A stricter direction

https://blog.ubports.com/2017/04/26/a-resolution-to-agree-on.html

This is a response to Dear Marius Gripsgard by Dalton, Jan, Chloe, Florian, Marius Quabeck.

This has been written with lots of thinking and with help from talking to other big open source project leaders and other communities.

This has also been hard for me to write, I know this will upset the people that created "Dear Marius Gripsgard", and I really want them to stay and that we still are friends after this. But after lots of thinking, I think this is necessary. And I'm sorry if I upset someone with this.

I'm probobly not a good leader, but I try the best I can. I try my best to make everyone happy. And I try my best make Ubuntu touch for everyone. I give so much off my free time to work on this. This project has been a big part of my life. And with that it's really sad to get this written to me.

History

First off I will start with some history of this project. This project started with me wanting to port Ubuntu touch to my Oneplus one, and the Oneplus one port has been a successful port, and people still say it's one of the best Ubuntu touch device. While porting this device, I ran into lots of issues with no clear to answer online, and with this frustration I started a forum to called ubports to have one place where the developers of the different ports and in hope that we can help new ports. And now after 2 years of non stop work creating our own android tree based on cyanogenmod, porting to new devices, providing ota and many other thing, ubports has transformed into something completely different, now suddenly ubports maintain a whole OS

Who wrote the “Dear Marius Gripsgard”

That was written by Dalton, Jan, Chloe, Florian, Marius Quabeck from the “Community team”. This was not written by any of the developers at ubports.

My response

“We are writing this as a last resort: we've all talked to you about these exact issues before and been either ignored or brushed off. We're tired of this, and so is the community at large.”

The only time this was talked to me about was when the Unity8 issue happened, I did my best to do what you guys wanted me to do, I thought we sorted that issue out. We had an two hangout call where we stat for hours just talked to each other but none told me this. And now I get this?

“Infrastructure changes or improvements can only be made by you for many services (whether it's because you're the only one with credentials or the knowledge of how they're built). What about the "Team" DigitalOcean account? What happens if you are stricken by hit-by-a-bus syndrome? Where will we be?”

This is false, I’m not the only one with full access to all the servers and Infrastructure, there is 3 other developers that has full access and every part is build on nodejs and follows a common nodejs style so any nodejs developer should be able to pick up my work and both improve and change it.

“There's no direction to our project. We don't have a good definition of milestones or dependencies, we don't even have much of a hierarchy.”

The goal was to “port” to as many devices as we can, and with this ubports was gonna be the “help” for developers to port to there devices. With this developers would maintain there own port and with that each developers had there own “plan”. That goal is still the same but at the same time different then what the “new” goal that got spawned after the news about canonical dropping Ubuntu touch this news is really new, and the direction is still not clear since the news is still so fresh.

“your code fixes are only released when you so wish. Case in point: October 21st of 2016, when you told us that you have Android Marshmallow sources that boot UBports that could be used as a starting point. It is now April 23rd of 2017 with no Android 6 sources.”

First off, who made the code? Does it not make sense that when I made the code, I can also decide when or if I want to release it? Most of the time there is a reason why I don’t release unfinished and code that does not work, and many times when I release it the “unfinished” code that I hold off on release is not the same because I scrapped it? And many of the early code is “proof of consept” and also to get a better understanding on what im working on. And for the Android 6 sources, it was “booting” yes, but only into adb shell nothing else working, it was “hacked” together as a proof of consept, and I said that! But the reason why it’s not out yet is that we will skip android 6 and jump to 7 instead.

“Another case: when you sprung on the developers that UBports was going to take a path more similar to SFOS for hardware enablement. This was decided by only you while at a conference. See the last heading.”

This was not something that was decided or something that we said we want to do, this was simply an idea and something we want to do. And this was not something I spawned alone, this was something that was discussed by the developers, we have a talk with some guys from sailfish at ubucon. And on top of that, this is a decision for the developers to take. This is a hard low level topic.

“Yet another: the fact that UBports was forking Unity 8. Without consulting any of UBports.”

Yet again, This was a decision taken by the developers, the decision was taken by the people that will do the work! But then, a fork is just a “copy” of a code, a fork does not mean “to continue and maintain”. A fork is simply a copy you have control over. With this you can submit the fixes you want, send the fixed you made back to the people that made it or import changes that is made by the owner or other forks. The reason for a such fork is so we have a place where we can freely work and improve on the things that matter to us.

“It's a terrible idea to give criticism without saying how to fix the problem. This is what this project needs to stay afloat:

* A team of people to make the decisions, not one person.

Again there is not only one! same 3 other persons (developers) that has full access has also full right to make decisions at the same level as I do.

* A sense of community, a listening atmosphere between developers, teams, and the people who support us.

It’s really not clear for me what you want here, we have 6 telegram groups, forums and mailing list.

The new direction!

I have been too soft, I have allowed myself to accept been yelled at because I didn’t release unfinished code, been yelled at for forking things, been yelled at for setting up build servers. And with this I got scared the they would be upset at me and at the same time ubports need all help it can get, so I let them create a “Community team” (this happened after the unity8 fork thing), I invited them into our github repo. And I let them do what they want, and now it feel like they want to control more! This is how I personally feel. They have done great work for the community and the docs and blogs that’s why I gave them full access to those things and I trusted them, and I have to thank them for there work. But now it seems like they want to have a word in if I release my own work unfinished code or if we work unity8 or not and even have full access to the servers and infrastructure.

And after the unity8 issue they went behind my back and edited the unity8 webpage, and I just silently “allowed” that, all I did was write a message to the one that did it…

So the new direction will be more strict and straight forward, There will be 4 people that has full access to all the servers and infrastructure and has the same right as me to decide things in the Ubports project, these people are: Me, Nils, Ricardo and Peat. These are the core developers that I trust 100%.

Decisions wont get taken behind the back without listen to the community at all, but with that said decisions like forking unity8 might be taken without talking to everyone in the community. After talking with other open source communities i learned that this is how most of the Open source project work where we have board members that decide thing. This is no different, this follows exactly as many other open source projects does it. That is a known method that works.

For the next month this direction will get impoved and added the details and a more clear roadmap and thins that needs to be done. I want to make it easier for people to see what needs to be done, and where people can help out. I also want to follow how other open source project handle this, that way we use a known method to drive the project.