[dct] Getting the Debian Collaboration Team started again

[Lucas Nussbaum]

Hi Martin,

On 13/05/07 at 17:22 -0300, Martin Albisetti wrote:
> This email might come as a surprise to all of you subscribed to the
> DCT mailing list since it hasn't had any activity for more then 6
> months.
> I've emailed Lucas Nussbaum about getting the team back on track, and
> I've been working the past week to gather all the information
> available about the discussions and progress already made.

Yes, thanks a lot for trying to put this team back on track!

> I'm very interested in getting this actually moving, not matter how
> slow, as long as there is a roadmap and interest in getting a much
> better collaboration cycle going between Debian and Ubuntu.
> 
> So far I've been working with Marcela Tiznado, a Debian Developer,
> each of us gathering information on how processes work on both sides,
> and looking for non-obtrusive ways to feed information to the other
> side (taking into account previous attempts).
> I believe we have made some real progress, and are slowly adding it to
> the wiki page (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DCT/Proposal).
> 
> We still have a few more days work until we can show some clear ideas
> on *what* to actually do, but one of my main concerns right now is
> dividing it into small, easy tasks to be able to have a larger pool of
> volunteers to pick from.
> 
> This email is basically to find out who is still interested in helping
> out, and who can shed some light on what has been done and what hasn't
> (I'd love to know how much was followed up after last year's DebConf:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/06/msg00278.html)

I can help from time to time, but don't expect a big involvement on my
side, as I'm already very busy with other things.

> Marcela and myself will both be attending DebConf7 this year, so we
> have faith in being able to get things together by then and take
> advantage of so many key people being in the same place.

Have you thought about proposing a DCT BOF ?

About the task of packaging software in Ubuntu, but not in Debian:
Debian and Ubuntu have different opinions on what should go in their
archives. While the policy for universe is basically "package everything
you can", Debian puts a bigger emphasis on quality. In most cases, I
don't think that packages from Ubuntu should be imported to Ubuntu,
unless:

 (A) There is someone interested in maintaining the package in Debian
 (B) The package is actually being used by many Ubuntu users. Ubuntu now
     has a working popcon.ubuntu.com, so this is quite easy to verify.
 (C) There isn't another package in the archive doing basically the same
     thing.

A few weeks ago, after a discussion about REVU, I started to wonder if
all the manpower put into getting new packages in Ubuntu was really
necessary. So I looked at the popcon score for universe packages that
were not in Debian. And basically, there wasn't a lot of packages that
were really used by Ubuntu users, once you exclude the packages that
cannot be in Debian for legal reasons. I didn't publish the results
because they were a bit depressing, but I could work on that again.

About the number of 4000 packages in Ubuntu but not in Debian, don't
forget that many packages get removed from Debian, and that Ubuntu is
often slow at removing those (RC buggy or useless) packages.
-- 
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas at lucas-nussbaum.net   http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
| jabber: lucas at nussbaum.fr             GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |