Todays show was brought to you by the letter C and the number 3.

Part three in my review of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct takes me to yet another word beginning with C. Having spoken often about community, commitment and creativity tonights post is about Collaboration. So lets review the 3rd article of the code of conduct.

Be collaborative.
Ubuntu and Free Software are about collaboration and working together. Collaboration reduces redundancy of work done in the Free Software world, and improves the quality of the software produced. You should aim to collaborate with other Ubuntu maintainers, as well as with the upstream community that is interested in the work you do. Your work should be done transparently and patches from Ubuntu should be given back to the community when they are made, not just when the distribution releases. If you wish to work on new code for existing upstream projects, at least keep those projects informed of your ideas and progress. It may not be possible to get consensus from upstream or even from your colleagues about the correct implementation of an idea, so don’t feel obliged to have that agreement before you begin, but at least keep the outside world informed of your work, and publish your work in a way that allows outsiders to test, discuss and contribute to your efforts.

Recently , as the UkTeam headed towards the Linux World Expo in London ( yes I am more repetive than Dvorak ) the UKTeam for Ubutnu recognised the need for a new logo that could be used to represent their Loco Team. In this case a number of graphically talented individuals rose to the Jono set challenge to create the Ubuntu-UK Team Logo. As is the way in things Community driven the Logos were presented for inspection, comment and review. Certainly a number of revisions went on and comments and criticisms ( more words that begin with C ) aided in the creation ( another C ) of the new Ubuntu Uk Team logo that is visible here.

Whilst part three discusses the issues of Collaboration in terms of code contribution it is clear that this section extends into more areas than SVN , or CVS repository update. It is about communication, co-operation and collaboration all aspects of which the creation of excellent and effective software like Ubuntu cannot be achieved. Congratulations to Schwuk for the final design .

How does this affect my view on the code of conduct? I would say that having been involved in the community for several years now the real changes are made not through force of will or personality but by providing the community with an answer and then by working to implement it through collaboration. The logo design in my mind was a working example of collaboration in action and one more reason to be committed to the code.

Thanks for reading.