Call for votes: Developer Membership Board restaffing

[Bhavani Shankar R]

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Steve Langasek
<steve.langasek at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 09:36:19AM -0600, Micah Gersten wrote:
>> The Developer Membership Board has started a vote to restaff for the
>> four members whose terms are expiring. The Developer Membership Board is
>> responsible for reviewing and approving new Ubuntu developers. It
>> evaluates prospective Ubuntu developers and decides when to entrust them
>> with developer privileges. There are seven candidates:
>
>>     Benjamin Drung (bdrung) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BenjaminDrung
>>     Bhavani Shankar (coolbhavi) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BhavaniShankar
>>     Cody Somerville (cody-somerville) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CodySomerville
>>     Dmitrijs Ledkovs (xnox) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DmitrijsLedkovs/DMBApplication
>>     Iain Lane (Laney) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IainLane/DMB2013
>>     Scott Kitterman (ScottK) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScottKitterman
>>     Stéphane Graber (stgraber) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/stgraber
>
> So my question to each of the candidates is this.  As a member of the DMB,
> what would you do to remove this uncertainty around when people are ready to
> apply, reducing the number of rejections (whether those are hard rejects, or
> soft "redirects") at DMB meetings?
>

Hello Steve,

What I believe is a perspective developer gets ready for applying at a
particular level when a minimum of one developer of ranks of core dev
believes that the applicant is ready for a particular level of upload
rights and having more than one of them vouching for the applicants'
skills does no harm.

I have been working with the ubuntu developer advisory team a fair
bit, reaching out to contributors, helping them by providing pointers
in their interested area of ubuntu development, helping contributors
in preparing their wiki page for the DMB meeting once they seem to be
ready and also reaching out to contributors who have gone inactive
over a period of time (maybe due to lack of time or lack of motivation
due to rejection of application by DMB for instances) and collecting
their feedback and motivating them.

Ofcourse, as you mentioned, the developers who are on the board would
have their own thoughts about the applicant and what I would not do is
to point out any shortcomings on a public list (which I am presuming
that it would be viewable to the entire world), simply because it
would give raise to the concern of motivation level drop for an
applicant (if feedback given is not taken in the right sense and right
manner).

What I would do is if I deem to see an application incomplete or
perhaps a bit early to apply to the particular set of upload rights, I
would simply abstain with a short explanation and then catch up with
the applicant privately on a detailed view of what I thought of his
application, his positives and why I exactly thought his application
was incomplete, So that it enables him to focus on the shortcomings
and hone his strengths even better.

In short, I would rather prefer to a soft redirect, considering the
applicants' work with the passion and motivation factor that comes
into picture when contributing to an open source environment.

Regards,



-- 
Bhavani Shankar
Ubuntu Developer       |  www.ubuntu.com
https://launchpad.net/~bhavi