Welcome to 2012!
At this time of year I like to read forward-thinking and philosophical writings. It's one of the ways I try to "reboot" my thinking processes and clear the way for new ideas. In that quest today, I discovered an interesting and helpful research paper on Ubuntu written by Tom Bennett at the University of Cape Town entitled "Ubuntu: An African Equity."
Though written in the context of law several ideas presented resonated with what I've seen both online and in the "in-real-life" community.
"It must be remembered that ubuntu is a "loan word" in English, which suggests that it was adopted to signify a phenomenon that was never before expressed in its new environment.(1)
This makes a lot of sense. Ubuntu is indeed novel to both the computer realm and to western-centric cultures and therefore is confusing a lot of people, especially journalists. What is it? It's software, right? How does something from Africa matter to computing?
A new word is a solution to a problem. Often the need is obvious, but sometimes it is unseen or barely felt, and then it is only in finding something to plug the gap that we actually realise the gap was there in the first place.(2)
Of your three closest friends or family members, how many of them understand the problem that Ubuntu is designed to solve? How many of them are actually using Ubuntu as their primary operating system? How many of them are aware that Ubuntu is "not just software"? How many of them care?
Ubuntu involves more than entitlements to equal treatment or fair play. It also obliges the individual “to give the same respect, dignity, value and acceptance to each member of [the] community. More importantly, it regulates the exercise of rights by the emphasis it lays on sharing and co-responsibility and the mutual enjoyment of rights by all".(3)
I think this is profound. The notion that any of us are entitled to Ubuntu is false. One might argue that we are entitled to it to the extent that we contribute to it. Have your friends downloaded Ubuntu? Have they used it? Have they given something back to the project? Have they joined an Ubuntu group in their town? Why not?
All of these excerpts point to a need we have in the Ubuntu Community. We have much educational (and marketing) work to do, and it's bigger than software. We need to teach people what Ubuntu is, how it works, and what problems it is designed to solve.
I hope everyone had a great New Year holiday and is ready for the 2012 challenge: to take Ubuntu across the chasm and to the other 99%+ of the world.