Response to Mark Shuttleworth

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/517
"Reflections on Ubuntu, Canonical and the march to free software adoption"

Since the comment feature was broken on marks blog, I figured it was enough of a response that a blog entry would be worth it.

I have long been toted by friends that I can have an inspirational tone to my words at times when my friends need it most.  For sure Mark has trumped me in the inspiration department, and I can't say this is the first time either.

I have had the privilege of "growing up" with a lot of the people Mark mentioned in the article.  Although I've never met 99% of the people I interact with on a consistent basis in person, I have a strange connection with them all and I consider most of them friends.  The bond of people working towards a similar goal has allowed this to happen, and I think thats among the things that Ubuntu offers as well that can easily get overlooked.

My LoCo (District of Columbia/ Washington DC) spent this past weekend sitting at a booth at a local folk festival promoting Ubuntu.  What I was expecting to hear most of the day was that people haven't heard of Ubuntu or Linux, and that I at least would get some great practice in saying the same thing over and over again.  In fact it was quite the opposite.  There were a lot of people that have heard of Ubuntu, most hadn't used it, but some had.  We "gave up" our own laptops that day so we'd have something to demonstrate to the festival participants, and to those people that hadn't used it before but heard of it were quite interested in trying it out after seeing it in action.  The coolest part of the entire day was every time that I handed a free Ubuntu CD to those interested and mentioned that they could try the OS out without any risk of damaging their current OS, they all had this shocked and surprised look on their face with how easy it really was to try Ubuntu out.  I have worked at booths before and never have I had so much fun.  Talking about Ubuntu made the day go by way too fast, I wanted to be there for longer.

I'll continue doing what I have been doing for a good while now.  Making a difference with every opportunity I get.  Ubuntu is one of many, but it definitely makes it easier when everyone I interact with in the Ubuntu community has the same goals that I do.  Although the outside sees contributions in code, those of us on the inside know that what we really do is far greater than bits and bytes will ever be.