Community

The Community Council

• The social structures and community processes of Ubuntu are supervised by the Ubuntu Community Council. It is the Community Council that approves the creation of a new Team or Project, and appointment of team leaders. In addition, the Community Council is the body responsible for the Code of Conduct and tasked with ensuring that maintainers and other community members follow its guidelines.

The Community Council is responsible for the following documents and processes:

• The Ubuntu Code of Conduct, which describes the standards of behaviour expected of Ubuntu maintainers and other community members.

• Arbitration of a dispute under the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. This will happen if a member of the community has asked the Community Council to review the behaviour of another member in terms of the code of conduct. The Community Council can ask a maintainer or other member of the community to retract and apologise for the offending behaviour, and refrain from further inappropriate behaviour, or leave the community. No person will be asked to leave without a substantial review and opportunity to defend their behaviour, but the Community Council will not hesitate to do so if an individual refuses to follow the Code of Conduct.

• Team creation and appointment of team leaders.

• Creation of new structures and processes. If a community member wishes to create a new structure or processes, they should submit that proposal to the Community Council for discussion and approval. The Community Council determines lines of reporting and responsibility between different community structures.

The Ubuntu Community Council operates on the following basis:

• The Community Council meets every two weeks on IRC.

• You can submit an item or proposal for discussion by the Community Council using the wiki page CommunityCouncilAgenda.

• Community Council meetings are open to all interested parties, but the Council seeks only to find consensus amongst Council members and representatives from the Team that submitted the proposal.

• If an open meeting becomes too noisy, the Council will move to a private channel for the duration of the meeting.

• In any event, full transcripts of the Council meeting will be published immediately after the meeting.

• The Community Council can be reached at community-council@lists.ubuntu.com. This list is privately archived to allow issues to be raised confidentially.

The Community Council is constituted as follows: Benjamin Hill, Mark Shuttleworth, James Troup, Daniel Holbach, Jerome Gotangco, Corey Burger, Matthew East and Mike Basinger. Meetings of the Community Council will also include members of the Team making any proposal or placing an item on the agenda, and the Council will try to reach consensus between Council Members and the Team representatives. The Chairman of the Community Council is yet to be determined. Nominations for the Community Council will be considered annually. Appointments to the board are made by Mark Shuttleworth subject to confirmation by a vote amongst the maintainers. Appointments are made for a period of two years.

The discrepancy between the terms of appointment to the Community Council (two years) and the Technical Board (one year) is deliberate. The Community Council is the more philosophical body, and is intended to take a more measured, deliberate approach to the problems of community organisation than the Technical Board, which must deliver a new set of Technical Policy updates for each release.