Introducing Products

[Emmet Hikory]

    In the testing team, we've been using the concept of "product" for
some time, to better identify the artifacts that capture our
attention, but I am unsure that this concept has been shared with the
wider development community.

   A product is an image containing some portion of Ubuntu software,
targeted for some specific installation environment, and released
following our release management processes.  Some examples of our
current products include:

Ubuntu Desktop Live i386
Ubuntu Server Alternate amd64
Kubuntu Desktop Live powerpc
Ubuntu Netbook Preinstalled armel+omap3

   In an attempt to better manage our products, and ensure that each
product is well tested and well supported, a more formal means of
tracking products is being established, so that each product must be
deliberately selected by some team willing to commit to the validation
and certification processes, consisting of those who have both the
necessary hardware and familiarity with the software to provide
effective testing; and each product must have a nominated product
manager.

   Towards that end, each flavour team should consider which
installation targets they wish to support, and identify a product
manager who will be available as a contact for the release team to
provide confirmation of the completion of milestone validations and
release approval for each product.  Depending on the internal
organisation of any specific flavour team, these product managers
might be part of the development team, part of the testing team, or
part of a management team.  In all cases, the nominated product
managers should have access to the installation environment towards
which their product is targeted.

   Those interested in following the specifics of the implementation
are encouraged to subscribe to the relevant specification (1), which
will be used for the tracking of the implementation.

   I will be contacting each flavour team in the near future to
discuss the available installation targets and the set of products to
be released with Ubuntu 11.04.  Once complete, the set of images
produced will be limited to only include those for which product
managers have been nominated.

1: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/other-qa-n-testing-different-architectures

--
Emmet HIKORY