Understanding the definitions and expectations of our membership processes

[Michael Bienia]

On 2011-07-26 15:53:09 -0500, Dustin Kirkland wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 5:52 PM, Iain Lane <laney at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > By the way, I am disturbed at the amount of implied criticism the DMB is
> > receiving in the past couple of weeks. Is it a coincidence that it comes
> > shortly after we defer some applications (for the first time in a long
> > while)? I am not just referring to this and the TB email thread, but
> > also comments that appear on IRC when individuals don't feel an
> > application is going the way they like.
> 
> Perhaps this is a reference to some comments I've made in IRC recently.
> 
> I admit that I am guilty of dishing out some such criticism.  Where
> I've offended people with said criticism, I offer my humble, sincere
> apologies and hope to avoid offending individual board members in such
> ways again.  I've already contacted these individuals privately, but
> I'll again offer my public apology here.

I'm open to discussion on how the DMB does its work as for me the DMB
works on behalf of all Ubuntu developers and the DMB interpretation of
what is expected from an applicant should match the common understanding
of all developers. So I prefer to have discussion from time to time to
be able to check if my understanding of the guidelines is still in line
with others as I don't expect that the interpretation is static over
time nor that my interpretation will be the same over time and might
shift.

> I am glad that Jorge started this thread, though, as I have been
> disappointed with the handling of several applications lately.  Not so
> much the final decision, but the process, which I think is more
> painful than it needs to be.  In particular, I'll echo Jorge's
> concerns around:
> 
>  - The true value of sponsor endorsements.  At this point, I'm
> becoming more and more reluctant to put time or effort into writing
> endorsements, as it seems to me that they are summarily dismissed in
> my experience.  This is frustrating as an endorser/sponsor to be told
> over and over and over again, "Sorry, your endorsement is just wrong

Please don't stop writing endorsements as for me endorsements are very
important when processing an application.
As the sponsors did a thorough review of the contributions when
sponsoring, they have a better impression of the quality than me.
Many endorsements are also a good sign of the good integration into the
dev community while few endorsements raise questions.

But I also check if the other things I expect from the applicant
(depending on the type of application) are also fulfilled. In some cases
I get feeling that the endorsements don't match the type of application,
e.g. when reading in a membership application endorsements which would
fit better into a MOTU or PPU application. (In those cases I also check
if the applicant choose the right type of application or didn't
understand the differences between the types and really should apply for
MOTU or PPU).

For some special type of applications (for kernel upload rights) I even
fully base my vote only on endorsements: if the current kernel uploaders
endorse you, you get my +1 and without such endorsements a certain -1.


>  - The pressing need for some standards for what counts as "enough".
> I've long been frustrated with the fuzzy, moving targets we have for
> membership and privileges in Ubuntu, and I think we are long, long
> overdue for some better published standards.

The requirements for membership didn't change: it was always
"significant and sustained contributions". Where "sustained" is in the
range of 6 months and I check if this is fulfilled when processing
membership applications. But please don't understand that as strict 6
months. I don't defer someone who is missing one or two weeks for those
6 months, but on the other hand I'd have concerns to count it as 6
months if someone contributed for 2 weeks, then took a 5 month break and
contributed for 2 weeks again. I like to see around 1-2 contributions
per month (more is of course welcome; based on an average package
complexity) to count for "sustained". Of course if someone is working on
a very complex package I won't insist on that number but like to see
that the applicant worked on it during that time (e.g. questions on IRC
or mailing lists about certain problems he encountered).

But what counts as "contribution" seems to have changed over time. In
the past (before UDD) my understanding of contribution was sponsored
uploads to the main archive only (PPA don't count). It didn't change
much till now and might need a discussion in the dev community what
should count as contributions (for membership):
I assume there is no much discussion needed for merge proposals (they
should count).
But what about packages in PPA: currently PPA don't count at all (at
least for MOTU, not sure if they count for membership or not). Should it
stay that way or should PPA count fully or only under certain
conditions?
What about "upstream" contributions? There was some discussion about it
recently.
Any other types of contributions I missed?

I don't insist on my understanding of what a "contribution" is as long
as there is a common understanding in the dev community what is a
contribution and what not.

Michael