Ubuntu
Ubuntu is 1) the 'brand' name of a version of Linux for the desktop that is easy to use, 2) a relational concept derived from the Bantu language of South Africa' 3), the name of the World Forum of Civil Society Networks
Ubuntu as relational concept
Contextual Quote
Ubunti is a verb
"Ubuntu is often translated as a noun—an idea, a philosophy, a moral guide to collective living. Yet, at its root, Ubuntu is not a static concept, nor is it something one simply possesses. It comes from the words Ubu (to be, to become) and Ntu (person, though often translated as human). In Kiswahili, an equivalent phrase would be kuwa mtu—to become a person. Understanding Ubuntu as Ubu-Ntu (a verb) transforms the meaning from an abstract concept into a living process, an ongoing journey of realizing our shared humanity.
What makes humans distinct from other animals is not simply intelligence or tool-making— According to our Bantu speaking ancestors - it is our ability to become people. Personhood (aka humanity) is not automatic; it is something we cultivate through our relationships, our actions, our commitments and trust in one another.
To become a person means to move beyond mere survival and individualism—it means to recognize that our humanity is only realized in connection with each other. This is the essence of Utu, the secret ingredient that makes Ubuntu meaningful.
As Wakanyi Hoffman explains, Ubuntu becomes tasty with Utu. It is that unspoken, instant connection that binds people across time and space—the feeling so profound that you would be willing to give everything, even your life, for another. It is deep and bordering instinctual—it is the recognition of our shared existence."
- Will Ruddick [1]
Definition(s)
0.
= "Ubuntu derives from Bantu, a southern African language, and relates to a Zulu concept - umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu - which means "a person is only a person through other people". [2]
1.
"Ubuntu: An African word (and proverb) meaning "I am human because you are human." Ubuntu psychology says, "Sharing ourselves and our gifts with others optimizes our collective and individual humanity. Even in the sharing and the giving, the individual or "other" group receives the gifts and the glories of humanity." (http://ubuntupsychology.blogspot.com/2010/06/ubuntu-african-word-and-proverb-meaning.html)
2.
Ubuntu ... essence of being human...the fact that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound up in yours. A person with ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share...open and available to others, affirming of others; do (sic) not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole and are diminished when others are humiliatedor diminished.
- Desmond Tutu [3]
3.
""The concept of Ubuntu has recently received a lot of attention in spite of the fact that there is no consensus about its meaning. African scholars have strived to attain a common meaning and English translation, and while they agree that it is typically and solely African, the closest some have come up with is 'African humanism'. A South African saying is frequently used to illustrate the core tenet of the ethics of Ubuntu: 'unumtu ngumumntu ngabantu', which translated into English means: 'A person depends on others to be a person.' The principles underlying the way of life proposed by Ubuntu are transferred from generation to generation through fables, sayings, proverbs and by tradition through the socialization of children in which the whole community is involved. Bearing in mind that traditional values may become diluted or lost during times of change and urbanization..."
(http://ubuntupsychology.blogspot.com/2010/05/childrens-understanding-of-ubuntu.html)
Description
Tshifhiwa Maumela et al. :
"Ubuntu is an African philosophy whose name is derived from the Bantu languages of the Bantu people of Africa and can be loosely translated to “I am because you are”. Bantu people are found mostly from the central down to the southern part of Africa. In each Bantu language they have a way of pronouncing this philosophy with the common thing being that they all end with ‘-ntu’/‘-nthu” sound (phonetically) just as it with the Bantu languages. To understand the concept of Ubuntu one might need to first breakdown the explanation of ‘-ntu’ which is usually associated with ‘soul’ in Bantu languages [39]. This is a concept also embedded in the daily language of Bantu languages where a single person can be addressed in plural such as usage of ‘vho’ instead of ‘inwi’ in Tshive textsubcircum nda language of the Ve textsubcircum nda people in South Africa. In Bantu greetings it’s common that the greeting will be asking a person how their soul is, meaning one recognises that their own well-being is dependent on their other persons well-being on a deeper level. The word Bantu itself means people.
African communities are arranged in an ongoing dynamic association of their citizens who have special commitment to each other. These citizens have developed a distinct sense of their common life [40]. There’s an African proverb that says, “&Ndot;wana u aluswa textsubcircum ndilani” in Tshive textsubcircum nda. This loosely translates to ‘a child is raised by the village’ which is a commonly known African proverb. This means that a child is considered a property of the community of whom is their responsibility in return to nurture the child into adulthood such that they become responsible citizens in the community. This child in the African community thus grows up with the sense of solidarity with large group of people with their personal interest bounded with that of the community over various issues of life.
Ubuntu as a way of life for African communities is characterised by emphasising sharing, co-responsibility and enjoying of the rights for each individual in the community by encouraging and promoting human relationship and exchange of human values, trust and dignity [42]. This interactions of sharing and co-responsibilities extend to the utility of the community and individual just as Mbiti explained, “Whatever happens to the individual, happens to the whole group and whatever happens to the group happens to the individual”. The paper will present this phenomenon described by Mbiti mathematically.
From the definition of Ubuntu and the explanations provided above, it becomes clear that an individual in the Ubuntu community says to themselves “I am because I belong, I participate and I share”. This individual is open and available to others without feeling threatened by them. An individual belonging in this community will have self-assurance which stems from knowledge of belonging.
Knowledge and rules that guide the community were encoded into proverbs. There a proverbs such as “Ṅwana u bebeliwa muṅwe”, “Munwe muthihi a u textsubcircum tusi mathuthu” or “ Kidole kimoja hakivunji chawa” and “Tsiwana i laiwa n textsubcircum dilani”. The first proverb is from Thiven textsubcircum da language of the Ven textsubcircum da people of South Africa and it means “a child is born for someone else”, while second and third ones have same meaning but from Thiven textsubcircum da and Swahili proverbs respectively and translates to “one finger cannot pick up grains”. The last one is a Thiven textsubcircum da that means “an orphan is guided in the streets”. What these proverbs symbolise is the deep interdependency that occurs in some cultures in Africa as these proverbs can be found in most languages in Africa. These proverbs affirm that cooperation based on sharing and trust is at the core of Ubuntu philosophy."
(https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9205897)
Characteristics
the [the four core values of Ubuntu,
- Morality (Trust & Credibility),
- Interdependence (Sharing & Caring),
- Humanity (Hospitality, Understanding, Generosity, Virtue) and
- Continuous Improvement(Wisdom & Social Maturity)
(https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9205897)
More information
More information in the Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(philosophy)
Ubuntu in Zulu means, - “I am because you are”
Ubuntu as an organisation
See: World Forum of Civil Society Networks, http://www.ubuntu.upc.edu/
Ubuntu as software
URL = http://www.ubuntu.com/support
Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28Linux_distribution%29
Definition
“a free, user-friendly operating system that combines Linux with a word processor, Web browser, spreadsheet application and PDF reader. The software is distributed by CD, upgraded every six months, and is easy for ordinary computer users to install.”
Description
“Mark Shuttleworth, an entrepreneur from Cape Town, South Africa, is the driving force behind Ubuntu . Shuttleworth sold his digital-security company for $500 million, and since 2004 has spent $25 million in developing and distributing Ubuntu to the people of the world. His goal is to distribute localized versions of Ubuntu to dozens of countries where people cannot afford (or even acquire) proprietary software in their own language. “There are some 350 languages in the world with more than a million speakers,” Shuttleworth told The Economist (June 7, 2007). “Free software is only translated in a significant way into about 20 of those, although this is already a lot greater penetrating than proprietary software.” (http://onthecommons.org/node/1171)
Status Report 2007
David Bollier at http://onthecommons.org/node/1171
“More than six million CDs with Ubuntu have been distributed already. While diffusion is still in its early stages, momentum is growing. Just this month, the French Parliament switched its computers to Ubuntu. Dell, the computer maker, offers computers pre-loaded with the system, and makes money by selling technical support and service for the software. Michael Dell says he has Ubuntu on his personal computer.
Ubuntu represents the next, more mature stage in the evolution of free/open source software. The project is not about bashing proprietary software, but about building better software and sharing communities on a global scale. What’s fascinating is how efficient the Ubuntu commons has been. For a fraction of the advertising budget for Microsoft’s new Vista operating system, Ubuntu is reaching millions of people with free, high-quality software that gives them greater user freedoms -- and this viral growth is likely to expand.
Ubuntu is also likely to seed a new generation of innovators who in time could out-perform Americans locked into the culture of proprietary software. As Linux becomes the standard platform for the next generation of tech innovation, it could also begin to dissolve proprietary technical barriers that currently make various portable devises incompatible. A new interoperability via Linux could unleash powerful new rounds of bottom-up innovation.” (http://onthecommons.org/node/1171)
Discussion
The relationship between Ubuntu and Debian
"Ubuntu is explicitly based on Debian, but this doesn't come without its problems. From the beginning Canonical, Ubuntu's holding company, employed a core of key Debian Developers. This created some jealousy among Debian Developers and some annoyance that energies were being diverted away from the Debian project. These irritations were compounded by a perception that the Ubuntu developers were not feeding back their changes, and that Canonical's own software projects such as Launchpad, were not being released under free software licenses. These issues came to a head at Debconf in 2006, when Shuttleworth and Ubuntu team members met with Debian Developers to discuss their concerns, and it was agreed that greater acknowledgement would be given to the Debian contribution to Ubuntu and to promote better communication between the two projects.
Ubuntu is unlike other Debian derivatives which, for the most part, have been based on the stable release and are less intimately involved with the Debian development process. As Steve McIntyre, the British developer who was recently elected to be Debian Leader for a second one-year term, observes: "Ubuntu is undoubtedly the most popular of all the spin-offs, and has the highest profile. They also tend to have the widest target audience(s) of all the derived distros; many of the others are focussed on smaller groups of users, e.g. specialised for netbooks or educational users. Ubuntu is also one of the few members of the Debian family that itself is commonly used as a base for further derivations."
Resolving the issues is as much a concern for Canonical as it is for the Debian developers. Despite a spate of misplaced headlines claiming that Ubuntu is bigger than Debian, Ubuntu needs Debian to maintain its momentum and is dependent on the good faith of the Debian Developers." (http://www.h-online.com/open/Health-Check-Ubuntu-and-Debian-s-special-relationship--/features/113260/1)
More articles on this topic:
- Conflicting goals create tension in communities - Mark Shuttleworth
More Information
See also:
- Ubuntu Code of Conduct = sets the community norms for the Ubuntu Free Software community. [4]
- Ubuntu - Governance
Listen or Watch:
- Mark Shuttleworth on Ubuntu: Interview by Open Business focuses on the Business Ecology of
- Mark Shuttleworth on the Business Ecology of Ubuntu
- Mark Shuttleworth on the Roots of Ubuntu
- Jono Bacon on Community Management at Ubuntu: "Interview with Jono Bacon, Community Manager for Ubuntu, at the 2009 Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco."