Moving Forward in Ubuntu (Wine, Debian and Universe)

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Scott Ritchie">

> I got really excited about the Ubuntu way when Jeff Waugh recruited me and
> Matt Zimmerman told me that things like that wouldn't happen in the Ubuntu
> universe, since we don't block other people's work like that.  I even got
> a personal message from Mark Shuttleworth telling me how excited he was
> about getting first class wine support in Ubuntu.  There are many great
> things we should take from Debian and contribute back, but the ability of
> maintainers to keep an iron lock on packages which they refuse to update
> or support should not be one of them.
> 
> I don't mean to start a conflict with anyone here, or to drive a wedge
> between Ubuntu and Debian, but if I have to jump through hoops just to get
> a less ancient version of Wine added to universe, it's going to be
> needlessly hard for me to contribute to Ubuntu.

Hi Scott,

So this is a tough problem. On one hand, we really want to involve upstream
developers in universe, and let them collaborate with package maintainers to
make universe *really* rock, without the "Big Maintainer Lock"; on the other
hand, we don't want to fork so far away from Debian that we can't share the
work each project does.

You have the dubious pleasure of being the first contributor so obviously
caught between these goals! We've stuck our head in the sand on this one,
because it requires us to make some difficult decisions, that we probably
wouldn't want to generalise as policy or convention (such as being happy to
fork away from Debian packages willy-nilly).

The great thing about Ubuntu is that we have the Community Council and the
Technical Board *precisely* to figure out these very difficult problems that
no single person or small group can solve alone.

So, no more heads in sand, let's sort this out!

Here's how I'd do it: First, I'd propose an agenda item for the next CC and
TB meetings specifically about this issue. Then, I'd propose that we have a
special combined meeting of the TB and CC to discuss it, with everyone in
attendance - I don't think that's too drastic, because this is a tough
problem, which *will* come up again, and it's going nowhere at the moment.
If the TB and CC don't want to hold a special meeting, then at least we can
deal with it in the regular meetings.

What do you think - is that too much bureaucracy? It is a pain that we have
to go up the stack to get a decision, but I hope I've illustrated (and from
your mail, I can tell you understand) why this is a special case.

Thanks Scott! :-)

- Jeff

-- 
linux.conf.au 2005: April 18th-23rd                    http://linux.conf.au/
 
   "Science helps a lot, but people built perfectly good brick walls long
               before they knew why cement works." - Alan Cox