The more I listen to the Ubuntu UK podcast, the more this idea grew on me, although it's not specific to them. Since the beginning the Ubuntu UK podcast presenters has decided to tailor their show towards getting the official nod from Mark Shuttleworth. This means keeping it clean, Ubuntu specific and generally positive about Ubuntu. It hasn't stopped them from explaining their bad experiences with Ubuntu so it's reasonably balanced right? Maybe not so much.
It's been kinda obvious for a while that the presenters are either trying to catch the ear of the Ubuntu headhunters, or have caught the ears of those headhunters. In fairness you can't blame them. How many Linux folks either don't make a living from FOSS, or our computing skills at all? Most of us have to use Windows or Macs at work or school, because the IT managers above our pay grades have signed a pact with a snake oil salesperson.
By attracting the eye of the Canonical headhunters, you can pretty much do what you have been doing for free, but as a job. How cool is that? I seriously don't blame them for that. The problem then becomes whose opinion is it they voice? Everyone is sorta representing their employer right? So if you badmouth your employers on Facebook or Twitter, they don't take too kindly. If you reveal some internal staff only incident to the outside world they don't like it. If you discuss the products or services your employer does, you have to be concious of what you say. This means being infected with selective deafness and dumbness when controversial issues are discussed.
In short, you are neutered.
You either have to put your employers side as your own, with some selective differences, so it's not obvious you're a mouthpiece for the company........or you pretend it's not something you know about, are interested in, or have an opinion on.
So what's the difference with FOSS companies? Since time began, you're representative of whoever pays your wages. The difference, is that with companies, you join them as a paid employee. It's not a group of individuals with a common passion who get together on some issue. They congregate because they are paid to congregate. They work on the tasks they are paid to work on. he company was there before they heard of it, it will be there afterwards. You were never an advocate for that company, spending your free time evangelising it's products and services, contributing to it by making it's products and services better before you were an employee.
FOSS starts with the individual. We all start and build our reputations (good, bad and indifferent) as individuals. It's that reputation with everything it's built up, that attracts the eyes of the headhunters. The great thing about FOSS, especially for coders, is that they have a catalogue of previous work to point to as "I did that". That also applies to how we conduct ourselves with others.
Obviously if you become an employee your outlook must change to some degree to respect the people who now pay your wages. If Canonical decide to employ the lead developer being X application, their coding priorities change to put Ubuntu at the top of the list of compatibility. Their focus online then switches to being Ubuntu centric. They can no longer slag off Ubuntu, if they did before.
But can they be honest about their true feelings if they don't match their employers? Does that matter as long as their work is satisfactory?
The reason I'm focussing this post and question about Ubuntu, is that Unity is very divisive. Some of the decisions handed down by Mark Shuttleworth have been divisive within the Ubuntu community. When those decisions are handed down, they are non-negotiable. It doesn't matter if there's a lot of pushback from both inside the Ubuntu community, and outside, in the wider FOSS / Linux community. Where does that leave the formerly independent FOSS people who are now employed by Canonical?
Usually the Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon is sent out to be the lightning rod on these divisive issues. He has to play the politician, in staying reasonably on message, arguing Canonical's case and taking the flak for the changes. In some cases you feel he believes what he's saying, in other cases you get the feeling that he can't possibly believe what he's saying. This also applies to the podcasters who are now (or are trying to become) Canonical employees.
Unity isn't as bad as many make it out to be, although it's still very incomplete, very slow and kinda heavy on resources. It has some features that may work for basic users, but will never appeal to people who need power and customisability from their OS. Despite this, those people can never express those opinions because Canonical need the members of their community with an existing soapbox (paid and unpaid) to endorse the path Canonical are taking, at least in the broad brush strokes.
These are nice people, while they're not lying, the more Canonical go down the path they're on, the more you feel they're not exactly telling the truth either. Their job relies on that. This means it's necessary to reassess who they speak for. On the Ubuntu UK podcast, is it Alan Pope (FOSS evangelist, Ubuntu evangelist) or Alan Pope (Ubuntu employee) who gives an opinion? At what point does this tip over to having a company spokesperson giving the company line?
Most podcasters have no financial stake in the stuff they talk about. This gives them an independence to offer free opinions. You may agree or not with them, but they are seen as independent views.
When was the last time you heard Jono Bacon give an opinion and not wonder if it's his or Canonical's opinion? The same now applies to Alan Pope. This seems to be dipping a toe into the waters of the mainstream tech media, where they endorse their sponsors and advertisers because there's profit in it for the company. Leo Laporte from Twit TV is a joke because his "I've always used that" line to every guest he has on (despite never having heard of it before the interview) is pretty obvious as a shopping channel smarmy deception. None of the Canonical folks have come close to this yet. I hope they never do. They do seem to have been unpaid Ubuntu community people before being employed by Canonical which does change the tune a bit.
I'm sure there's plenty other examples of this in different projects and shows. My sphere of Linux life mainly means Debian / Ubuntu / Mint, so these are examples that have fallen within my sphere.
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Comments
Speaking for themselves but quite obviously 'Pro-Ubuntu'
So let me say that to start off, it may be that Alan's new job does affect how he expresses himself either conciously or sub-conciously I don't believe at this point there have been enough podcasts to draw any conclusions from (since he was hired by Cannonical). If this has a negative effect on the podcast and the listener feels that the podcast no-longer has the style or content that brought them to the podcast in the first place - they can just stop listening. Fundamentally, that Alan is open about the fact that he now works for Cannonical is key as it allows the listener to take this into account when assessing any comments he makes.
I think it is has always been clear - as you mention right at the start of your post that there has always been an agenda to these podcasts - they are produced by the Uk Ubuntu LoCo team - essentially a group of grassroots voluntary advocates for Ubuntu. They are never going to be 'impartial' that's not to say that they act in a false way. If you are going to donate (I'm guessing) 4-6 h of your free time every two weeks to a project (in this case I'm refering to Ubuntu) then this would suggest you are passionate about it and agree in the main with what the project is doing.
Your argument; that rather than believing what they say, they choose to express the company line in hope of being hired is certainly not impossible. It could be that they spend a great deal of their free time expressing opnions they don't really agree with on the 'off-chance' they may be offered a job to be paid to work in a company delivering a product that they 'by extension' don't believe in either. This may be true but seems far-fetched.
The reasons for not spending huge amounts of time complaining about Unity could be as simple as:
To conclude, I'd say that everyone has some sort of agenda behind what they do, people who share their opinions (bloggers, podcasters, tweeters etc) more so. Where we feel someone has no agenda it's only that their agenda closely matches our own and therefore is invisible to us.
Thanks for the well thought out reply
A lot of what you say is fair enough, my point wasn't that they'd have opinions they personally don't hold, but that they'd filter that because it may count against them with their employer. It's a subtle difference.
You are right in saying that Alan doesn't make any secret of his employer, so people can judge for themselves.
They do put a lot of their free time into making a damn good podcast, although Canonical and Ubuntu have changed a lot since they nailed their flags to that mast.
There's a lot to like with Unity. If you're the type who doesn't change the default much (which many of us are) then it's downsides aren't quite as glaring. That aside, can you really see a power user happily using Unity? I can't. This makes me wonder how many of Ubuntu's power users would prefer to use something else day to day, knowing Canonical have nailed their flag to Unity.
Hi Thistleweb
Hi Thistleweb. Your post makes a few interesting points. Hopefully I am in a position to address at least some of them. This might be a bit of a ramble though.
Your respondent above, Dave, makes several good points about listener choice and why we might not spend 4-6 hours a fortnight making a new show about a product we hate. :) Generally, we try to include dissenting views when we discuss an issue as there is nothing particularly interesting in listening to four people agree with each other. Sometimes someone will play Devil's Advocate to help the conversation along.
We also broadcast pretty much all the feedback we get. We just haven't had that much feedback about Unity, good or bad, though we have included some feedback from both sides in recent episodes. I understand that for some people Unity is a "make or break" issue, but it's just not that big a deal for me. It's there and I use it. Of the four presenters, three of us use Unity regularly and don't believe have major issues with it. The other uses KDE. I don't believe I use Unity because it is Canonical's annointed desktop environment per se. It has more to do with it being there and it not annoying me enough to change.
We aim to make a podcast that we want to listen to ourselves, and hope that it appeals to others. It's why we took the decision right from the start to be family-friendly and broadly compliant with the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. I have a great affection for the laddish style of LugRadio, but it wasn't a style of show we wanted to produce.
You're right in that one has to be careful about what is said on the show, and that is the case for all of us. If I mention anything that has happened at work, I do so only in vague terms, enough to make whatever point is being made and no more. That's just life.
Of the four current regular presenters of the show, only Alan is a Canonical employee. Alan has always been more involved with the Ubuntu community than the rest of the presenters, which has been a great way of keeping abreast of topics on the mailing lists and IRC channels. Alan and I are Ubuntu members (I achieved membership a couple of months ago), the others aren't. Speaking personally, it's never been my objective to gain a job at Canonical through the podcast. I've never heard any of the others express that either. We're not supported by Canonical in any way (although they did sponsor the OggCamp events.) I can think of quite a few segments in the past couple of seasons where we've been critical of Canonical's approach.
I can't speak for Alan about whether what he does in work will affect what he can say in the show, but I can say that it won't affect what I can say. :)
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