Communication from Canonical to the Ubuntu community lacking tact

Hi Greg,

Just addressing some of your issues, and it seems reasonable to respond to them here:

 1) I am not entirely sure of the details why it is closed source, but I do know the components it is built with are open source.
 2) The use of the Ubuntu name and logo is because it is an account that provides access to a wide plethora of Ubuntu services such as wiki.ubuntu.com, the Ubuntu store, Ubuntu One etc. It made sense to use the Ubuntu name instead of Launchpad SSO as they are Ubuntu focused.
 3) It's purely a branding change, AFAIK.
 4) This is primarily a branding change: your existing Launchpad credentials should work fine.

As for the messaging: I agree it is less community focused, but the Canonical Blog is not just for community members. I was planning a blog post on this topic, but I haven't got a chance to write it yet as (a) the SSO service was just announced and (b) I have had to make a last-minute trip to tend to some family issues.

Expect a blog entry from me over the next few days.

Thanks for your reply, Jono.

And just for the record, I only put those questions in there to give examples of things that the PR didn't address that the community would probably like addressed; I was stretching to come up with 4.

Should it be a case of communication items that are both canonical and community focused there should be two types of tailored releases one that deals with canonical and it's partners and for the public and one that deals with the community. The information is the same but explained differently and in a more open and easier to access way ?

I think that is exactly how I was thinking of this, Laura. The different audiences will have different questions they want addressed.

I'm going to get the Locoteams meeting up and running again which is on the 1st Tuesday of the month in #ubuntu-locoteams from 5-7pm it's going to be a health check for teams to come and ask the LoCo council questions if they need help and also so we can give some feedback to the teams.

I'm also going to invite folks from other teams within Ubuntu to come and possibly do a Q&A session where community can ask questions and we can have productive and effective discussions taking place. The first of these meetings will take place in May 2010 I'll be mailing the lococontacts mailing list to encourage teams to come and take part.

Laura: Sounds like a great idea. It would be a good way of closing the gap between the international and the local communities. What I've seen in my LoCo was that there are a lot of people who are not aware of what they can do for the international community. Of course many are impaired by their lack of English skills, but many are perfectly capable of communicating well enough.

The session could serve not only as a way to get up with the LoCo Council, but also to learn the team leaders about the jobs there are in the international community.