Notes from the Mousepad

With both a two-day conference and a three-day sprint, the Open Help Conference made for a busy week, but I must say that it was a success. We had people there from Gnome, Mozilla, OpenStack, Red Hat, BSD, as well as people who were interested in learning about open-source help. Everyone had something to share.

Some of our discussions may bubble-up as other blog posts, but a couple of the presentations and discussions made me think more about engaging users where they are. They made me think of how we can do more to extended help to people who use our software in the places that they go, rather than just requiring them to seek-out help from our help platform.

Twitter as a support tool
For example, one topic that we discussed was using Twitter as a support platform. Jennifer Zickerman demonstrated Mozilla’s Twitter-based “Army of Awesome” as a facilitator for user-to-user support. It’s pretty cool that Mozilla opens up their support channels in this way — users help other users directly, and you only need a Twitter account to help out. Although you can’t always solve a problem in 140 characters, it’s easy to point someone to a support article or to suggest other help resources. In a less formal way, I’ve also seen members of the Mozilla documentation team use Twitter to request a technical review of new help articles, or to remind people about documentation-related events (e.g., reminders for Mozilla’s Wiki Wednesday events).

Stack Exchange sites: Likes and dislikes
Another approach that we talked about were the various Stack Exchange sites. In talking about this, we liked how good answers rise to the top (as opposed to regular user forums where you may need to scroll through rows of posts to find a solution to a problem) and the gamefulness of the sites. We also liked that user questions and responses are available for download in XML format under a CC-by-SA license (albeit with fairly stringent attribution requirements). In particular, the XML downloads of user questions will allow documentation contributors to see what questions users are really asking, and what questions are occur frequently.

This being an open help conference, some of us did note that the back-end for any Stack Exchange site is proprietary, and discussed the network-effect of how using closed-source tools encourages more people to use to closed-source tools. Yes, Stack Exchange sites are “free-as-in-beer” to the people who use them, but we discussed both OSQA (GPL-licensed) and Shapado (AGPLv3-licensed) as open-source alternatives that would be worth considering for similar help-site deployments. Someone also mentioned that Reddit (which isn’t necessarily a help platform, but is open-source software) is a popular area where people can post questions or comments that are related specifically to Gnome or Ubuntu.

Using blogs and planets to recruit writers
Aside from Twitter-based tools and Stack Exchange sites, some other ways of seeking out users are less centralized. Two items I took away from Anne Gentle’s talk were that she is not shy about asking bloggers to repurpose their blog posts for use in the official documentation, and she also recruits people who post to the OpenStack Planet to help write documentation. These approaches seem especially helpful when writing documentation for very technical and complex projects. In some areas, the help author may not have the deep domain expertise needed to write docs for bleeding-edge software.

Other possibilities, and the remaining need for good docs
One project that I’m curious to know more about is the Mozilla Sumo project. I wish that members of their team had been able to join us. Sumo seems like a well-rounded platform for gathering user contributions to official documentation, while still allowing for editorial review and for document translations.

Even with all of this in mind, though, I still see strong, centralized documentation as very important. After all, it can save a lot of time if a user can find good docs in one central spot, and even Google isn’t helpful if no one has documented a well-researched solution to a problem. These discussions reminded me that it’s also important to interact with users where they are, though. If you have ideas for other ways to interact with users where they are, or know of something that has worked well for you, feel free to share any suggestions in the comments.

Today is Debian’s 17th birthday*, and with that comes Debian Appreciation day!  Do you want to give them some thanks for the super work that they do?  Just head over to thank.debian.net, and leave them a few words to express your gratitude.

You can even search for your favorite package, team, or packaging team, and thank them directly!   (Don’t we all want to thank the XML/SGML Group, though?)

*I’m sure that Debian is looking forward to next year when it will turn 18, and (at least in the U.S.) be able to vote and smoke cigarettes.

The VRMS program does a nice job of listing the non-free components on your system.  Let’s see what my VRMS report shows:

————

jwc@tereska:~$ vrms
Non-free packages installed on tereska

linux-generic             Complete Generic Linux kernel
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.28 modules helper script
linux-restricted-modules- Restricted Linux modules for generic kernels

Contrib packages installed on tereska

flashplugin-installer     Adobe Flash Player plugin installer
flashplugin-nonfree       Adobe Flash Player plugin installer (transitional pack

3 non-free packages, 0.2% of 1467 installed packages.
2 contrib packages, 0.1% of 1467 installed packages.

————

This report reflects the current “free” status of the software on my system, but my system didn’t start out this way.  What we see here is the result of a little bit of cleanup.  For example, some restricted Nvidia and ATI drivers were installed by default, but I was able to remove them because I don’t have any Nvidia or ATI hardware on this computer.

Also, Valide (the name given to the Vala IDE program) was listed as contrib software on this report.  I’m not sure why that is.  I eventually removed it from the system prior to rerunning the vrms command, so it does not appear in the list above.

Anyway, at this point it looks like all I have to do to get a completely Free system is remove the flash plugin and, um, my kernel!  Then I’ll be all set. : -)

I recently posted a couple of ‘dents onto identi.ca regarding UbuntuOne, but wanted to follow-up with some more complete thoughts.

In thinking about UbuntuOne, there are a number of factors involved; it involves the need to build a sustainable business, trademark issues, and the level of one’s own comfort with using non-free software. To me, there it also involves issues of community, and the difference between the Ubuntu project and Canonical as a corporation.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but the topics do allow for at least an initial framework for talking about things. So, if you’ll humor me for a couple of moments, here are a couple of my thoughts regarding these topics.

Some Caveats

First, I’ll get a few things out of the way. Yes, I’ve used You Tube and I use Gmail. The irony of my giving UbuntuOne a hard time for being non-free while I use these services is not lost on me. As for email, I have previously looked for options outside of Gmail, and am still considering other options. With regard to YouTube, there simply isn’t anything else that remotely provides something of the scale of that service in a free software context, nor do any free software services have the opportunity to provide a scale big enough to support a similar service. I think I am realistic about these things.

Moreover, I do understand that, as it is now, UbuntuOne is just a tool to synchronize files across desktops, and that I don’t have to use it if I don’t want to. I know UbuntuOne is currently available as a, “you can have a small beer for free, and you can pay money if you want a bigger beer,” service, and I have nothing against Canonical making money. I want the company to be successful.

Finally, with regard to the trademark issue, this is not a big deal to me, either, as Canonical owns the trademark, so they can violate even their own recommended guidelines if they want. No one has said that what they are doing is breaking any kind of law. It’s kind of like them painting their house pink or something. Someone else might not think it’s the best idea, but it’s Canonical’s house. It’s their decision, and that’s fine with me.

From my points above I think it’s clear that I am willing to make certain sacrifices of my computing freedom to use certain services, I know Canonical needs to make money, and I’m not concerned with how Canonical handles their trademark business.

Jim, dude, what is your beef?

My main concerns are that, while this might seem like a small application for now, it is a non-free element that is going to become more integrated with our desktops over time. Also, while Google and Twitter and Facebook may have their own reasons for keeping apps closed, Ubuntu is not Google or Twitter or Facebook, and (to me) Ubuntu (and I would like to think Canonical) operates under a somewhat different set of principles. Let me expand on these items.

UbuntuOne is currently a small service

A primary concern is that while this is a relatively simple service for now, it is going to get much bigger, and they show no intention of ever opening it up. Per the summary of this upcoming talk, there are significant plans to build more user-friendly applications attached to this closed-source web application.

I know people can get by without UbuntuOne’s cross-desktop file synchronization for now, but they are going to build a lot of other (probably really cool) functionality into this service, and it looks as though the back end of it will all be closed. If more and more applications are built around this closed web-app, it will make it a shame to miss out on some of those cool features while using Ubuntu if I want to avoid closed applications.

Depending on the level of integration, we may then find ourselves in a spot where we are using an open OS, but a good number of our favorite tools and applications are tied in with closed web-apps. As I posted on identi.ca, “If we go from having a closed desktop, to an open desktop that is strongly linked to a closed ‘cloud,’ what have we gained?” If the web becomes “the new operating system,” how will it help us if that new operating system is closed? While shipping only the open client as part of the distro may not technically violate the principle of “We only ship Free software (with the exception of some binary blobs to make some basic hardware work),” attaching it to a closed web application (to me) violates the spirit that principle.

Ubuntu != Google

Granted, what I have described above already appears to be somewhat of a reality. It certainly is getting more common for desktop client apps to be open while attached to closed web services. So why does this matter with UbuntuOne? To me, the difference is that Ubuntu, the Ubuntu community, and (even to a certain extent) Canonical are not Google. We are not Facebook or Twitter. The folks involved in Ubuntu work hard to create Free software. The distribution we work on is based on Debian, which has built itself up using the principles of Free software, and without which our project would not exist. I know that Canonical is a for-profit company, but we still have a choice here. We can’t control what Google does with their web applications. We can’t control Twitter’s Fail Whale. But we (Canonical / Ubuntu) can control this, and, to me, the Ubuntu project is supposed to be different.

We devote a lot of time to removing non-free software from our systems. Community developers work hard, paid Canonical employees work hard, and the folks in charge at Canonical spend a lot of the company’s own money so that we can remove non-free stuff from our systems, and I am thankful for all of this. With UbuntuOne, though, we’re getting more non-free components associated with our desktops when we should be working to get less non-free components associated with our desktops. It seems counter to the mission of the Free Software community aspect to have the parent company of this distribution actually introducing more non-free elements into the software ecosystem.

What really raises flags for me this time around, and perhaps I’m a little late to the game, is that we’re actually bringing the non-free components into direct integration with the desktop. It’s not like Soyuz (one of the main back-end components of Launchpad) or the (currently non-free, but soon to be Free) Launchpad, which have been developer and software building tools, and have limited integration with the desktop . . . but this actually integrates with our desktops in a non-developer-centric manner. I guess that’s why I didn’t notice or pay as much attention to the other non-free elements provided by Canonical previously – because they weren’t tightly integrated with the Desktop.

Could Canonical still make money from UbuntuOne as Free software?

I’ve got to assume that the folks working at Canonical considered whether or not they could do this in a Free manner. I have only read that the back end is closed, and that there are no plans or roadmaps in place that point to making it Free software. I haven’t heard anything along the lines of, “Yes, we considered it, but we didn’t think it would work out because of X, Y, and Z.” They are a business, and they have every right to not open up those kinds of discussions to the community, but based on the nature of their business I think it’s fair to assume some conversation along those lines occurred.

I am not a business guru, and I know that trying to make money off of an open platform in a real business world is a difficult nut to crack. That’s what we keep working toward, though, and I think that’s at least part of why so many people contribute to Ubuntu. UbuntuOne may currently have a closed back end, but with it now being released to the public, the cards are on the table. We can now talk about it. I know this is a Canonical effort, but I think there are lots of other smart people in the community, and it seems like it could be worthwhile to have a discussion about ways to monetize UbuntuOne as a Free software option. Perhaps this could be a good discussion for UDS.

I guess I should close by noting that I have written this because I do like Ubuntu, but what drew me to Ubuntu in the first place is that it is based around building Free software. I recognize that there are certain sacrifices that need to be made in areas we can’t control, but we have a choice here. Free software is what got us started, it’s what we work on, and I do not see a tremendous amount of value in fixing bug #1 if we get there by integrating ourselves with non-free networked systems.