The last couple of weeks in MOTU

[Stephan Hermann]

Hi my fellow MOTUs,

I write this email to explain, why I'm a bit disappointed in the last couple 
of weeks with the mood around our Universe.

First of all, I thank everybody who tries to get our Universe repositories in 
a very usable state. And I thank everybody who tries to decrease the workload 
from the MOTU team.

But, not all the time there is sunshine, so I have to express my thoughts now, 
what is in my eyes completly nonsense, and makes the work for MOTUs not so 
enjoyable, as it was before.

I have to admit, that working in a team without the usual rules is not 
possible, but too many rules is no good for a team like us.
To be honest, I was surprised, when some wiki pages about collaboration came 
up, and very political discussions were coming up. 
Yes, I'm not the one, who is saying "I don't have anything to do with it", but 
when I replied to debian-devel, it was more the "foul language" and the 
"attitute towards Ubuntu" in general, which drove me to reply. But, now after 
some days/weeks it's time to stop all that.

When I started to work for MOTU, some of you remember the times in April/May 
2005, we were a small group of people who tried to accomplish the impossible. 
Working on an ammount of packages, where our mother distribution Debian needs 
more then >1000 developers or maintainers for. We were just 15-20 people, and 
the first really hard work was the c2 CXX transition, which we worked out 
very fast and reliable. 
During this transition, there was no time to file any bugs towards Debian, and 
it wasn't needed, because for the package maintainers in Debian, those 
transitions are just finger practices. Those changes were trivial and were 
announced by Matthias Klose as well to Debian-Devel, that Ubuntu had 
transitioned most of the packages already. So everybody was invited to grab 
our packages, and check the changes.

The same happend now with the last c2a transition and it happened for 
python2.4 and xorg. Where the latter transitions are not suitable for Debian 
yet. 

Yes, I know, we can try to decrease the workload of the MOTUs, when we file 
bugs towards debian about our changes, but sometimes this is not the way how 
it works. 

My view of all this is, that we, working on Ubuntu, our first duty is Ubuntu. 
Making Ubuntu the best distribution around is our first goal. Our second goal 
could be, to make Debian the 2nd best distribution around ;)

But for that, we don't need new rules, new work orders or whatever. We all 
know where we come from, and it should be in our view, that we have to give 
back at least serious fixes and patches back to Debian, but not all, what is 
really trivial.

Right now, everything we discuss most of the time on #ubuntu-motu is politics. 
How can we give back to debian etc. But this is not our job, not our main 
purpose. 
Ubuntu is a distribution, just like Debian, and many of the people who are 
coming to Ubuntu, wants to see Ubuntu growing, not redhat or suse or debian.
So, for me, all new rules, work orders etc. which have not Ubuntu in the first 
line, makes my work not enjoyable. 
I don't say, we shouldn't do anything for Debian or others, but we should 
focus on our main purpose, which is and always be Ubuntu.

I know, we have several Debian Developers and Package Maintainers in our team, 
and I appreaciate their goal to decrease the divergence between Ubuntu and 
Debian, but please don't force it onto other people. 
If you think you have to do something, please do it by yourself. You read 
dapper changes, you can read the changelogs, you can ask, why  we made 
changes, and push them back to Debian, if you have the time. 

I, for myself, I decide which changes/patches are worth it to go back to 
Debian, and most of the time I see the package maintainer not reacting in a 
reasonable ammount of time, so for me, most work towards this goal, is just a 
waste of time.

I think it's more a duty of the package maintainer in debian to check for 
himself, who has changes/patches ready for his package. That means, he should 
do the same work as we do, checking launchpad, debian bts, 
redhat/gentoo/suse/mandriva bugzilla and even upstream for fixes, patches 
etc.

We can't make it right for everybody, that's the world. And we won't change 
it, when we create more and more legal stuff around our team.
Quiet the contrary, it will make the work for our area quite impossible, 
because we have to check first, if it's not against the rules.

So, for me, we should concentrate on our main work, without any rules and work 
orders. 
And we should stop this nonsense about politics and flames and ranting about 
others, who have nothing to do directly with Universe or Ubuntu.

If you decide, that it can be a good contribution back to debian, take those 
and push it into debian. If you have no affiliation at all with debian, leave 
it, someone will push it into debian, where there is time.

So, I hope my thoughts are ok to share with you, and it's the last mail about 
this for me. There is nothing to discuss about this anymore, and I'll refuse 
to talk about this in the future.

I don't know how you feel about the last days/weeks change of mood in the MOTU 
team, I would say, express yourself here, or whereever you think it's 
appropriate, but let's stop all discussions about the matters of Debian or of 
Mr. Smith. 

Welcome to Upstream Version Freeze :)

\sh
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/attachments/20060119/e965c6ba/attachment.pgp