Hello everyone, I am a user of Ubuntu Touch since February 2015, first developed by Canonical, and then developed by UBports since January 2018. I am using and enjoying this OS as my mainly drive. I have seen that UBports team is serious and dedicated to the project, maybe too much, as they are 24/7 working on it, just take a look at the Telegram groups.
UT has evolved and improved a lot until today. Now it has a very good visual and performance level, and thanks to the latest device ports you can use modern mobile phones.
It pains me to see that the project could go much better and that most of the users won't fully support it.
We need the whole community contributing and by that I mean the whole community, which is not the reality nowadays. I see that people think donating money is for others, that some other user who has more cash will donate, that we don't have so much money than others. We want a free OS with good apps, and we don't pay for it. Yes, great!
Ubuntu Touch could have been based on Ubuntu 20.04 a long time ago and we are still here on 16.04. What is the reason for this failure? Its users… those of us who use Ubuntu Touch, don't make any effort and don't care to fight for this. So, if UT stops being developed it won't matter either, because Android is better, right?
I do not understand it, we are more than 5000 users and the funding of this great project is nearly nothing, about 10% of users donate to UBports. I can understand those who live in countries with low purchasing power, countries mostly located in Asia, Africa or South America, but surely more than half of users live in countries with high purchasing power, even so, the amount of donations received is laughable and this is not a joke. UBports does not finance itself, you think of the expenses: lawyers, developers, servers, etc.
This petition is not only for the foundation, it is also for the app developers. App developers do not receive money for their hard work, I mean only few people have donated to them. Developers need money to eat, not just enough for a coffee. I have seen the money that some developers receive in Liberapay and is shameful: 1000 downloads of 1 app and we donate 20 € a year? Do you want good apps? Apps of all kinds, that are as cool as those of Android?
Well, it looks like in reality we don’t. The users of this community do not fork their money out. Developers are discouraged by the huge effort and leave, so we end up with apps that do not get updates and when we'll move to 20.04 will be left to rotten. Don't you think that we could change this?
An OS without apps is nothing. Ubuntu Touch being good is not enough if it is getting behind Ubuntu desktop.
I want you to think about another way to earn money, would you like to have ads on the UBports forum, like XDA developers do, or would you like to have ads in the apps you use often? It's a way to finance, others do it, why couldn't they do that?
Personally I don't like that idea, but maybe you do. There is one thing this OS is known about: its privacy and there is nothing private about ads. You go to XDA developers website and you will see the same ads as on the pages you browse, it's not very private, is it?
I would like that the 2500 users that live in developed countries would tell me that they can not contribute 5 € per month to UBports and app developers. 5 € you save in beers one day, tell me really… would it ruin you? Would it ruin your holidays?
I understand that there are so many monthly payments to do. You can't help everyone but this OS needs the donations from its users. A fixed donation per month, imagine it is sort of gas or electricity bill but in this case to help to support your favorite OS.
• Do you want privacy?
• Do you want an open source OS?
• Do you want Ubuntu on your mobile?
• Do you want a secure OS?
• Do you want to use desktop apps on your mobile?
• Do you want to use Android apps?
• Do you want your mobile to be your computer?
If we don't move forward in 5 years we will continue as today, having an old and left behind OS.
We need more developers for Ubuntu Touch and more cool open source apps.
What are you waiting for? You are the solution to the problem, you can enjoy the best OS on your mobile, it can be done in a short time, we all have to support this project.
We need all the users of this community to donate money, those who can't, because of their low purchasing power 1€ a month is also a valuable contribution, those who live in countries with higher purchasing power could donate 5€, 10€, 15€, 20€ or more per month.
Guys, wake up. We have to help Marius, Florian, Alfred and all those community developers who make us enjoy Ubuntu Touch, the project has to go on like any flavour of Ubuntu, specially now that Dalton needs to recover, his exhaustion can only be fixed by himself, spending a lot of time resting, I hope he recovers and comes back to us.
Thank you all...