brainstorming for UDS-N - Ubuntu the Project

[Rick Spencer]

On Tue, 2010-09-28 at 21:39 +0200, Allison Randal wrote:
> The Project track is about building the community and improving our
> development practices. Make the work of existing contributors easier by
> removing blockers and streamlining processes. Think about
> more/different/better ways to welcome new contributors, and encourage
> and train less experienced developers.
> 
> What's high on your list for this area?

1. I would like us to talk about our Freezes and how we treat them. I
think certain projects are *always* breaking freezes. I would like to
discuss if we should stop allowing this, or should we change the process
to accommodate the needs of these teams, or, perhaps all is fine the way
it is. The recent Font FFE might be an instructive case to consider
specifically, but there are probably others as well.

2. I worry a bit that we have gotten complacent about how we technically
and otherwise support core contributors like MOTU, Core Devs, etc... I
think we might want to examen our current processes and tools, and see
if there are some targeted investments Canonical can make to improve the
work flow or other aspects of being a core contributor.

3. I get the sense that certain queues are getting backed up in a way
that didn't used to, and this is blocking the inflow contributions. For
example, Benjamin Drung sent an email about the main sponsor queue. I
think it might be useful to talk as a community about the right ratio of
"Feature Work" versus sponsoring and other community related work for
the devs that are paid by Canonical to work on Ubuntu, as well as other
ways to focus on these sorts of contributions.

4. Bugs bugs bugs ... we get so many bug reports, and I'm not 100%
certain that we make the best use out of them that we could. I think
there are probably opportunities to analyze them in a numerical manner
and allow statics to draw our attention to problematic areas in way that
trying to keep up with individual bug reports cannot.

Cheers, Rick