Role of the Sponsorship Queue

[Emmet Hikory]

Scott Kitterman wrote:
> "Emmet Hikory" wrote:
>>    Now, I happen to believe that it's worth having a sponsors queue.
>>I remember when we didn't have one.  We created it specifically so
>>that those developers who didn't yet have upload rights to a given
>>package could get priority for reviews of their candidate packages
>>(which at the time primarily consisted of collections of the
>>previously unreviewed patches).  If we don't wish to fast-track
>>uploads for developers, that's fine, but I believe that we'll end up
>>back in the days when people just repeatedly posted on IRC when they
>>had a debdiff, and I think that's a waste of the submitters time and
>>the time of anyone reading iRC (either in real-time or in logs).
>
> This leaves out the class of submitter that is currently very motivated around one or two bugs, but has no current intent to become an Ubuntu developer.   I think this unfortunate for two reasons:
>
> 1.  It misses a good chance to get a fix into the archive.

    I'm not convinced this doesn't apply to a significant proportion
of the outstanding patch list currently, and I don't think that the
subscription of a special magic team necessarily has any relation to
the quality of a patch.  Yes, we're losing track of patches, but the
outstanding number of patches has been fairly constant for the past
year, and is lower than it has been.  This gives me confidence that
we're making progress, and can get the total available patches down to
a manageable level soon, especially if we encourage lots more folk to
help review the outstanding patches.

> 2.  It misses the chance for people who think they don't think they want to become Ubuntu developers to discover they are wrong.

    I agree that the model I describe serves those who may discover
that they really do wish to be Ubuntu Developers badly.  I'm not
convinced the current model serves them that much better.  For those
few who come to IRC and talk to us, we can certainly help them through
building a candidate, submitting it, etc.  For those that don't, we're
lost, but I assert we're not more lost than we are now, and certainly
not more than if we try to push all the patches into the sponsors
queue.

-- 
Emmet HIKORY