In a blog post from UDS, Charles Profitt writes about how the Ubuntu community is evolving and changing as it grows more popular and becomes perhaps “mainstream.” He talks about how “new members of our community come from a different culture; they are used to faceless corporations ignoring them unless they act rude and obnoxious.” And I would like to disagree with him on this.
I think more and more people are using Ubuntu who just want to use Ubuntu and don’t really care about giving back to the project. In fact I am quickly becoming one of those members of the community. When I first joined the Ubuntu project during the Warty Warthog release it was because I was looking for a way to give back to a project. I spent my days as the computer guy for a private company doing everything from password resets and unjamming printers to more technical things like server administration. I was looking for a way to challenge myself and learn something new during the evening hours and to give back some how to a community of people.
I have found over the releases that more and more I just want to use a piece of technology that just works and meets my needs without having to tinker with the little bits and pieces. The GREAT news is that 90% of the time Ubuntu works for my personal computing needs. Granted professionally I have had some problems using Ubuntu in my day to day needs but that’s a whole different story.
Soon I maybe joining the group of “users” who don’t contribute back to the community as much as others do, but it’s not because I’m used to corporations ignoring me, its because I’ve finally found a way to get things done the way I want to get them done.
