New Official Flavor Process Issues (Was Re: Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix packages)

Jeremy Bicha jeremy.bicha at canonical.com
Thu Jul 28 12:35:30 UTC 2022


On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 9:22 PM <eeickmeyer at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Steve,
>
> Your reply brings up a larger discussion which involves not only the
> technical board, but also the community council since there are
> community implications that need to be addressed as the wiki entry you
> referred to is not at all community friendly.
>
> For those just joining the conversation, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix
> (ubuntucinnamon.org), with Joshua Peisach as leader, has been working
> on meeting the requirements to become an official flavor for the past 3
> years. Joshua has been trying, to the best of his ability, to follow
> the requirements posted at <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RecognizedFlavors>.
> I have stepped-up to assist him with my MOTU hat on, but Joshua has run
> into numerous roadblocks over the years, and I am seeing his
> frustrations as well. It seems as though when he meets a requirement, a
> new requirement appears, so that while the goalposts aren't actually
> moving in the eyes of those on the technical board, to him it appears
> like they are.
>
> Before I proceed any further, I need to note that I have brought this
> to the attention of the Community Council, and we agree that this issue
> does need to be addressed. Therefore, I write this now as a
> representative of the Community Council, with some replies in-line
> addressing the packaging concerns.

I'm not on the Tech Board, but this feels like a hasty escalation to me.

The Tech Board was emailed on Saturday and replied, very quickly, on Sunday.

I am unaware of Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix developers reaching out publicly
to the Tech Board before Saturday.

Perhaps someone could have been more proactive and asked the Ubuntu
Cinnamon Remix developers if they wanted to become an official flavor
and encourage them to do so.

The Tech Board reply gave some specific tasks that need to be done
which is similar to what I had to do many years ago when I went
through the process for Ubuntu GNOME.

If you need help understanding or completing the tasks, please reach
out to me or to the Tech Board or Ubuntu Release teams.

Yes, the documentation can be improved.

> There is no documentation anywhere that I know of in this context for
> the requirement of the involvement of a member of the ~ubuntu-core-dev
> team, so now I'm emploring the technical board to get this sorted,
> preferably on some kind of documentation, but not necessarily on
> <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RecognizedFlavors> as I'm not happy with that
> wiki entry from a community standpoint. More on this later in this
> email.

That requirement is documented in these links. Ideally, at least one
Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix developer would have upload rights for their
flavor's packages. That can be done by becoming a MOTU or with a new
team specifically for the flavor's packages. From years ago, I don't
think it's a blocker for becoming a recognized flavor since
sponsorship works but it ought to be a goal to get those upload
permissions soon.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopers/TeamDelegation
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeveloperMembershipBoard/ApplicationProcess

Another responsibility of becoming an official flavor is that the
developers need to be able to reach out and communicate well with the
Ubuntu Release Team so that releases can happen on time. The
communication burden falls on both sides, but the flavor developers
need to reach out to the right team when needed instead of waiting to
be asked if there is a problem.

Ideally, the developers would have some experience with completing
Stable Release Updates too since fixing bugs in stable releases is an
important part of providing support for stable releases.

Thank you,
Jeremy Bicha



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