Making it easier for people to work with upstreams

[Bruno Girin]

On Wed, 2010-01-13 at 12:48 -0500, Jorge O. Castro wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Sense Hofstede <sense at qense.nl> wrote:
> > Then there is the Upstream Contact. An Upstream Contact is the formalised
> > link between upstream and Ubuntu. However, is this for a whole upstream, or
> > like Adopt-an-Upstream mostly centred around one application? What is the
> > relation between the tasks of the Upstream Contact and the Adopt-an-Upstream
> > group, who should do what? The list of tasks on the wiki[3] seems a bit too much
> > for one person to me.
> 
> Daniel and I discussed this today during our call.
> 
> I think this is getting too complicated, so I think we should just
> grab what's in Upstream/Contacts and merge it into Adopt-an-Upstream.
> Me personally, I don't care too much about what the person's title is
> or whether the relationship is formal or informal. As long as
> $potential_volunteer has a place where they can see what kinds of
> things they can do to work better with upstreams then I'm ok with
> that.

Good idea. We should keep it simple and flexible otherwise people won't
volunteer. At the end of the day, if it works well, we will probably
need several upstream people for large upstreams like Gnome, maybe one
per application, or maybe even several for a single application like
OpenOffice. On the other hand, small utilities can probably be handled
by someone who cares about that utility but is also doing a lot of other
stuff.

> 
> Does anyone have any objection to Daniel and I just merging
> Upstream/Contacts into Adopt-an-upstream?

Not me.

> 
> > I would suggest to make the Bug Squad's Adopt-a-Package[2] initiative a part of
> > the Adopt-an-Upstream group, or a subteam, depending on the size of the group.
> > This because the description of the Upstream Contact[3] does suggest the Contact
> > to take ownership of all bugs and work on them with a group of volunteers. This
> > group of volunteers could be what's now the Adopt-a-Package group[4] and this
> > subteam would also report to the Bug Squad in order to allow us to keep an eye
> > on the bug status of Ubuntu. A separate adoption team could be created for
> > moving bugs without package to the right one.
> 
> This is starting to get complicated with teams and subteams, etc. At
> the end of the day it breaks down to "My name is Jorge and I care
> about making Banshee better in Ubuntu; I read/write X wiki pages,
> handle Y bugs, on occasions I try to run a Bug Day, I help filter out
> junk bugs for upstreams, I help new users on IRC ...."

Exactly. An upstream contact should be a way to interact with that
upstream for all Ubuntu teams, not just BugSquad so it's better if it's
separate. However, there's nothing precluding the same person from
adopting an upstream and also adopting the corresponding package in
Ubuntu for bug handling.


> 
> Some people will want to do some or all of those things, some people
> will just want to do one bit, or whatever, as long as there's a common
> place on the wiki to help these people link together. I don't think
> people will care that it's actually adopt-a-package or
> adopt-an-upstream, I think they'll start someplace and then as they
> get to know it they might work on the package or in the direct
> upstream bug tracker or whatever and will figure out what to do.
> 
> Or am I oversimplifying? Maybe I'm just paranoid because I expect
> someone to jump in with "Then we'll have a council to oversee ...." :p

No, the simpler the better. What I think is important to do though is to
be clear on the wiki that adopt-an-upstream is not necessarily bug
related while adopt-a-package is. So scope definition is key.

Bruno