Considering component-specific work when reviewing applications

Stephan Hermann sh at sourcecode.de
Wed Aug 20 07:36:02 BST 2008


On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 05:21:21PM -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> [...]
> 
> Well then I guess I'm left feeling like this is the unwritten "Server Team 
> need not apply" rule.
> 
> When I've brought this up about people who were active in #ubuntu-desktop, 
> but not #ubuntu-motu my concerns were dismissed.
> 
> I feel like it's a clear double standard.

I think we have some social problems here...

In the past, we didn't have those teams in the first place, so the very
first step was to do work in Universe...and it didn't matter what
packages we were interested in. We were doing anything...

Now we have different, specific teams, like server team, desktop team,
mozilla team, mobile team, what have you team, and many people are not
interested anymore in doing general universe package work, but are
interested in specific packages. 

Nowadays we see that happening, and yes, the distinction of universe
and main is questionable. But, people are just being pushed to MOTU team
to get their upload rights, but are not working with people from MOTU or
do some other work then their work they are interested in.

So, we have problems.

1. Most MOTUs won't know people coming from the specialised teams.
2. Those people are not interested to work for anything else then their
pet packages
3. Universe work will lose menpower, and the whole workflow becomes
questionable.

I agree, that working on particular packages is more fun, because it can
help you in your daily real life work or whereever. But having still the
universe/multiverse component, it's important that we recrute people
who are interested in doing "general" work too.

Therefore, I can understand the two viewpoints: 

a) Who is this guy, I never saw him doing any work on Universe in
general, only on those packages which are somehow split up in main and
universe.
b) We need this guy, because he's da rockstar for desktop/server/mobile
etc.

I wonder if it's time to review the whole universe/multiverse
main/restricted system...but I do see already one problem with it: more
packages won't be in the view of anyone. We will get more people working
on their favorite area (the specialised teams), and less people are
working on the more general side of ubuntu life.

Furthermore, it will be more and more difficult to judge for people we
don't know, because we never worked with them.

I don't think it's a "personal problem" but more a general problem
between the people not being inside the motu team, but doing great work
in their specialised teams.

We need to fix it...we should review our policies.

Regards,
\sh
-- 
Stephan '\sh' Hermann		| OSS Developer & Systemadministrator
JID: sh at linux-server.org	| http://www.sourcecode.de/
GPG ID: 0xC098EFA8		| http://leonov.tv/
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