Principia / DevOps / leadership and governance

[Dustin Kirkland]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 2:03 AM, Mark Shuttleworth <mark at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> 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.

Okay, thanks.  I see your reasoning and analogies and that makes a lot
more sense to me now.

>> 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.

Again, thanks for the clarifications.

-- 
:-Dustin

Dustin Kirkland
Manager, Systems Integration
Corporate Services
Canonical, LTD