Principia / DevOps / leadership and governance

[Mark Shuttleworth]

On 27/05/11 19:34, Dustin Kirkland wrote:
> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Mark Shuttleworth <mark at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> ...
>> 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.
> "Ubuntu Community membership"?  Or "Ensemble Community membership"?
>
> I think I'd expect the latter, more than the former, from an Ensemble
> Council.  I think I see the Ensemble Community as being separate, with
> perhaps some overlapping members, rather than being a proper sub- or
> superset of the Ubuntu Community...

I quite specifically believe that Principia is as much a part of Ubuntu
as, say, Ubuntu Translations or the Ubuntu Forums. Formulas are a
distillation of devops expertise just like packages are a distillation
of integration and coding experience, and they are tightly coupled to
Ubuntu.

So while I think they warrant dedicated domain-specific leadership and
governance, I think that needs to take place under the umbrella of
Ubuntu governance, and contributions there are contributions to Ubuntu.
Hence Ubuntu membership for those who make substantial and sustained
contributions.

> Having never served on such a council myself, can you give some idea
> as to what the approximate time commitments might be?  I'd assume
> maybe a couple of hours (4-8?) per month spent attending IRC meetings
> and actively following a mailing list?  Is that about right?  Can you
> detail the typical responsibilities of such councils a bit more,
> perhaps?

The Council would typically meet on IRC every two weeks, for about an
hour each time. They would have a mailing list where folk can put
questions to them for discussion and resolution. 4-8 hours per month is
a good estimate of the time commitment needed, folk who serve on the TB
or CC usually do this after hours FWIW.

The Council serves a number of purposes:

 * it highlights a core group who can set policy for the whole work
 * it provides a forums for debate and discussion, with resolution
(i.e.  a decisive forum)
 * it recognises contributors and can confer Ubuntu membership as a result
 * it manages the permissions of contribution (i.e. who has commit to a
branch in UDD, and who can upload to which package)

In some cases, where needed, a Council can delegate responsibilities to
achieve scale, as the TB has delegated to the DMB and the CC to the RMB's.

Mark