Tribes and their demise

[Matthew East]

Hi Scott,

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 3:01 AM, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:
> I've adjusted the subject and the cc list (dropping DMB and Tech Board as
> I don't believe that the topic from hear concerns either people becoming
> developers or technical issues).

I'm not sure that the CC is really in a position to discuss this issue
in an informed way without the input of the TB or DMB. We haven't been
involved at all with the details or implementation of
ArchiveReorganization and I personally don't feel like I have any
answers to your email. I think that the issues raised by your email
really need their input. Is there a special reason why you disagree
with that? If not, I'd like

> It's quite clear that the MOTU tribe has no future.  I'm unhappy about
> this and don't understand why this has to be.

"Tribe" is a slightly pejorative term but I can certainly understand
how you feel about this. One of the most enthusing aspects of
contributing to Ubuntu is the feeling of being part of a team. I think
that the way that you are feeling about this is something that many
others are likely to feel and an open attempt to address it is likely
to be important. We're going to need to address it head on if we want
to avoid losing good people. On that basis I'd like to suggest that
you send your email to the TB and DMB too for discussion. It's up to
you whether you copy it to the public motu list at this stage. My
personal inclination would be to discuss this between us at first
(including the MC, who of course represent the MOTU) and then we can
make a balanced statement to the MOTU which will hopefully reassure
people and can reflect the outcome of the discussions.

What do others think?

> Today I discovered that a month ago
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates was edited to remove all
> mention of motu-sru.  I have the impression (but am not certain) that
> motu-sru members didn't know either.  Today, by the process as writing,
> https://launchpad.net/~canonical-losas can approve a stable release upload
> to Karmic Universe, but https://launchpad.net/~motu-sru/+members can not.
> They have certainly been approving uploads and we have been asking them to
> do it.  What's going on with this?

That's extremely odd, I agree, because the members of ~canonical-losas
aren't Ubuntu developers and don't have the expertise (or at least
haven't been through the usual process) for approving uploads. This
looks to me like simply a mixup with Launchpad team memberships, with
the "Registry Administrators" team accidentally being a member of
~ubuntu-sru for some reason.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF