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Ubuntu NL

General information

A short history of Ubuntu NL

Ubuntu NL was founded in 2004 and is one of the LoCos that became de-facto approved. In the past six years, the Dutch LoCo has evolved from a small group on IRC into a very active forum, as well as developing a reasonable amount of activities outside the forum. Before the official Ubuntu Pastebin service was launched, Ubuntu NL provided the most possible pastebin solution in the Ubuntu Community. The 'sources.list' generated a lot of traffic in the early years of Ubuntu's existence.

Despite some internal struggles, the community is going strong and growing strong.

The bulk of the Ubuntu NL community is centred around the Ubuntu NL Forum, and until recently it was not possible to join the Ubuntu NL team on Launchpad if you weren't a member of the Ubuntu NL Team. Now anyone can join the open team ubuntu-nl-community, but our new Launchpad-policy is still in its infancy, as can be seen from the low membership of this new team. A better indication of the community's size are the 70+ users in the #ubuntu-nl IRC channel and the more than 20,000 registered users on the Ubuntu NL Forum.

Miscellaneous activities

Ubuntu NL is supporting one of its community members with the founding of a new LoCo 'Ubuntu Fry', which wants to serve the province of Friesland in the North of the Netherlands, where the main language is not Dutch but Frisian.

Ubuntu NL is closely cooperating with Ubuntu BE and many Flemish Ubuntu BE members can be found in the communication channels of Ubuntu NL. For the whole Dutch-speaking Ubuntu community there is one IRC channel, one forum and one translation team.

Several forum members have been running an effort to collect redundant PCs in the Netherlands. The collected PCs were subsequently shipped to Africa, where a community member helped with installing the computers with Ubuntu.

Forum Team

The Ubuntu NL Forum can be found at forum.ubuntu-nl.org and is also used by the Dutch-speaking part of Ubuntu BE for providing support and to chat. On 1 october 2010 the forum had more then 56000 topic and more then 650000 messages.

The last few months the Ubuntu NL Forum has seen changes to its structure: the subforas 'Translations', 'Documentation', 'Promotion' and 'Artwork' were completely opened up to allow anyone who wants to contribute to cooperate, without having to become a member of the Ubuntu NL Team. This also has the consequence that members of other subteams can partake in the discussions of other subteams.

The 'Off-topic' subforum was moved down a bit to reduce the attention it gets.

There was also a 'For sale & Want To Buy' subforum added. This is meant as a place where registered forum members can swap or sell hardware. Acts of friendship. (Special prices.)

We've had a 'Board Community Council & Forum Delegation' in which delegates from the regular members could discuss matters together with the Community Council. The subforum of this board has been completely opened up so all registered members can contribute their opinions concerning all kinds of different subjects, contributing to a better an opener community. The members behave excellent. The idea behind this is to have good conversations and listen to each other, rather than only trying to get it your way.

The subforum for the Ubuntu NL Team where the Team members and moderators could discuss has been split in two. The Ubuntu NL Team has moved its conversations to public communication channels; the moderators have moved to a dedicated private subforum, which is only accessible by them. This is done to make sure every moderator can freely express his or her opinion, without having to be afraid of the repercussions when the forum members would find out who was in favour of which decision.

The moderator team has changed its name and was extended by several members of the former Forum Delegation. They are now called the 'Forumteam', which describes the team's purpose better. A moderator is more someone who is constantly following a conversation and intervenes when necessary. This is not possible on this forum, because there isn't always someone present who is responsible for this. Our time is limited since we are volunteers. The 'Forumteam' first consults before a punishment for a breach of the rules is enacted. At least every moderation act is reported, to make sure the other members of the 'Forumteam' are notified.

Because there has been quite some turnover in the moderator team and we are busy implementing the changes on the forum that are the result of Ubuntu NL's aim for more openness, the 'Forumteam' is still busy growing and accommodating to the changes. It isn't always easy, but we're getting there.

IRC Team

Promotion

History

Releaseparty's in The Netherlands

Ubuntu-NL has a strong history of organizing Ubuntu releaseparties in The Netherlands. There have been big parties with several hundreds of visitors in 2007 in Hilversum, and in 2008 in Amsterdam. The results were very good, however, the task of organizing such a big event proved to be a lot of work for one person. The decision was made to try to organize multiple smaller parties instead of one big party. For the winter release of 2008, several smaller parties were organized by community members in Apeldoorn, The Hague and Groningen.

In December, a discussion was started by several community members about the future of organizing releaseparties. There was a call for more support to community members willing to organize such a release party. From this discussion, a group with active community members was formed who gave themselves the task to support future organisers of smaller releaseparties, and to act as a bridge between the Ubuntu NL Team and the organizers. The result of this effort was a big success. The next five releaseparties in Apeldoorn, Drachten, Oss, Groningen and The Hague in the spring of 2009 were sponsored by several companies. Flyers promoting the four parties were distributed throughout The Netherlands, a new releaseparty wiki was made to inform organisers and volunteers and to manage subscriptions. The organizing community was very enthusiast about the new approach. Several members of this releaseparty support group were added to the Ubuntu NL Team.

The next release, the largest club of computer and electronics users in Europe—the Dutch organisation 'HCC!'—was contacted to work together organising releaseparties. The result of this joint effort was the Ubuntu releaseparty on the 'HCC! Linux Thema Dag 2009' and the Ubuntu stand on the 'HCC! dagen 2009'. Lots of visitors got acquainted with Ubuntu on these big events and the party in Oss. The cooperation with HCC! was continued in the form of an 8 person team, consisting of members from Ubuntu NL and HCC!, working together with the communities and several companies to organize the large Ubuntu Releaseparty 2010 with 28 lectures and workshops, and a lot of interesting stands, nice prizes to be won (new laptop and server and lots of goodies), and a high profile location in the center of The Netherlands. Two smaller parties were organized by community members without official support in Utrecht and Tilburg.

Pictures about all the party's mentioned and the party's organized in Belgium by Ubuntu BE can be found in the Releaseparty Hall of Fame: http://wiki.ubuntu-nl.org/community/ReleasepartyWiki/HallOfFame. The close ties between Ubuntu NL and the Dutch-speaking part of Ubuntu BE is shown here clearly, as both LoCos use shared infrastructure to promote release parties—the website eleaseparty.eu—and several members were active in organising events across the border.

Videos of the talks held by Ubuntu NL members at a release party organised by Ubuntu BE can be found at http://ubuntubenelux.blip.tv/posts?view=archive&nsfw=dc.

Stands on events

Ubuntu-NL has manned stands on quite a lot of events the past few years. The T-DOSE, Software Freedom Day events, Olster Jaarmarkt, the 'HCC! Dagen 2009', the 'HCC! Regiodagen Drachten 2009' and more.

Other initiatives

Community sponsored Ubuntu posters in public buses

To promote the Ubuntu Releaseparty 2010 locally in Ede city, 29 local buses were driving around with posters advertizing this releaseparty. The posters were sponsored by community members, and this was also mentioned on the poster: "This poster was sponsored by: Name of the Sponsor".

Ubuntu promotion in magazines, books

The last years several community members wrote articles for computer magazines in the Netherlands. The magazines were: "Linux Magazine, ComputerIdee, and PCTotaal". Also there was a chapter about the Ubuntu community in the "Open Source Jaarboek 2009" that is aimed at a professional public and politicians.

A post stamp was designed

In December 2007, a Ubuntu post stamp was designed. People can actually use this post stamp as a legal post stamp: http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/8928/rb071210ubuntupostzegeltm3.jpg

Spreading Ubuntu cd's in a library

A test is being held to see if setting up a promotion stand with ubuntu cd's and ubuntu books in a local library is a good way to spread ubuntu. People can borrow a cd with a book. Flyers are also present with short installation instructions.

Present

At the moment we made the decision as a team that it was a bit too much the past years, so we decided to shift focus from organizing releaseparties to be present at non-open source events, promoting Ubuntu there. Our goal is to reach out to the non-technical users, who usually cannot be found on the releaseparties and other computer-related events. Only the spring release will have releaseparties supported by the Team.

There is also a community member experimenting with a presentation of Ubuntu CDs in combination with some documentation and books about Linux in a local library. If this will prove to be a success, it may turn out to be a good way to promote Ubuntu throughout the rest of the Netherlands as well.

Future

Next spring we want to organise several smaller releaseparties. Until then, our focus is to set up an official foundation. The main reason for this is to provide our volunteers with correct insurance coverage and protect them against possible trouble that may arise when things go wrong. Canonical has been contacted with regard to this, but at the moment the Ubuntu NL Team isn't fully in favour of founding the foundation immediately.

Translation Team

All Dutch translations for Ubuntu are done via the Dutch Translation Team. There is no separate team for Ubuntu BE. This is the same situation as GNOME NL, which name should be translated as 'GNOME Dutch' rather than 'GNOME The Netherlands'.

History

In the beginning there was no real "translation team", so everybody who wanted to translate helped out. We also organised a translation sprint in a "chalet" in the Veluwe woods one wintery weekend which resulted in a lot of translations. At some point most of this old informal translation team got busy with other things, and although some translations were done still, there was a period when there was no real team of people coordinating with each other anymore.

This changed a couple of years ago when a new person took over the team. TODO (cumulus moet hier maar kort vertellen wat hij gedaan heeft)

Present

Ubuntu Manual

The Dutch Translation Team have recently completed the translation of the Ubuntu Manual Lucid Lynx (158 pages!). It will be published shortly. We feel that this is a valuable project for new users, who might know very little about Ubuntu. Its sequential nature makes it easier to follow than, for example, wiki-pages where users can navigate in circles and get lost easily.

Upstream

The Dutch Translation team is currently working to streamline its collaboration with upstream translation teams—most notable GNOME NL—to make sure more users will benefit from our translations, not just those who use Ubuntu. Our main projects regarding upstream are listed below.

Maverick Translation Sprint

One of the big successes of this approach was the recent two-day translation sprint we had in preparation for Maverick. This was coordinated with GNOME NL, who had translated several programs during their own sprint a week before. These translations were then imported manually into Launchpad for Maverick and have made it into the release on time, saving the Dutch translation team a lot of time and work. We were then able to focus our attention on the remaining packages, translating more than 800 strings and completing about a dozen packages in just two days. The complete translations were subsequently submitted to GNOME and have since been accepted. This was mostly coordinated by Hannie, who is a member of both GNOME NL and Ubuntu Dutch Translation Team.

Debian

A first effort has been made to contact the Debian-translators to synchronise package descriptions and packages like 'apt' and 'dpkg'. This is, however, still in a very early stage.

Other upstream projects

The Dutch Translation team have also adopted several orphaned upstream translations, including quite popular ones like XScreensaver and Compiz. These translations will benefit both Ubuntu users and users of other distributions.

Future

Our immediate goals include improving and extending our contacts with upstream projects, so that we can keep contributing back to them. We also plan to modify and extend our wiki pages—especially the introductory page Launchpad sends to new translators—to make it easier for one-time translators to contribute. This will also reduce the amount of double translations that are done for packages that are translated upstream, and thus will never be used. This caused some irritation in the past.

We also plan to complete the translation of the Ubuntu Manual for Maverick as soon as it is released. Our long term goal is to completely translate the package-descriptions for all applications that are available through the Software Center.

== Documentation Team =

History

Since 2007, the Ubuntu NL wiki, which is, amongst other things, also the home of the Dutch documentation, can be found at wiki.ubuntu-nl.org. The Dutch documentation that was still on the international Ubuntu Wiki was used as a starting point and has been improved and extended. There are Documentation Guidelines in place to assure the quality of the documentation.

Present

Articles are not only created and maintained by members of the Ubuntu NL Documentation Team, but also by other community members. New items are delivered via the page: Articles in progress.

The articles are focused on Ubuntu and its derivatives, and on various related subjects. Often a page from the Ubuntu Wiki or the Official Ubuntu Documentation is used as the basis for a Dutch article, but own content is created as well. The Ubuntu NL Documentation Team discusses via a subforum at the Ubuntu NL Forum. This subforum is one of the several subfora that was opened to the whole community. Previously only the Ubuntu NL Translation Team had a public subforum on the Ubuntu NL Forum, the other teams were using private forums. Recently, the Ubuntu NL Documentation Team was organized in a Launchpad group: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-nl-documentatie.

Future

The Ubuntu NL Documentation Team is working on plans to make it easier for community members to get involved in creating and improving documentation.

Artwork Team

The Artwork team is currently working on a new theme for the forum software SMF 2.0.

News page maintenance team

History

The Ubuntu NL news page, called Prikbord (Dutch for pinboard), emerged in december 2006, when the new website was released. The prikbord has the aim to announce news from the community and tighten community ties. The prikbord proved useful to let everybody know about meetings and release parties. In the fast-growing community, these events were needed to create personal interaction between community members. Later, new categories were added. The Ubuntero of the month was meant to get to know each other better and still exists to date. Every month, a community member tells about his personal life and appoints the next Ubuntero of the month.

Present

At the moment, the Prikbord is mainly used to release the monthly Ubuntero van de maand. Sometimes, an event is announced. The Prikbord brings people together. Community members look forward to the release of the Ubuntero of the month every month and discuss about it heavily. Moreover, both people and companies from outside the community reply to articles. People are interested in the events that are announced and companies want to let us know that they are using Ubuntu.

Future

In the future, we will expand the number of active Prikbord maintainers. At the moment, there is only one active maintainer. We will not add extra monthly categories, but we would like to submit more news items written by community members.

http://prikbord.ubuntu-nl.org

Planet

Community members can sign up for Planet Ubuntu NL in order to let the news items on their blog be shown on the Planet. Among others, the Planet features the news articles from the Prikbord. At the moment, the Planet is not very high-traffic, but this may change as we encourage community members to submit their blogs to the planet. http://planet.ubuntu-nl.org/

Other community initiatives

Ubuntu-NL members active for Africa

Ubuntu-NL is not only doing activities on the internet, Ubuntu-NL is also spreading her wings to help Africa. Different people have set up projects to collect PC's, repair them, clean them and make them ready for shipping to Africa. The first time, a project was set up by forum members iGadget and wutnubu. They collected PC's in the area of Hilversum and shipped them to Africa. Then, in March 2008, a initiative from HP Koster came to collect PC's for a group of female immigrants in Zutphen. The PC's were collected, set up and then shipped to Twello. The PC's were set up there with the help of forum member Maarten Leeuwis. This initiave even made it to national TV. It was broadcasted by the RVU: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kBjvMANvr4 This year MrGee set up a project to bring pc's with Ubuntu to a Gambia, Senegal. He himself went there to help locals out with the installation and setup in a school setting. Next year there are plans to return, but this time with more pc's (almost a 100 already).