Changes to the Universe Development team structure

[Emmet Hikory]

    In recognition of the growing number of developers, a new
development team is being introduced to provide further granularity of
entitlements within Ubuntu Development: the Universe Hackers (Ubuntu
Contributing Developers) (1).  This team is intended to include all
who have been actively involved with universe development for some
time, have provided significant contributions, and have a sustained
commitment to the development community.

    All current MOTU have been added to this team (indirectly), and
new members are encouraged to apply by sending mail to
motu-council at lists.ubuntu.com with a reference to their updated wiki
page, indications of other current team members willing to sponsor
their membership, and their plans for future activity.  Applicants are
expected to meet the following criteria:

* Have been working with Ubuntu development for some time, with a
number of bugs fixed in the archives
* Have a close working relationship with other members of the Ubuntu community
* Have a clear plan for future activity
* Have updated their wiki page to meet the criteria listed on
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NewMemberHowto

    While the specific entitlements granted to this team are still
expanding, the intent is to allow most development activities that do
not specifically require upload to the archives or extensive
experience with package management to be performed by members of this
team.  In addition to other efforts underway, I would like to
encourage anyone maintaining a VCS for Ubuntu packaging of a universe
package to consider using this team in place of ~ubuntu-dev as a
source of acceptable committers.  Further, if anyone has any specific
suggestions of other entitlements that should properly belong to this
team, please reply here, or raise in a MOTU Meeting.

    Along with this new team, the previous Contributors of packages
for ubuntu universe team (ubuntu-universe-contributors) is undergoing
a rename to "Universe Code Monkeys" (~universe-code-monkeys), and a
transition is planned for existing members to expire after six months
have passed.  All members of the Universe Hackers and all Ubuntu
Developers will remain members, and anyone whose membership expires
will be welcome to rejoin (although those working on packaging for
greater than six months are definitely encouraged to become Universe
Hackers).  This should significantly reduce the REVU keyring sync
delay, and may grant other entitlements in the future.

1: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopers

-- 
Emmet HIKORY