PlanetUbuntu

Planet Ubuntu is a window into the world, work and lives of Ubuntu developers and contributors. This page describes the guidelines for posts on the planet, and how to add your blog if you are an Ubuntu Member.

Guidelines

Confidential Information

Ubuntu members who publish blogs on Planet Ubuntu should endeavour to ensure that company confidential information is not posted there. The planet administrators will make a reasonable judgement about the sensitivity of information in blogs re-published there, and will consider requests for the removal of content on those grounds. However, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to establish the confidentiality of any given piece of information, and will not automatically remove posts on request.

You can contact the planet sysadmins by emailing rt@ubuntu.com.

It is imperative that where a post is removed, the relevant user is contacted and respectfully explained the reason why - miscommunication is the main problem in such situations.

Inappropriate Posts

The Code of Conduct applies to all actions by Ubuntu members, including posting to their blogs.

Where a community member is offended by content on another member's blog, the best approach will generally be to attempt to resolve the issue peacefully through respectful discussion. In extremely serious cases and in the event that it is not possible to resolve the issue, the CommunityCouncil can mediate the problem.

By and large, we take a "liberal Western" view of matters moral. That means we don't blush too much when sex is discussed, though we prefer to keep it practical, to keep personal preferences private, and never to criticize or belittle others on gender or sexuality grounds.

If you are contacted by a community member in regard to blog posts, we would ask you to respond to their comments politely and in good faith. Don't let a difference of style or opinion spiral into a conflict which will make it impossible for you to collaborate with that person on matters of mutual interest. No single "set of rules" would let us all get along - but we expect everyone in the Ubuntu community to make a real effort to treat one another respectfully, across great cultural divides.

Language

As a rule of thumb, English should be considered the "lingua franca" of Planet Ubuntu. There are a number of language and locale specific Planets run by Ubuntu LoCo Teams, which are a great way for teams to get news out in their local language. However, the official Ubuntu Planet should attempt to use English where possible to reach the widest possible audience.

Corporate Blogs

Planet Ubuntu is not only a window to the world of individuals who contribute to Ubuntu, it is also a place for companies. Given the unique nature of corporations, a few additional guidelines are in place:

  • posts to be of a non-advertising nature
  • Planet should only be subscribed to a subset of blog entries where a conscious decision is made to put the blog post on Ubuntu Planet. For example, tagging entries with an "ubuntuplanet" tag, and subscribing planet to a feed of blog posts with that tag, would be acceptable. This is to allow a corporation to have a single blog with more advertising style posts that don't get syndicated.

  • the CommunityCouncil must give permission

  • there is a 3 month trial period at which point the CC review
  • the company must have at least one Ubuntu member who can take responsibility for the blog
  • the company must demonstrate sustained and active interest in the Ubuntu community

Current approved Corporate Blogs are:

  • Canonical Blog
  • Oxford Archaeology blog

Adding Your Blog

To add your feed to Planet Ubuntu, you must be an Ubuntu Member and have been added to the ~ubuntumembers Launchpad team or one of its subteams, and your ssh key must be included in your Launchpad account information.

Separating Content

You may want to tag or label individual posts or categorize only some posts to be aggregated in Ubuntu Planet. Different blogging software have different ways of providing feeds that will only aggregate posts you mark or tag under an "ubuntu-planet" category, for example.

Adding Your Feed

You first need to add an SSH public key to your launchpad account, if you haven't done so already. You can do this from here:

https://launchpad.net/~/+editsshkeys

Then to add your feed, first install the "bzr" package if you haven't done so already: 

$ sudo apt-get install bzr

Then tell bzr your name and email address. It's best to use an email address associated with your Launchpad account: 

$ bzr whoami "Example User <user@example.com>"

Next, check out the configuration files from the launchpad bzr tree. 

$ bzr launchpad-login yourusername
$ bzr checkout lp:~planet-ubuntu/config/main planet-ubuntu
$ cd planet-ubuntu/

Warning /!\ If you don't have the host key for bazaar.launchpad.net, initial checkout will ask you to authenticate. The RSA key fingerprint for this host is: 9d:38:3a:63:b1:d5:6f:c4:44:67:53:49:2e:ee:fc:89

Warning /!\ If this checkout fails with a "No branch found" message, it is likely that you are not listed as an Ubuntu Member. Read more about how the new member process works. If the checkout fails with a Permission denied error, it is likely that your SSH key isn't in Launchpad, or that you have your username wrong.

Next, place your hackergotchi1 into the heads/ subdirectory: 

$ cp ~/hackergotchi.png heads/yourusername.png
$ bzr add heads/yourusername.png

If you don't have a hackergotchi to add right away, comment out the line (using # at the beginning) or leave the entire line out.

Once you've done that, add a stanza like the following to the end of the config.ini file: 

[http://blog.example.com/~yourusername/feed?category=ubuntu-only]
name = Your Name Here
face = yourusername.png
nick = yourusername

Warning /!\ Please use your real name at least somewhere in the 'name' field.
Warning /!\ Please use your Launchpad ID in the 'nick' field.

When you are satisfied that your entry is correct, it's time to check in your changes: 

$ bzr diff
$ bzr commit -m "Added yourusername to Planet Ubuntu"

Warning /!\ Please note that Planet runs from cron, and it relies on the work of some periodic events on the Launchpad server. Your changes could take up to two hours to take effect.

Removing Your Feed

If you no longer want your blog to appear on Planet Ubuntu, you can follow these steps. If you are no longer an Ubuntu member and would like your feed removed, please contact the Ubuntu Community Council.

This section assumes that you added a feed earlier, are an Ubuntu Member, and have the ssh keys and bzr setup correctly. Please do not remove any feeds but your own.

You need to start with a clean, updated copy of planet-ubuntu: 

$ bzr checkout lp:~planet-ubuntu/config/main planet-ubuntu
$ cd planet-ubuntu/

First, find and remove your hackergotchi. 

$ bzr rm heads/yourusername.png

Once you've done that, find your stanza in the config.ini file, and remove it with the editor of your choice. This will be the line that points to your blog.

When you are satisfied that your removal was done correctly, it's time to check in your changes: 

$ bzr diff
$ bzr commit -m "Removed yourusername from Planet Ubuntu"

Warning /!\ Please note that Planet runs from cron, and it relies on the work of some periodic events on the Launchpad server. Your changes could take up to two hours to take effect.

  1. Your hackergotchi should be scaled to roughly 100x100 pixels, give or take. (1)

PlanetUbuntu (last edited 2024-02-20 14:35:36 by merlijn-sebrechts)