Ubuntu Studio (and others) Flavor Status

[Erich Eickmeyer]

Hello Technical Board,

I would like to make a plea/argument for keeping Ubuntu Studio's flavor 
status for this current release cycle and beyond.

As you know, up until yesterday, nobody on the Ubuntu Studio team had 
upload rights in any way, despite previous efforts to gain such upload 
rights. As such, Ubuntu Studio had been limping along since prior to 
the release of 16.04. At that time, Set Hallstrom (sakrecoer) had been 
elected project leader banking on the idea that Ross Gammon (Rosco2) 
would gain upload rights. Despite their best efforts, that didn't 
happen until yesterday.

This happened because the project lead prior to Set, Kaj Ailomaa 
(zequence), had retired. I have it on good authority that it was less 
of a retirement so much as it was a burn-out and quit with malice. 
Apparently, Kaj was so upset that he attempted to kill the project with 
his retirement by deliberately not handing-off the project, and making 
sure nobody had upload rights prior to his departure. I cannot verify 
these accusations, but this information was given to me by a pior 
Ubuntu Studio team member, currently on hiatus.

Now that myself and Ross have been given upload rights to the core 
packages, we are struggling to get Ross upload rights to the 
packageset. While I can understand that need, I could find no evidence 
of such a high requirement outlined in 
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RecognizedFlavors. In fact, the only 
requirement I could find that pertains is as follows:

 * One or more developer with upload rights.

That does not specify in what form those upload rights must be. 
Granted, it would be easy to change the phrasing on that requirement, 
but then that requirement could unnecessarily push Ubuntu Studio and 
Ubuntu Budgie from both being recognized flavors, as Ubuntu Budgie is 
in a similar situation at the moment.

So, with this, I would like to plea that the Technical Board not to set 
that bar so high that it kills one or more official flavors that are 
both active in development. I believe that such an action would harm 
the Ubuntu community irreparably. For example, Ubuntu Studio is 
planning a 20.04 LTS release, and if 19.04 is not allowed to be 
released, even if 19.10 is allowed, Ubuntu Studio 20.04 would not be 
allowed to be an LTS due to this requirement:

 * Must have a proven track record of participating in at least 2 
non-LTS releases before applying to TechnicalBoard for LTS designation.

I will be watching the meeting today. I have an appointment just prior, 
so I hope to make it back in time to participate if called-upon.

Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully,
Erich Eickmeyer

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Erich Eickmeyer
Council Chair
Ubuntu Studio

ubuntustudio.org