Changes to the Universe Development team structure

[Emmet Hikory]

Scott Kitterman wrote:
> None of this should be done until we've had a MOTU meeting and have agreed on
>  it.  The changes that have been done should be reverted.  I don't think MC
>  has unilateral authority to change the way the community works.

    The rename of the ubuntu-universe-contributors has been undone, as
the above is undoubtably true.  Further, as much as I believe that it
is appropriate to auto-expire old memberships in this team, I shan't
be implementing this, nor encouraging others to do so without wider
discussion and agreement.

  The new team is being retained, as it is believed that appropriate
community processes were followed, as described below.  If I am in
error, I would appreciate correction.

    In February, I was asked if MOTU Council granted membership
directly, as well as through MOTU.  This question was raised to the
prior members of the MOTU Council, who indicated that the question
needed to be referred to the Community Council (see thread from (1)).

    On the basis of that discussion, a proposal (2) was presented to
the 21st February Community Council meeting (3).  After some further
delay (apologies for that), I was assigned to ask the Community
Council for a mechanism by which the MOTU Council might grant this
membership (4), and in the following discussion, it was proposed that
this be done through a separate group (5).  This was further discussed
by the community council, and after approval (unpublished), the MOTU
council created the new group, which was duly granted membership in
Ubuntu Members to reflect the Community Council approval.

    As such a launchpad group is also a means by which entitlements
may be granted, the MOTU Council expressed a belief that it would be
nice if this team was also granted some other rights currently
reserved to MOTU, suggestions for which my previous mail was intended
to elicit.

    Until such time as some current member (that being some MOTU for
now) chooses to sponsor some new applicant, the existence of the new
team does not change the entitlements granted to any individual, and
for now, the only entitlements granted to the team are those of Ubuntu
Members and Contributors of packages to Ubuntu Universe (an open
team).

I wrote:
> 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.

    Just as a matter of clarification, the above is not intended to
indicate or encourage the wider use of LP-authenticated VCS management
for Ubuntu packages.  This is a matter of discussion in several other
fora, and opinions on whether there should be more or less are best
directed there.  For those cases where a LP-authenticated VCS is in
use, I believe the new team would be an appropriate container for the
entitlement, but such decisions are best taken by the administrators
of each individual repository.

1: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-February/000875.html
2: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Council/GrantingMembership
3: http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2008/02/21/%23ubuntu-meeting.html
4: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-March/000920.html
5: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-March/000931.html

-- 
Emmet HIKORY