[MOTU] 2005-08-03 Summary of MOTU Meeting

[Stephan Hermann]

Openener
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Thanks to Barry 'bddebian' DeFreese for wrapping up the MOTU Meeting Minutes.
Some additions were made by Stephan '\sh' Hermann.

This mail is send on behalf of Barry DeFresse.

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Hello,

Here is a synopsis of the agenda items discussed at the MOTU Meeting on 
8/3/2005.

1)   MOTU Taskforces (StephanHermann)

  a) Description

    i)  As we all know, there is too much work right now, to do all the 
expected MOTU work at all. E.g. all transitions, merges etc. is eating up a 
lot of time, which is lost on the other work like reviewing etc. We need to 
discuss, how we manage our strength and time to have both. That's why I want 
to build up MOTU taskforces. Taskforces will deal during special times with 
special workorders. One taskforce will deal with transitions, merges etc. 
and the other will deal in the same time with reviews and new packages. 
Right now, we have enough MOTUs to fulfill this action point, and we should 
determine the need of those taskforces alltogether.

    ii)  In a nutshell, Stephan was looking for a way to balance the 
workload to ensure that priority tasks received the appropriate attention.

  b) Discussion

    i)  Daniel felt inclined to setup more of a lead for each area of work 
to be accomplished.

   ii)  General consensus is that we need more structure but there were 
varying opinions on how to accomplish this.

   ii)  Essentially it was determined to establish a wiki page to flesh out 
these different ideas for focusing the workload and re-discuss at a later 
meeting.

  iii)  Siretart (real name here?) Also wanted to briefly discuss a new 
MOTUs process.  His thought was to establish the Jedi/Padawan relationship 
(sorry, couldn't resist).  He is going to throw up a wiki page to flesh this 
out.  Also to be re-addressed at a later meeting.

c) Decisions
   
   There was no decision, because there are a lot of points to think about and 
we will
   wrap all ideas up on a wiki page to discuss them later again.


2)   Proceedings of feeding UniverseNewPackages (and Andrew's RFP list) to 
utnubu-discuss. (DanielHolbach)

  a) Description

    i)  Daniel feels that there is not good notifications of NEW packages.

  b) Discussion

    dholbach was refering to the problem we discussed earlier, what to do to 
get new packages and
    patches into Debian.
    Right now, on Debian there is a new working team called Utnubu, and 
they're working on 
    incorporating our patches into the Debian packages. They're working as 
well on getting new 
    packages from Ubuntu, which are not in Debian in. 
    The problem for dholbach was, that the announcement of those new packages 
and patches are not
    so present as it should.

    ogras opionion was, that the Utnubu folks have eyes and browsers and 
tools, to get all the stuff
    by themselves. So there would be no need for us to announce them anywhere 
then on our wiki and 
    bugzilla/malone bugtracker.

    A good idea was mentioned by luis introducing RSS feeds for new uploads 
(which is already there) 
    and for new patches.

  c) Decisions

    The consense of this discussion was no consense. Many people in MOTU have 
different views, 
    and all are right or wrong. We have to see what will happen in the future, 
depending on 
    volunteer work from Debian Utnubu Team.


3)   Trashing of MOTUNewPackages and MOTUToReview in favour of REVU 
(DanielHolbach)

  a) Description

    ii)  Should we drop the MOTUNewPackages and MOTUToReview wiki pages?

  b)  Discussion/Decision

    i)  It was decided that the pages will stay for a breif period (though 
no specific timeframe was given).  It will be announced, and they will be 
removed.

4)   Assigning Malone Bugs on Universe packages to the MOTU Launchpad team? 
(DanielRobitaille)

  a) Description

    i)   As you may be aware by now, while doing bug triage in Malone in 
recent days I started assigning to the MOTU Launchpad team bugs on Universe 
packages that were previously left unassigned. Is it something that we 
should continue doing or not? While this ensure that these bugs are properly 
associated to the MOTU team, it is generating emails to some motu members, 
which may not be a productive on the long run, especially considering that 
there is currently in the order of 300 of these bugs in Malone. So the 2 
questions are: should all unassigned Malone bugs on Universe packages be 
assigned to the MOTU Launchpad team, and if yes, should this be done 
automatically for all new bug reports?

  b)  Discussion/Decision

    i)  Modify dilys to do an RSS feed?

   ii)  A mailing list for MOTU bugs?

  iii)  Daniel H. requested delaying decisions until we get feedback back 
about Launchpad.

5)   that lamer DanielHolbach, again: common REVU practices - there are two 
topics I can think of, which got discussed on REVU - maybe we should have a 
bit of bendable policy and an agreement here:

  a) Description

    i)  config.{guess,sub} in the diff (relying on build hosts' build system 
vs. clean diff)

   ii)   changing .ORIG.tar.gz (sorry, I'm a bit biased)

  b)  Discussion/Decision

   It's quite difficult to describe this very technical discussion on this 
topic.
   The decision was made, to contact autotools upstream, to get this thing 
sorted out.
   It all has to do with "depending on the build system, or on the patch 
someones provided with 
   config.{guess,sub} in it".
   mdz and seb128 made some really serious point outs and we think that 
contacting the upstream of
   autotools/automake is a better solution.

6)   Review Days! We need to hold them on a regular basis (see taskforce 
topic above) (AndrewMitchell)

  a) Description

    i)  Self explanatory

  b)  Discussion / Decision

    i)  Andrew has "volunteered" to head up getting more review days 
scheduled?

Next scheduled meeting:

August 24 20:00 UTC

Thank you for your participation.