary software development and away from Free Software. It’s got unintentional institutional bias which is rooted in the ideas of the developers and managers at Canonical. The suggestion that donations are somehow a meaningful way to drive money to Free Software projects is a sure sign that a person doesn’t ‘get it’, Free Software isn’t a charity case in need of a one off anonymous tip. It’s an industry and with a unique production process that requires careful cultivation and sustainable connections that focus latent user demands to developers and potential developers attention. The USC and it’s makers fail to see that.

Use the User Force

A platform like the Ubuntu Software Center should be made though. But made to specification for the Free Software industry instead of the Proprietary one.

Imagine it embed directly into every Free Software desktop and mobile distribution. The same user focused invitation to join a Free Software project, involving money and time without stigma. Think of a framework available to Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu at the same time, users able to come together and join us in the community by opening their wallets and telling us to get to work on their dreams.

Imagine the power, the vitality and yes, even the vibrancy of the ideas users demand we make for them; all developed into a platform that like iTunes could take a wild west and focus it with good design into a platform that delivers successful sustainability for creators and meaningful dialogue with users.

We need transparency in the accounts of projects to foster trust. Progress of bugs and roadmaps delivered to the desktop so users can see a future in our projects. Reviews and statuses of developers working and available to work. Users electing favourite developers as heros of their causes with monthly payments to kick their bugs before they ever get to the archive. Kickstarter style risk investments to push radical designs and brand new projects. Bug reports where money can be added to the heat to indicate demand for attention and the rewards for completion.

It’s all possible if we dare to make users the center of the Free Software universe and scale it big, VERY big.

We require the courage and vision of the leaders from Canonical, Red Hat, Debian, the FSF and every project leader out there to advocate for User focused Free Software and economic sustainability. With a willingness to embrace our industry’s unique software production method, good design of the frameworks and an invitation to users and paid developers we can make the Free Software industry a powerful and successful part of every user’s computer experience.

Are you with me? Let me know below in the comments.

Give Jono a Break, Grow the Community

by doctormo

From today’s Q&A with Jono Bacon. I need to use Jono to make a point, so apologies in advance. At 53:00 in the video Jono says is spending 14 hours a day working on Ubuntu. This despite having a brand new baby boy and a awesome meat smoker to contend with.

I say this isn’t fair on Jono. There is no reason why someone should be giving 175%. 14 hours a day is 70 hours a week; That’s more than the 40 hour week enshrined in the European working time directive for office workers; more than the 48 hour maximum safe working week for junior doctors; even more than the 60 hours a week that the Tory government want to change that to.

To put this into perspective, a balanced week would typically or ideally include 56 hours sleep, 40 hours work, 72 hours recreation, responsibility and relationships. But Jono does 70 hours, how can anyone be a good positive cheerleader with that sort of workload?

Responsible Indigestion

I think there is some blockage with the vast array of responsibilities that the Canonical Community Team have to do. A great deal of these responsibilities are likely only held by members of the team because we are unable to find volunteer or non-canonical business people to take them over.

Thinking about the people in the community team (who I love with all my heart), I see a ton of projects, lots of talk and quite a bit of regret at not being able to do everything. And I don’t think it’s right that they should be asked to do everything. Outside of the team, lots of aspects of the community are quiet indeed.

Not the Center

I’ve had some really good chats in the past with Jono about the nature of the community team and how it’s often perceived as being the center of the universe for quite a lot of the Ubuntu community’s activities. There is a misconception that the “Canonical” community team is the authoritative organiser and sanctifier of activities. It’s not.

The Canonical community team are employed to look after Canonical’s interests in the community. So of _course_ they’re going to spend all their time focused on their business objectives, that’s what the team is for. Of course Canonical’s objectives might be over-stretching too, but I think the team also helps out in places for the good of the community which is leading to stress.

Our true centre, if we have one at all, is the Community Council. But it has never really taken on the responsibility of being a co-ordinating power. It deals with problems and that’s what it was made for. So I guess one waits for the project to explode before taking the charred remains to the Community Council for autopsy. This isn’t good enough.

What to do

What we need is a new centre of the Ubuntu Community universe. It’s no good having a company act as the sol centre of activity; volunteers hate working for free for mega-corp big bucks and move away over time as co-ordination is often innocuously prescribed along business objectives. A community needs a strong central point, or central set of core ideas that we can all dance to without fear we’re being abused by a large player using cheat codes.

“Ubuntu for everyone” used to be enough. A rallying cry from a thousand frustrated Linux users to come together, creating a gravity1 all of their own, pulling more people in until we had such a strong and healthy community.

That isn’t enough any more. We’ve been too successful. We have an awesome Linux desktop which we can install on anyone’s computer without very many problems. You can get it for free if you ignore the skull, download an iso good for a million installs of the same fully working operating system.

What we need is a new centre of the Ubuntu Community universe. A new point of gravity. A new co-ordination body who can sanction every hair brained scheme2, listen endlessly to every kid on irc who has an exciting new idea, comment on things, and act as a great mixing bowl for people and ideas. Such a body would need a reason and a goal, something resonant that goes beyond just technical aims, or marketing PR.

I seriously propose that we found an identity for Ubuntu which lies outside of Canonical. A gravitational body of such stability and neutral authority that the massive Jovian mass of Canonical will happily find it’s lagrange point while smaller congregations will find more comfortable points in their own orbits.

I hate to say it, but Catch 22, Canonical MUST be committed to such an idea. There is NO point in a bunch of community folk wandering off into the brush to build this. We would need everyone to recognise the problem we have here and help fix it with some radical rethinking about the community. And that includes helping Jono3.

Are you onboard? What do you think? Let me know below in the comments.

1 Gravity, the reason we all come together. Each Canonical PR blunder acting like stellar wind pushing more people away.
2 Every hair-brained scheme in Ubuntu is already sanctioned, but most of the time someone with a fancy hat and an official looking title just has to listen to it and say that it’s a good idea to give the kids confidence.
3 Save the Cheerleader, save the world.

What about Fixed Morality?

by doctormo

Welcome reader to another “impossible to prove conjecture Tuesday”. Today I’ll be looking at the grievously problematic notions of modern morality.

The Christian church; that would be the catholic one, not the Orthodox, Church of England or any of the Eastern Churches. They believe that morality comes from God and we learn about his morality through his words which are documented in the Bible. Everything from thou shall not kill (Deuteronomy 5:17) to no buggery (Timothy 1:10). There is a golden rule theme running through the Bible’s moral thinking which is especially evident in the new testament.

But ultimately the important thing about the authority of the Bible and God for Christians is that the morality is fixed. It’s not relative to the times you live or person you happen to be interacting with, nor relative to your position in society or attributes therein. It’s something that applies to everyone and it brings Christians a sense of stability.

But I am not a Christian, to me the Bible is a 1,500 year old unaccountable narrative of man’s accent from chaos and into a more ordered society. So I can not use it as an anchor to say what should be moral and what be immoral. But I can use it as a set of good ideas, thinking which was done long before I was born which I can incorporate.

As the modern world progresses and we unshackle ourselves from old religious dogma, there is a tendency to think that everything is relative, even morality. Somehow morality itself is in doubt if it’s possible to show situations where it would be considered the other way about. The best example is murder in self defence, by accident or deliberate? with a weapon or without? all these complicating factors which would suggest the morality is simply a weakened with complexities.

But, that’s over thinking things. Murder is immoral because you intend to do harm to someone else, murdering yourself isn’t immoral in itself because you’re doing yourself harm (however it can be said that you are harming others, especially if you don’t tell them or don’t have their support). As the buda would say: killing things for a reason doesn’t remove the fundamental wrongful truth, it just provides motivation.

So my conjecture today is: The fundamental property of morality is causing harm to other people. The most basic tool to avoid causing harm is the golden rule philosophy. The best way to deal with causing harm is to find ways to undo or make up for what you’ve done and hope for understanding and forgiveness from others.

What are your thoughts?