Role of the Sponsorship Queue

[Emmet Hikory]

Soctt Kitterman wrote:
> "Emmet Hikory" <persia at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>>    I don't think it's about motivation, but rather about the status
>>of the submitter.  If someone is not an Ubuntu Developer, have them
>>just submit a patch and call it done.  That makes it simple and easy.
>>If someone *is* an Ubuntu Developer, let's make sure there is a way
>>that they can get their work uploaded for the case where they can't
>>upload to a package directly (using as a definition of "Ubuntu
>>Developer anyone falling into any of the categories on the wiki (1)).
>
> "Sorry, you are not an Ubuntu developer, so your patch is not eligible for sponsorship. Unsubscribing ubuntu-sponsors.  Your patch will be reviewed by ubuntu-reviewers."
>
> Is that the experience we are after?

    Not quite, and in two ways.  Firstly, I don't think there is any
way that we can determine if someone is an Ubuntu Developer or not
without asking them (as there's no clear way to distinguide
Prospective Developers from arbitrary users, and no clear way to
distinguish Contributing Developres who didn't happen to chat with the
DMB from other Ubuntu Members).  Secondly, I'd really prefer to see
sponsors discovering bugs in the sponsors queue that ought be in the
reiviewers queue leave a bug comment like the following:

"This patch doesn't appear to be integrated into the packaging for the
packagee.  I've removed this bug from the sponsors queue and
subscribed myself.  If you're planning on working on it more, please
update the bug, otherwise I will handle it from here.  Please note
that one does not need to subscribe the sponsors queue for most
patches."

    Depending on other factors, it may be worth mentioning upstream
coordination or other actions that oght be taken to help the patch
submitter get the issue solved (and I *don't* think "Go make a debdiff
out of this and resubmit" is a useful statement of guideance).

    Also, I object to the idea that we should consider patches that
got subscribed to the sponsors queue any better than other patches in
the bugtracker if they aren't being produced by active developers.
That just creates the impression that there's some mysterious method
that one has to use to get a patch applied.  That there happen to be
2000 patches awaiting our attention is a completely different failure
on our part, and unrelated to how we deal with sponsoring (although a
problem we ought solve).

-- 
Emmet HIKORY