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

[Jeremy Bicha]

On Thu, Jul 28, 2022 at 3:52 PM Joshua Peisach
<itzswirlz2020 at outlook.com> wrote:
> Jeremy,
>
> UCR has been around for 3 years. Plan since day 0, when I went on discourse and brought up the idea was flavor.
>
> There have been reasons I've been so hesitant to reach out - these dang barriers. Again, for you and current devs it doesn't matter but for community members it is essentially impossible to move forward.
>
> "Escalation" - I've wanted to apply for PPU status to get my packages into universe but other roadblocks keeps popping up. For example, the Debian cinnamon maintainer left Debian and me and Fabio fantoni as aforementioned, we both deserve rights but we don't get that. The only escalation that has been happening is that Erich decided to help me and upload the ubuntucinnamon-* packages to universe. But the directions are still unclear as to what to do. Should a germinate seed be in Launchpad before or after applying to flavor status? When it says "one or more developer with upload rights" what does the at mean? You already have upload rights. I don't.
>
> And to say that "oh we are using the community council and you're being unfair to the TB", we are just trying to figure out what we are supposed to do.
>
> You could say "oh just apply for status" but trying to find those places of contribution can be difficult and it feels very rare to see someone new come in and get their dev membership nowadays, especially one who isn't already a member.
>
> And to top it off, make requests for improvements individually? Currently I am silenced. Nobody cares if I say a thing; in general, I get ghosted anyways or treated as if I'm dumb. To many, my input doesn't matter and if I were to email TB right now they would probably not respond, or not even let my email go through the mailing list.
>
> I know I sound very harsh - but check my application page. And look at Ubuntu Cinnamon and Unity and their community. If you want to make a distro where we embrace community, put your company paychecks aside and make it happen. We want this. The community wants this. And we aren't letting this stop us and we will not be silenced.
>
> If you truly believe that I need to be a core dev, then you are saying any community member who wants to create a flavor needs to spend YEARS getting to that high of privilege. And that is not community friendly at all. I am a student, and I'm going to a magnet school in September (a CS school might I add). School is going to get more intense and I'm not going to be spending 6 hours a day on Ubuntu development.
>
> Again, to you this is hard to understand because you already **have** the upload rights.
>
> Truly, with honesty,
> -Josh

Josh,

Thank you for emailing.

Background
---------------
Let me try to briefly summarize my story. I am not doing this to brag,
but to try to communicate that I've been where you are.

I didn't join Canonical until January of this year. The vast majority
of my contributions to Ubuntu were done as a volunteer community
member. It took me a long time to see myself as a Developer because I
didn't have a traditional computer science education or paid work
experience. Related to that, I usually took too long to apply for
memberships and upload rights. I became an Ubuntu Member in 2011. By
the time I applied I was more than qualified and was told I could have
used the Contributing Developer process instead. I didn't know that. I
joined Ubuntu Desktop (an uploading team) later that year and I joined
MOTU the next year. Ubuntu GNOME became an official flavor for 13.04.

The other co-founder of Ubuntu GNOME, Tim Lunn, who was Technical Lead
for a couple years when I wasn't able to, never joined MOTU or Core
Dev. It's not required to join those teams to be a Technical Lead for
an official Ubuntu flavor. But there needs to be a plan for at least
one developer to get PPU upload rights for your flavor's essential
packages.

I eventually got Debian Developer and Ubuntu Core status in 2017. But
I should have applied for those sooner. Because I waited too long, I
try to encourage others to apply sooner.

You do not need years of work to get the upload rights you need. It is
generally interpreted as 6 months of work. Therefore, I believe you
more than qualify for the Ubuntu upload rights you need.

Oh and I wanted to contribute to Ubuntu for years but it wasn't until
2011 that I figured out where I could use my skills to make a
difference.

Help
------
Your PPU application [1] needs more endorsements. I'll write one for
you this week.

I think you should include all the Debian Cinnamon packages in your
team's packageset (except for libtimezonemap since that's a shared
component).

I think the biggest thing you've been missing earlier in your Ubuntu
contributions is a mentor to help you reach your full potential in
Ubuntu and along the way, get the uploader status and memberships you
deserve. I volunteer to help you with that.

We should also get you upload rights in Debian. I want to help you
with that too.

There is a need in Ubuntu to have a better mentorship/sponsorship
process so that other people like you don't get neglected. I know that
Canonical has been investing more in Community recently so I'm hoping
Canonical's Community team can help improve this area.

Apology
----------
I apologize that my earlier email in this thread came across as
dismissive. I only meant to suggest that action from the Community
Council seemed too aggressive to me based on the immediate context of
the very recent email starting the Official Flavor process. I didn't
mean to target you or ignore your concerns or Erich's concerns. There
clearly was deeper context that wasn't apparent from the initial
Official Flavor email or its reply. I don't believe you were wrong to
talk to Erich or anyone else on the Community Council.

I am deeply troubled by your feeling that your voice isn't being
heard. I personally strongly appreciate the sustained work you have
been doing. You are intelligent. Your work matters and your input is
important.

I want to do my part to help you feel valued too.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/itzswirlz/Applications/UbuntuCinnamonPPUApplication

Thank you,
Jeremy