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

[Steve Langasek]

Hi Joshua,

On Thu, Jul 28, 2022 at 02:29:27AM +0000, Joshua Peisach wrote:

> I also want to mention that the ubuntu-mentors team is long gone.  For new
> developers, they now have barely any place to start to find sponsors.

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what team you're referring to here, as to my
knowledge there has never been a team named "ubuntu-mentors".  Perhaps
that's why you are having trouble finding it?

The two teams that I know of having filled the developer mentorship role are
ubuntu-sponsorship, and ubuntu-motu.  Both have their challenges currently
(as you point out, #ubuntu-motu is all but defunct).  I am hopeful that a
reinvigorated Community Team at Canonical can help us sort out some of these
issues.

> New devs who want patches for contributions (and to later apply for
> privileges) have to jump into #ubuntu-devel (since -motu is dead
> basically), and nag a person to help them.  80% of that time that person
> is likely a canonical employee and one who knows literally nothing about
> the package being tested, has never heard about it or has never tried it.

I understand you are expressing disapproval, but can I ask what you think
should be the alternative?  The Ubuntu developer community is small relative
to Debian and always has been; it's true for almost all packages in the
Ubuntu archive that any developer you interact with won't know anything
about the package you're working on, 80% of the time.  So there will always
be a period, during the developer onboarding process, where the person
interested in the package will need the help of someone unfamiliar with the
package.

In your case the "onboarding process" seems to have been excessively long;
I concur with Thomas's suggestion that you should be applying for upload
rights.

> For the first time, we have community making flavors.  And this is
> community; all flavors that exist are either born because yes, like
> Kubuntu and Xubuntu in the old days when Ubuntu was young and new.  New
> flavors often have devs who have partners or already have developer status
> in Debian.

I don't think it's constructive to define "community" in a way that excludes
Ubuntu and Debian developers.  Folks are not less members of the community
because they contribute, or because of the nature of their contributions.

Maintaining an Ubuntu flavor is a developer activity, whether or not the
flavor started with folks who are already developers.  If you are going to
maintain an official Ubuntu flavor, then I think you should be aiming to be
considered an Ubuntu developer, both in terms of privileges and in terms of
duties - and the sooner the better.

-- 
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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