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Archive for February 21st, 2008


Posted on February 21, 2008 - by jono

Announcing 5-A-Day

DIGG THIS AND SPREAD THE WORD!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Dick and Dom(1), I am pleased to announce a brand new initiative in the Ubuntu community that we have been working on for a little while, and one that has been alluded to by some members of our incredible community. It is of course…5-A-Day!!

One of the most incredible things about any community is that when you unite people around a concept – it is incredible what a large collection of individual users can achieve, when they come together as one consistent force. With enough feet marching in the same direction, stunning things can happen, and with this in mind, we have produced a united method of Ubuntu contributors helping to improve and refine Ubuntu – via our bug list. This initiative is called 5-A-Day.

The idea for this came from a recommendation in many countries that to stay healthy and fit, it is recommended that you eat five portions fruit or vegetables every day. If you make a conscious effort to do this, your body will thank you for it. It is a simple concept that a variety of manufacturers have supported, and it provides an easy metric for normal people to determine how to contribute to a healthy lifestyle. Many people try to stick to the five portions of fruit or veg a day, and it is simple and easy to get involved, with long-term benefits for people in general. Lets apply the same ethos to Ubuntu…

The idea with 5-A-Day is simple – everyone in the Ubuntu community works to tend to at least five bugs every day. When we say tend to, this naturally depends on the kind of contributor you are. As such:

  • If you are a developer – you could fix five bugs, package fixes etc.
  • If you are a user – you can help triage and confirm bugs, contribute your experience to bug reports. Test bugs and share your experiences.
  • If you are an upstream contributor – you could help forward bugs upstream and help to get these bugs fixed.

To make things ultra-cool, and to spread the word, we have some rather nifty methods of automatic reporting which bugs you have worked on for 5-A-Day and we have a Launchpad Team you can all join. This gives us an idea of how many people are participating in 5-A-Day. People are already starting to contribute their 5-A-Day bugs in their email signatures, and I would love to see the 5-A-Day bugs that people contribute to shown in weblogs, IRC channels and more. If you have a nifty little script to do this, do get in touch.

It is time to take 1000 boots and kick 2000 arses. All set? Let’s go.