The Ubuntu developer community conducted a series of public tutorials and discussions on IRC last week during Ubuntu Open Week. The event attracted many enthusiastic Ubuntu users and contributors as well as other members of the open source software community. Many of the Open Week sessions offer valuable technical insight into the development process and provide instructions for new contributors who want to learn how to package software and help fix bugs.

In addition to technical tutorials, Open Week also included a two hour question-and-answer session with Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project and CEO of Canonical. Shuttleworth discussed a wide variety of subjects, ranging from Ubuntu's governance model to plans for the upcoming version of Ubuntu, codenamed Jaunty Jackalope.

Canonical's relationship with Dell is one of the topics that Shuttleworth addressed during the session. The hardware vendor began offering Ubuntu preinstalled on a select assortment of computers last year in response to demand from the Linux enthusiast community. We were impressed when we tested one of Dell's Ubuntu laptops shortly after the launch. Shuttleworth believes that distributing Ubuntu on Dell hardware has been a big success and he says that "the machines are selling well".

"[Dell] clearly sees Linux users as thought leaders," he told Open Week attendees on IRC. "They know it takes a lot of work to do something like Linux well and they work very hard at it, so we appreciate the partnership."

Indeed, Dell's commitment to Linux appears to be growing. Dell is working with component makers to improve the maturity of Linux drivers in order to boost the open source operating system's hardware compatibility. Dell has also introduced DVD playback and media codec support.

A focus on mobile

Shuttleworth also discussed Canonical's partnership with Intel that is focusing on mobile platform development. He sees enormous opportunity for Linux in the mobile device market but believes that the lack of a cohesive ecosystem is going to impede progress on that front.

"Linux is a perfect platform for consumer electronics, and the rate of adoption there is fantastic, but it's highly fragmented. There are many different projects/environments/frameworks for Linux on smartphones," he said. "We have partnered with Moblin from Intel because we think they are committed to a (a) great user experience and (b) open processes and governance. Intel has really set the pace with hardware enablement in free software. They invest a lot in it, and they invest it well—they work like an open source project to a much greater extent than any other manufacturer."

He is "looking forward" to the next major version of the Moblin platform and intends to have the components packaged for Ubuntu. He acknowledges that single-vendor solutions are suboptimal and suggests that success for Linux in the mobile space could depend on multiple hardware manufacturers, mobile operators, and software vendors coming together within a single ecosystem. Moblin could be a good starting point for achieving that goal, he said, and he hopes that the project will grow beyond its Intel roots to attract a community of active contributors and third-party developers.

Responding to critics

Ubuntu Open Week participants also asked Shuttleworth to comment on some of the allegations that have been made by critics of Ubuntu, such as kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman. Kroah-Hartman has condemned Canonical and believes that the company's relatively low involvement in kernel development reflects a serious failure to contribute back to upstream projects. Shuttleworth doesn't accept this assertion and argued that Canonical is making valuable contributions in other areas that move the Linux platform forward.

"The ecosystem is broader, deeper and richer than Greg was making out and those relationships are more complex than Greg was making out. I believe Ubuntu and Canonical are making a very big difference in free software, and that has little to do with how many patches in the kernel have an @canonical.com email address associated with them," he said. "I'm not going to hire lots of people to keep Greg happy. I do continue to hire people to make free software into an amazing experience for me, my friends, my colleagues and peers, and everyone else I meet in a plane, train or on the street."

This approach is exemplified by several of the development projects that Shuttleworth talked about during the question and answer session. Roughly half of Canonical's staff is working full time on Launchpad, the web-based collaborative development platform that is used to facilitate Ubuntu development. Shuttleworth has committed to completely open sourcing Launchpad by the end of 2009.

"When we open source launchpad, we will have more than 100 people doing nothing but hack on free software. I think that's a great contribution for a company of 200 people," he said. "It will be done by November 2009. The team is working through a list of issues already—license checks, separating out pieces that are not related to the web service, determining the right approach for various issues. It may happen sooner, but you have a concrete commitment that it will be done by then."

Another area where Canonical is hoping to make major contributions is in design and usability. Shuttleworth announced in September that the company was planning to hire more professional designers and interaction experts to work with upstream projects on improving the quality of the Linux user experience. In response to an Open Week question about theming for Jaunty Jackalope, Shuttleworth revealed that these plans are moving forward.

"We have been hiring, for months, designers and user experience guys. It has taken much longer than I hoped. That team will be in place in Jan/Feb, I imagine," he said. "Whether their initial work will make a dramatic visual impact on Jaunty, I don't know. I know that other work, on the user experience front, will land, but i'll keep some surprises in store till later. ;-)"

Now that Ubuntu Open Week has passed, the development cycle for Jaunty Jackalope is in full swing. The developers will meet next month in Mountain View for the Ubuntu Developer Summit, where the roadmap for the next release will be formulated. To learn more about Open Week and see complete logs of all of the sessions, check out the Open Week page at the Ubuntu wiki.