Karmic UDS and other events

I still have an hangover from the last week. I was at Barcelona from Monday to Friday at the Karmic UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit).

This is a great event for all those who are interested on knowing how Ubuntu works, but it’s basically oriented to those who are Ubuntu developers or from any of its derivatives distributions (like Guadalinex, which is my case). I think the event is interesting, in general, for any hacker and developer from upstream projects or just people nearby the Ubuntu world, because there is a lot of interesting people from Ubuntu, but also from upstream or derivative projects sharing knowledge and experiences to improve the next version of Ubuntu.

One topic that is always on the table (in many ways) is how to be better FLOSS citizens. I mean, how to do the things in the better way to give back to upstream projects all the improvements they do. And also to give the merit from each thing to its real author, from upstream, from Ubuntu or from the community.
I know (they know as well) that it isn’t always like that and some people from different project complain about that. But I truly believe this is an issue that is very important to them and they try to do their best. But to drive this is not very easy task and take some time.

I’ve been in four UDS (Mataró, Sidney, Seville and this one in Barcelona) and is getting better. The thing I like the most is that after the UDS you know there is a lot of work already done and almost every discussion and conclusion written down. You have a very clear concept about what is going on in the next release, how is going to be approached and who is going to be involved in the task to get them done.

I’ve been in a lot of different kind of FLOSS congress, seminars, summits and so for more the seven years and this is one that I like especially. Mostly because I feel it very productive. In a lot of congress, talks and workshop somebody talk about something you already know (or likely you don’t) everybody feel that could be interesting they talk a lot but when everybody come back to their homes (or a week later) everyone come back to their projects, work and real life and that it. In the UDSs, at least, you got after the event has finished a bunch of specifications, already discussed, with good feedback from different people, tasks in order to get it done and people with those task assigned.

I don’t know. The event is not perfect, it’s not the only way to do the things, but IMHO is very pragmatic and good way to do the things.

I really hope the next GCDS (Gran Canaria Desktop Summit) leave me the same good feeling after it’ll have finished. I know the GCDS is going to be great, but I hope after the event we have some real tasks and aims to follow to get the best for our free desktops.
Anyway, I know the event is going to be great. People form the both desktops (GNOME and KDE) are working hard for it. Also local teams and people are giving all they can (as Luis would say: “dandolotodo” ;-P ) to get the better cross desktop event ever.

Well, thanks to Canonical and the Ubuntu comunity and developers to give me the opportunity of participate in such of event and try to be useful for Ubuntu and Guadalinex. Also thank to the Junta de Andalucía and my company, Emergya, for cover my travel for being there.
I was especially happy to meet again with Daniel Holdbach and Jorge O. Castro, which are really great persons and very hard workers who push and work a lot for all developers and the community. I’m very sorry for not being able to say good by to them. I left in a hurry and I couldn’t say good bye to a lot of friends.

I also was happy to see to a old good friend and amazing GNOME hacker, Rodrigo Moya, which is now working at Canonical and I hope him the best in this new cycle of his life. Good luck Rodigo! 😉

Another person I met there was David Planella, which is new in Canonical as well, but he isn’t either new in the FLOSS world. He is translator in GNOME, Debian and Ubuntu. And now is the head of the Ubuntu Translations. As far I know he is going to be in charge of the coordination of the Ubuntu translations and the infrastructures around (Rosetta, language-packs and so). He is a really nice guy which seems very implicated and with willing of getting the things working.
I’m especially interested in his area because translations ir one of the biggest issues for Guadalinex and the coordination with him and the Ubuntu translations is very important. We also were talking about help from Guadalinex to test the Spanish translations to be sure the updates don’t break any application in the stables releases (as Jaunty in which is based the last Guadalinex version).

Well this post is long enogh, so I’ll save some thoughts for the next ones 🙂

Happy hacking to every one 😉