Application to add ~xnox to ~ubuntu-archive

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 08:04:15PM +0200, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> Hey there,

> Coincidence but Christian asked details on how to join ubuntu-archive as
> well today, I'm going to copy a part of Łukasz's reply for consistency
> between potential applicants

> "So the Archive Admin team, similarly to the Ubuntu SRU and Ubuntu
> Release teams, is a strict invite-only team with no formal process of
> becoming one. The main reason is that being an AA gives a lot of power
> in Ubuntu, basically giving full control over the Ubuntu archive
> as-is, so it's not something anyone can get by just requesting
> membership. This is also why there is no formal process as we do not
> want it to be possible for arbitrary people to apply by themselves."

> I personally didn't know about this rule. I've personally asked a few
> times over the year if the SRU team would be interested by me joining
> but never got a reply so I know it can be frustrating. I also witnessed
> Laney getting through the same problems when he tried to join
> ~ubuntu-archive. If there is no process on purpose I think it would be
> worth at least documenting that and be more open about how those teams
> are working. Sorry for sidetracking a bit from the original topic but
> since the technical board is Cced and I had in my mind to reach out to
> them about the issue for some time I'm taking the opportunity to mention
> it now.

Speaking as a long-time member of each of the Archive Team, the Release
Team, and the SRU Team, I would say this is more custom than rule.  It's not
100% true that these teams have been invite-only; we have had folks in the
past who have put themselves forward as candidates and been added to the
teams.  But both because of the high privilege each of these teams
represents with respect to the archive, and because of the fact that we
DON'T have a clear documented onboarding procedure (outside of people's
brains), we are slow to accept volunteers.

I think it's been said before that (paraphrasing) "anyone who's eager to
join these teams is someone we don't want on these teams".  But that's not a
strictly controlling precedent.

And in terms of how selective we need to be about team membership on account
of privilege, it's Archive Team > SRU Team > Release Team.  While we can
conveniently delegate most archive decisions to the Debian FTP Team, we
nevertheless have to have a solid NEW review process for Ubuntu-specific
packages, which means both taking responsibility for managing the package
namespace, and ensuring that source packages we accept are both legal to
distribute and published to the right archive component.  SRUs aren't nearly
that high stakes, but the SRU team is still responsible for ensuring stable
updates are regression-free.  So we are going to have a high threshold for
new team members, but also just as important, we are going to want to keep
the teams as small as possible while still delivering on their committments.

I think it is a good idea for each of these teams to publicly document the
criteria for team membership, and our onboarding process.  At the same time,
I am not eager to commit to a timeline for this, because by the nature of
these teams the members all have significant committments to
high-priority/urgency tasks for the Ubuntu project that take precedence, and
the documentation would be used very infrequently.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                   https://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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