MOTU report - Issue 2

[Daniel Holbach]

Hello everyone, 


this is the second issue of the MOTU report, bringing you NEWS about the
efforts of the MOTU project [1], a group of volunteers maintaining most
of the Universe and Multiverse packages.

[1] http://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU


=> The last month in an overview <=

The last month was very exciting to all of us; apart from being
incredibly busy to have Universe in a good shape for Hoary's release
[2], we managed to work out processes for new packages, package
reviewing, MOTU meetings and MOTU approval. It seems we are finally
reaching a state, where we can just work.

[2] http://wiki.ubuntu.com/HoaryReleaseSchedule

Our team grew every night and we are pleased to now have Aaron Lake
(metallikop), Jani Monoses (jani), Jerry Haltom (wasabi), Jorge Bernal
(koke) and Niall Sheridan (dredg) in our midst. They all beautified
Universe with their outstanding efforts.

Primarily we worked on [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] and [9] and we were
able to fix more than 200 packages in one month. As you can imagine,
this amount of work made us grow together as a team. The atmosphere is
kind and all of us enjoy being where we are. We can only invite you, to
become part of the MOTU crew and will do whatever we can to guide you
through the process.

[3] http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UniverseDefomaVersionBumpTODO
[4] http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UniverseHowlRebuildTODO
[5] http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UniversePackageWithoutDesktopFile
[6] http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UniversePythonTransitionTODO
[7] http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UniverseUnmetDeps
[8] http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UniverseXorgBuildProblems
[9] http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UniversePriorityList


What may sound like dull work is actually pretty exciting - having a
look "behind the scenes" and the good feeling of achieving something
good with sometimes little effort is what pleased most of those new to
the Maintainer world. "Is it really that easy to get in?" - YES, it is!
Tackling build problems together is really big fun.


=> Hear some words of those directly involved: <=

Hervé Cauwelier (herve) said: "last month I most of all transitioned
python packages, had... er, fun with gcompris - sip/qt/kde python
bindings - that apt-get.org thing killed me - and I still think the motu
ROCKS!"

Jorge Bernal (koke) worked on loads of packages; most prominent: the
change of gnome-menu to show default icons for missing menu entries and
after his magical interference, papaya compiled the first time on a
powerpc.

Michael Rimbert (tritium) worked hard on [3] (grace, grace6, lmodern,
scigraphica, ttf-dustin, ttf-f500, ttf-isabella, ttf-staypuft,
ttf-summersbym, ttf-uralic, xfonts-baekmuk, xfonts-thai-ttf now follow
the newest standard), fixed glabels for [4] and fixed xawtv for [9]. He
worked together with Daniel T. Chen on fixing python-scipy and
succeeded. Michael also packaged python-matplotlib, krecipes, gourmet,
and python-rtf. They are all stuck in the [10], but will soon be
reviewed to make it in the Hoary Release. Apart from that, he continues
to be an active contributor in #ubuntu, as his time permits.

Andrew Mitchell (ajmitch) hacked up /usr/share/cdbs/1/class/zope.mk to
make cdbs packaging of zope products easier. He packaged zope-quills as
a test.

Daniel T. Chen (crimsun) and Jani Monoses (jani) started the XFCE team
and work hard on having a fresh and smooth version ready for Hoary.

Brandon Hale (tseng) works hard on getting Mono in shape for the release
and Jonathan Riddell (Riddell) put incredible efforts into Kubuntu.

Our MOTU hopefuls: relatively new in our team are Chris Scheib (schweeb)
as well as Stephen Shirley (diamond), Adam Israel (StoneTable), Reinhard
Tartler (siretart) and Corey Burger (Burgundavia), who did fabulous work
on [9] and [5]. Stephen Shirley joined Michael T. Rimbert in fixing
gnome-python and together, they tackled the bug. Well done, guys!

A lot of submissions of new or changed packages hit us and we want to
thank Dmitriy Kropivnitskiy, George Farris, Henning Sprang (hsprang),
Jochem Kossen (jk), Mattias Eriksson (snaggen), Travis Watkins
(Amaranth), Sven Herzberg (herzi), David Sedeño, Simone Gotti for their
efforts and patience, if their packages still did not make it in yet.

[10] http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/MOTUNewPackages


=> Future plans <=

After the release we will be glad to open up teams [11] for whatever you
can think of. We need eager people, highly interested and commited to
the teams' goals. You guys can change the look and feel of Ubuntu today,
just drop in #ubuntu-motu or find interested people on the mailing list
[12].

We are planning to have cool T-Shirts soon; so if you have a nice idea,
please do not keep it to yourself!

On another note: We are proud to announce you this: Malone [13], /the/
bug tracking tool has finally hit the webservers. If you run into
trouble, especially with Universe packages, file a bug in Malone to let
us know!

[11] http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/MOTUTeams
[12] http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
[13] https://launchpad.ubuntu.com/distros/ubuntu/+bugs



Make the change! Today!

(If I forgot to write about YOU, I didn't do it intentionally, just tell
me and you'll be in the next issue.)

Have a nice day,
 Daniel Holbach (for the MOTU team)