Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Jono Bacon]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 11:11 AM, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:
>> I don't think it is unreasonable for Canonical to focus its resources
>> on Ubuntu as opposed to the flavors.
>
> I'm crystal clear that the Canonical community team's QA effort is focused on
> trying to get the broader community to do QA on Canonical products.  I think
> that's quite unfortunate.  Rather than just trying to get free labor for
> Canonical, I would have hoped you wanted to make QA better for the entire
> Ubuntu project.
>
> This is in marked contrast to Daniel Holbach's efforts (which I've been
> watching and appreciating, but not had much time to get involved with) to
> bring new blood into the Ubuntu development process.  He's pursing the kind of
> holistic approach I'd hope to see from your entire team.

We *are* working to "make QA better for the entire Ubuntu project",
but the point is that our focus is on *Ubuntu* and our specific
efforts don't extend to coordinating flavor testing. This doesn't mean
we are ignoring our flavors, or are not happy to offer advice or
guidance, but my team (Daniel included) is not focusing their efforts
on helping specific flavors achieve their goals.

I myself am surprised that you find this surprising: while many of our
efforts and programmes can bring value to the flavors (e.g. general
developer growth, working with upstreams, translations work etc), we
have rarely if ever assigned staff time to delivering on flavor work
items.

This is purely and simple about resourcing. Canonical is a company,
and it needs to invest its resources carefully: sure, we would love to
support all the flavors with more staff time (not just Kubuntu), but
we simply don't have the resources to do so. Importantly, though, we
are not stopping flavors from doing this work themselves...we are
still providing the infrastructure and help and guidance we can offer
in doing this work.

   Jono

-- 
Jono Bacon
Ubuntu Community Manager
www.ubuntu.com / www.jonobacon.org
www.identi.ca/jonobacon www.twitter.com/jonobacon