Ubuntu Touch Q&A 136 Call For Questions
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@domubpkm I would take advantage of this question to ask if Marius Gripsgard, the UBports founder, is still around. It's been a while, couple of years at least, that I see him not participating anymore to devs activities, publicly at least, and very seldom to Q&As, even though in one of the last appearences he said that he would have wanted to become the UBports main reference, but since then he quite disappeared. Looking also at modifications and PRs in preparation of the last OTAs, apparently his contributions became marginal. Thank you in advance. Matteo
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@matteo thanks to Alfred who replied to this question in last Q&A, even though I deem his reply is a bit disappointing for the reason I want to share with you. In my opinion, Marius isn't any random dev, he is the dev who made all of this to happen, who had the courage to keep up the development of UT after Canonical quit. If he lost interest in UT, I would like to know as an enthusiast user and financier of UT at the same time. This to understand if my financing at UT is still fine (I wish to know where my money is going, which is just a little contribution, but granted for many years so far), or maybe I should better orientate my contribution directly to devs nowadays active with UT (like Alfred and others are, for instance). Don't take this wrong: Marius has the right to do whatever he likes the best with his life, same as all people involved with UT, but I think a little bit of more transparency should be sought here.
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@matteo Well, Iet's hope that because of different reasons, a generalized burnout doesn't affect all the UBports team
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@matteo said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 136 Call For Questions:
If he lost interest in UT, I would like to know as an enthusiast user and financier of UT at the same time.
I recently saw him on a meeting of the Board of Trustees. He is certainly not dead or gone.
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System unpinned this topic on
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Hi @matteo
I understand your concern, but UBports is a community first.
Which means it is made of humans sharing a common goal/philosophy.I personally think, on the matter of transparency that UBports as a foundation is pretty good.
I think you ask about the monetary aspect of the foundation, but I would like to understand what is precisely your request?
Where the money is spent?
Who are the paid developers?
Who are the main contributors (who might deserve your contribution more)?I think we tried to explain some aspects during previous Q&A, but I found it important that people can trust the foundation with donations.
And trust that the foundation will use the money in the best interest of the project at heart.This topic echoes our calls to membership.
Because the foundation needs trustee members in order to steer the money where the members thinks it's relevant.So just to be clear, the foundation is not a company which means the goal is not to make money.
UBports is a community most of the work is done by volunteers on their free time.
The foundation's purpose is to supports financially and helps the community to do the job with infrastructure, partnership and some paid hours in some cases. -
@AppLee hi, thank you for replying to me, really appreciated. Let me better explain what I mean with my post. First, I would like to clarify that I really believe in this project and in what the UBports Community is trying to bring forward, with a lot of struggling, i.e. the development of an OS which is different from all the rest. I trust this Community, I believe in free software in general and in Linux in particular and I'm grateful to all the devs that so far worked actively into development. I'm raising this topic since I'm with you when you say that, quote "people can trust the foundation with donations" unquote, and this is exactly the reason why I'm afraid there might be a loss of interest in UT and diminishing of donations. I followed the development of this OS since the very beginning, since when Marius announced to the World (the niche of it of course) that he would have stepped in to keep up the development of UT. For many years he was by himself the driving force of this Community and really he, and couple of fellow devs, lifted all the work burden alone. In last years, I noticed his involvement has restrained a lot: in the last months I just remember of him few announcements to say that he wants to be still the reference for this project, that he is working on topic such as VoLTE or AGPS and nothing else more. Other than the announcements I cannot see any practical signs of what he did in this regards nor whether he found any roadblockers or where we are at, what's the state of the art for each of the topics. I see him not participating publicly to this Forum at all, nor in any Telegram channel or any other channel that I'm aware of. What I see instead is a bunch of devs trying to keep the development on track with too many efforts to be done in their spare time: their pain is my pain. Unfortunately I have no particular skills in development, even though I tried in the past to get my hands dirty with couple of apps but when you come to development at low level, I simply am not able to comply with since in my daily life I do something completely different from coding. I try to help as much as I can in other ways, one way is with monetary contribution. I still follow updates here in the Forum and in Telegram even though I recently am less active at writing. When I talk about transparency, it's mostly related to Marius because he is the Founder and I wish to know if he is still motivated or not and this may orientate my donation as well. In the latter case, I may prefer to finance the people, directly or indirectly, who has the coding knowledge and I recognize are doing very recently a great job, let me mention for instance Jami, Raoul, Florian who put a lot of efforts in the past, Mike Gabriel and Alfred, as I deem they deserve to be rewarded for all the work done somehow. Problem is I don't even know if the money I'm sending to UBports reaches them in some ways, since I don't know how all the donations are employed inside the foundation. If you can enlighten me I'd appreciate. Thank you in advance.
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@matteo Thanks for the explanation.
Your question is being discussed on what can be done to show how donations are used.
But that's out of my hands and it might take time.Regarding the contributors you've cited, there is no doubt about there involvement and I understand where all this come from.
I don't have anything to support what I will throw out here, so take it for what it is ; just my two cents
But I believe the best way to insure that your donation is useful and impactful is IMHO to donate to the foundation.
Because as I already stated this is its goal.
When I read the list of contributors you've given I notice some invaluable members that you did not mentioned.
Yes Marius is a public figure for the project, the community and the foundation, but regarding VoLTE for example, NotKit and Ivan are also invested in this topic. Whose contribution is the best, more impactful and all? I don't know
I repeat this is just my personal opinion, but to avoid ignoring someone's contribution I prefer to rely on the foundation to search for and bring contributors together and help them achieve the best outcome possible.If I may, your point of view at the moment may seems fair and is understandable. But I think it is not applicable in the case of an open source community effort where the money is not the objective.
I don't think developers contribute because they expect something in return. They do this because they want it to be better and if they can help in some way that's already a great satisfaction.
Of course we're all different and have different personal situation.
Money is certainly part of the equation, but that is not the reason why any us, community members, are here. Money helps that's why we ask to donate, but manpower is the most important contribution, translation, community management, communication, design, development, ...
And I dare to hope that one day we might be able to lobby politician and contribute to laws helping open source projects and privacy oriented devices...I start to here Dr Martin Luther King Jr in my head which means I'm getting carried out too much, so I'll stop there
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@AppLee thank you again for your valid points and your valuable reply. Of course I may have forgotten other important people who are contributing to develop the OS, my bad. But my comment was intended to be general and not specific. I agree with you that for a developer the best reward should be the satisfaction for the work done but I also believe that a monetary reward might help and motivate more a dev, otherwise why are we normal users encouraged to donate, if not for this reason? Said that, I hope this project will thrive more and more and think that people motivated and dedicated to that do deserve more. Sadly I deem that UBports Founder isn't that anymore, therefore others shall take his place. Keep up the good work. Best regards. Matteo
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Without wishing to get involved in this intractable debate, I think it's difficult for us to rate the work of developers, whatever their position, on the basis of their public appearances.
Most people in the community work behind the scenes. Some exchange more frequently on the Telegram Dev channel, others less. Some slow down, then get back more actively.
Some leave, others join... Thus I guess it's hard to get a snapshot of our most deserving members.As AppLee rightly points out, the UBports Foundation - in accordance with its articles of association - is officially entrusted with the task of managing resources as best it can according to the needs of the project at hand. Elected members of the UBports Foundation Board of Directors are its auditors.
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Again @matteo,
I understand your point of view and agree about rewarding the work done.
Marius will always remain founder of UBports, and no one can take away his personal contributions to Ubuntu Touch.
I'm not saying you implied otherwise but that should be clear
.As for his current whereabouts, only he can answer that.
I personally don't know, but even if I did, I'm not one to speak for others without their consent...This is my final comment on the topic as I don't want this question to be more than it is, but I wanted to answer as I didn't want this question to be seen as taboo.
And I hope it's enough transparency for the moment.
And as I said the concerns you raised were heard and we (I'm a trustee now) will try to address it because transparency is really important for this community.
Thank you for the talk it's always interesting to see things through the eyes of someone else.Cheers.
