Principia / DevOps / leadership and governance

[Jono Bacon]

Hi Folks,

Apologies for the delay - I was away over the holiday weekend. Just
catching up on my email.

On Fri, 2011-05-27 at 18:04 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> Hi folks

<snip>

> In short, we'll be building a community of devops, defining, debating,
> collaborating and maintaining a large collection of formulas. It's
> that community that I think will need steering, in the same way that
> the TB provides a forum for architectural and structural issues across
> the whole archive.

Agreed.

> Right now, this is all embryonic, so I don't want to create a large
> group. But I do want us to signal (a) that this is part of Ubuntu, and
> (b) who to go to for resolution of technical and social issues related
> to Principia and Ensemble. So I think we should create a Principia
> Council, with a chair, appointed by the CC.
> 
> I think the focus needed here is different to the leadership that the
> TB currently provides - this work will be very cloud and devops
> specific, and we'll want a team which reflects that. It will also be
> very day-to-day, this is a fast-moving area, and it needs more
> hands-on guidance than the TB can provide directly. I would be happy
> for this group to be accountable to the TB on technical matters,
> though I think this group should also be able to grant Ubuntu
> membership to contributors which is a function the CC delegates.

I agree that having a leadership body for coordinating the community of
formula contributors, defining quality/workflow processes, and governing
those who participate, would be useful.

I would recommend we start with something very lightweight that is
modeled more along the lines of the Application Review Board (who review
apps to appear post-release in the Ubuntu Software Center). This body
would:

      * Review contributions (akin to the sponsorship queue for those
        without upload rights to commit formulas to trunk).
      * Keep an eye on good contributors and assign upload rights to
        those providing significant and sustained contributions.
      * Decide on appropriate participation workflow and governance.

This group would report to the Community Council (I am not sure the TB
would be required as the TB defined technical policy and does not have
many bodies reporting to it).

Make sense?

> As a lead, I would nominate Clint Byrum, a member of the Server Team
> with a passion for devops who's taken to Ensemble like a duck to
> water. As other members of the Principia Council, I would nominate
> Yuan Negron and Marc Cluet, who work in Canonical helping large
> deployments of Ubuntu. Clint is an Ubuntu Member but I don't think
> either Yuan or Marc are, yet. Nevertheless, the field is so embryonic
> that I think it is appropriate to bootstrap in this fashion.
> 
> I would think they could build a team of core Principia contributors
> who in future could help confirm nominations to the Principia Council,
> but again, for bootstrapping purposes I think we need to JFDI this
> initial appointment.

I think Clint would do a great job. I would be happy for Ahmed to be on
the board as, and I think he could bring value in ensuring community
participation in the board.

	Jono

-- 
Jono Bacon
Ubuntu Community Manager
jono(at)ubuntu(dot)com
www.ubuntu.com : www.jonobacon.org
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