MOTU Application for kirkland [Was Re: Universe Contributors application for Dustin Kirkland (kirkland)]

Emmet Hikory persia at ubuntu.com
Fri Aug 15 07:19:49 BST 2008


Dustin Kirkland wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 6:29 AM, Emmet Hikory wrote:
>>    Also, reviewing the packages page, there appears to be only two
>> packages that were uploaded to universe.
>
> I respectfully disagree.  I have worked with considerably more than
> two packages in Universe.
>
> In my experience, the packages page in Launchpad is both buggy and lossy.

   Indeed it is.  There is work in progress to address thism but it
remains a persistent problem for reviewing this sort of application.
That said, where I found your changes (and not only from that page), I
was generally happy with the quality of the work done, but it all
seemed very much focused on packages now in main.

> For that reason, I keep track of the packages I touch and bugs I fix,
> as best I can, in my wiki page:
>  * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DustinKirkland

   This page shows a total of 33 bugs fixed, of which 6 packages (ltp,
asterisk, bip, mythtv, ecryptfs-utils, mythtv-status) were in universe
at the time of the upload.  While 6 is surely better than 2, it's
still a small number when compared with other applicants.

> I have contributed tremendously to the upstream ecryptfs-utils
> project, adding functionality, and fixing bugs.  I have guided
> _each_and_every_one_of_those_changes_ into the ecryptfs-utils,
> opencryptoki, trousers, and pkcs11-helper packages, ALL of which lived
> in Universe until two weeks ago when they were promoted to main.  This
> has required an extremely active relationship with Ubuntu MOTU
> sponsors, the Debian maintainer, as well as the project upstream of
> Debian.

    I've just double-reviewed the opencryptoki, trousers, and
pkcs11-helper packages, and I suspect that you will understand that
the complete absence of your name (even as "Thanks to") in the
changelog may lead one to have a false impression of the effort
involved in this work.

> == The following are packages in my PPA and in REVU, that I have
> created from scratch, and are awaiting promotion to Universe ==

    As not yet included packages, these are not typically considered
for review of contributions.

> == The following are universe packages for which my contributions were
> dropped by the sponsor in changelog ==
>
>  * audacious - https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/audacious
>  * sbuild - https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sbuild

    While I see a changelog entry in audacious, I'm curious why these
might have been dropped.  Was there discussion with the sponsor about
the dropped change?  Was it a case of duplicate effort?

> I understand that this is of marginal benefit to my MOTU application,
> but I do hope that it demonstrates my technical competence at Debian
> packaging, and my overall zest for the Ubuntu community.

    Certainly.  Neither of these are in doubt, rather just integration
with the MOTU team and contributions to Universe as a distinct entity.

>>    My apologies for the disappointment this change may represent.
>
> I must say that I am disappointed and I hope that you will reconsider
> given the more detailed account of my participation in Universe
> earlier.
>
> Most importantly, however, I'm concerned that you would be convinced
> to change your vote based on comments made to you by someone off-list.

    The current MOTU Council process is such that had I not changed my
vote, the discussion would not have occurred, as with three positive
votes no other voices would be considered.  While I would much rather
that some of those with concerns had raised them to the list earlier
(and perhaps not contacted me privately), it is sufficiently important
to me that we have an open discussion that I was willing to retract my
positive vote in order to permit that.  If discussions are complete,
and the remaining members of MOTU Council have voted without reaching
conclusion, I may reconsider my +0 to avoid deadlock, but will not be
again changing my vote except if required to avoid this deadlock.

    Further, I'd like to note for *all* subscribers to this list, that
early discussion is much preferred.  I am personally unhappy that I
felt the need to change my vote in order to allow discussion, and
encourage any with concerns to raise them soonest to avoid this in the
future.  I would not like to again feel a conflict between my desire
to avoid delay for confirmation to MOTU and my desire that open
discussion on candidates occur.

-- 
Emmet HIKORY



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