What do you want MOTU to be in Q, R and S?

[Stefano Rivera]

Hi Andrew (2012.05.03_20:59:19_+0200)
> It's that over the past few cycles the team has dwindled to the point
> where it is hard to see what it even does. Much of this is of course
> due to many of MOTU's traditional responsibilities having been
> superseeded by newer institutions and norms:
> archive-reorg/package-sets, the Developer Membership Board, a stronger
> emphasis new packages going through Debian. A lot of this is "a good
> thing," but I feel that we've lost some of the social cohesion that
> the team used to bring to Ubuntu development.

I agree with that reasoning. I don't think we have much of a team
identity, rather than just being a bunch of people who care about
unseeded.

It feels wrong to have to attract members by quilting them into helping
us, or make helping us a pre-requisite for them getting things done.
But I don't know how we should attract the type of people who enjoy
archive gardening.

Personally, my catalyst for MOTUing was wanting to get a package into
Ubuntu in a hurry before lucid released. It went through Debian, but
wanted to make sure I could help it along as much as possible in Ubuntu,
as a freeze was imminent.  So I sat down and learned how to do some MOTU
things, did a few merges, and discovered this was a whole lot of fun.

> As Daniel mentioned, one of the most important contributions of this
> team has been bringing new contributors into the fold.

I like to think I spend a fair bit of time on this, and when it comes to
chatting, I think most of us do. When people make the effort to get
involved, we're quite good at this. The IRC channels are very friendly,
and the patch pilots (not that MOTU can claim credit here) are making
sure everything gets reviewed soonish.  Sure, not everyone who does some
uploads sticks around, but I assume some people find it's not their
thing.

I think the problem is that we aren't getting that many new faces.
Even when do get people saying they want to help, most of the time, we
don't have a good project for them. Without a personal motivation to get
a new package in or something like that, I think it's harder to find the
energy to get into it.

> While things like per-package upload rights are great for getting
> contributors with a very narrow interest to help directly in Ubuntu,
> in the past I think there was some value to the social pressure to
> help with package outside your specific interest in order to get
> upload rights.

We (the DMB) do apply some pressure on PPU applicants, but by the time
they've got to us, it's too late the to persuade them that they should
become MOTUs. And yes, PPU serves a purpose, many of them probably
shouldn't become MOTUs.

>  * Maintaining packages that do not belong in any package-sets.
>  * Providing guidance and training for new generalist developers.
>  * Extended Quality Assurance functions.
> 
> Are we living up to this mission? Does this still make sense for us?
> Has the MOTU simply out lived its usefulness?

I think that's a fairly good description of us these days.

> I haven't found a blueprint for this yet. Does it exist yet, or should
> I file one?

Not as far as I know, please do.

If we didn't have a MOTU session, it'd be a sign that it's all over.
Then again, a sad MOTU session isn't much better :/

SR

-- 
Stefano Rivera
  http://tumbleweed.org.za/
  H: +27 21 461 1230 C: +27 72 419 8559