Friction Building Around An Ubuntu Community Council Decision

The longtime leader of Kubuntu, Jonathan Riddell, appears to be out of any leadership position relating to Ubuntu for at least twelve months. This decision has caused some to criticize the Ubuntu Community Council for their decision made in relative private -- a decision that was also backed by Mark Shuttleworth.

Scott Kitterman exposed the email exchanges today of the Ubuntu Community Council informing Jonathan Riddell that due to his aggressive, confrontational behavior towards some within the Ubuntu community and Canonical, he should step away from "all positions of leadership in the Ubuntu Community for at least 12 months." His leadership positions should be put aside for both Ubuntu and Kubuntu while he would be able to keep his upload/commit rights and still participate as a member of the Ubuntu community.

Riddell rejected the Ubuntu Community Council's request to step down from leadership positions. Riddell has long been involved with the KDE version of Ubuntu and seen as the leader of Kubuntu. Riddell was a Canonical employee but a few years back joined Blue Systems when they became the major sponsor of Kubuntu rather than Canonical. The Kubuntu Community Council was also confused by the Ubuntu Community Council's requests and believe his behavior has not been improper. Mark Shuttleworth then participated in the conversation by stating that the CC's decision would be enforced.

Following the post by Scott Kitterman where he made all of these emails public, he made another post about him being unpleased with the Ubuntu Community Council's decision made "in secret" and being backed by Mark Shuttleworth. Kitterman has been a longtime Ubuntu Linux developer since 2006, but his latest post seems to indicate he's now resigning from his Ubuntu work but will remain a contributor to Debian.