Open letter to Canonical and UBports Foundation.

Hello Canonical and The UBports Foundation,

I have been a user of Ubuntu as my main operating system for over a year, in the past I tried your products for months several times. I even tried the first version of Ubuntu Touch, Ubuntu for phones.

Now I am 25 years old and this very year I changed from a student to an entrepreneur, in the blockchain field. Since my life stage and my economics changed, last time I downloaded Ubuntu for desktops I was able to donate to you. The only option you gave me was a donation via Paypal (They took an important % for the EUR USD conversion). Why not a crypto option? Although better leave this question for another occasion, not being important for this proposal.

Due to work I had to buy a second phone, I was used to Android and checking the phone market, after almost 4 years since the last time, I have realized that it changed towards 2 OS and very few manufacturers options out of Chinese government dependent smartphones. Only Samsung remains next to Apple.

Endly I chose an iPhone. Doing an onboarding on a new phone in 2021 has been a terrible experience. They really asked you every step to allow to use your location, for every app you open, even the camera. I spent an evening deleting apps because I want few more than contacts, e-mails, and browsing. Most apps preinstalled are designed to grab the attention of the public from real world matters: TVs subscriptions, games, health related apps, smartwatch connection etc. In summary all full of trackers, location, health condition, payments, speech/conversation etc. etc.

Then all of a sudden I remembered Ubuntu touch, for phones, which I tried in 2016 and because of lack of support for the project it was taken aside.

Since 2016 the open source software financing options and capacity has widely changed, to the better. Now open source software, blockchain related projects, get financing within hours in the order of hundreds of millions doing Initial Coin Offerings.

I want to suggest that you approach the blockchain community and create a token to finance the development of Ubuntu Touch again or/and Ubuntu for desktops. The tokens need to make sense, have a purpose, within the ecosystems to be attractive for potential investors/patrons, and maintain a stable or even increasing value for the future. We will think about token economics.

If you ever take this approach, I am willing to help with the design and I will be one of the very first to finance you via buying tokens.

Open source software has never had so much available capital in history as it has today!

John Felipe Branch