Key Ubuntu teams should have an open process for new members

[Erich Eickmeyer]

Technical Board,

It has been six months since Sebastien opened this email thread, and 
neither the Release Team, the SRU team, nor the AA team have documented 
or published any process for this, nor is there evidence Technical Board 
holding them to this.

Additionally, my email and recommendations/suggestions for what it means 
to be part of such high-leadership teams went largely ignored.

As I write this, an incident is occurring [1] in which mutter has a 
major regression due to an SRU[2][3] that was released for mantic, but 
no AAs are available to halt the phasing. *This is a failure not only on 
the part of the Desktop team for not adequately testing the mutter 
update, but also the AA team for not having coordinated anybody 
available in case something like this were to occur.* Furthermore, *this 
is a failure of the TB for not enforcing adequate onboarding for any of 
the core teams.* As stated before, without adequate onboarding for core 
teams, *the project will die.*

This is the first of several events of its kind that can happen due to 
attrition. This attrition can happen in many ways. The time to act is 
*now* and not whenever you have time.

On 7/7/23 14:56, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 06, 2023 at 04:08:07PM -0700, Erich Eickmeyer wrote:
>> On Wed, 2023-06-14 at 20:48 -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
>>> To be clear, the Ubuntu Release Team has always been open to non-
>>> Canonical employees.  I just don't expect community members of the
>>> Release Team to increase our "core" capacity.
>> I think that's a rather short-sighted expectation. If you have a
>> volunteer Release Team member that is passionate and sold-out for the
>> project, I think you'd be surprised as to what they'll accomplish.
>> Again, going back to my education, we're taught volunteerism.
>> Volunteers are in some ways easier to work with than employees, but in
>> some ways harder. When it comes to volunteers, you don't have a
>> paycheck to hold over their heads, so you have to cast the vision of
>> the project/organization to them often, especially if they're feeling
>> close to burnt-out. At the same time, if they need to take a break, you
>> have to let them. That said, they tend to be more passionate because
>> they're not doing it for a paycheck; they're doing it because it's the
>> thing they love. An army of volunteers is typically the most powerful
>> force in the world. So, don't ever underestimate community members.
> Driving a milestone is a two-week, full-time committment possibly in excess
> of 40 hours a week.  Because Ubuntu releases are time-based, this work
> cannot be deferred or spread out as a result of other committments.
>
> I would not ask a community member of the Ubuntu Release Team, who is not
> being paid to do this work, to make such a committment.  Even if someone did
> volunteer to do this, I do no think the Release Team should accept such an
> offer, as it's both exploitative of volunteer labor and unfairly places the
> volunteer in a position that, if they fail to deliver for any reason,
> impacts the business of Canonical.
>
> This is what I am referring to as "core" capacity.

I thought more about this lately, and I believe this statement is 
actually contradictory to, and maybe actually a breach of, the Code of 
Conduct:

"We invite anybody, from any company, to participate in any aspect of 
the project. Our community is open, and any responsibility can be 
carried by any contributor who demonstrates the required capacity and 
competence."

You don't know if those community are actually paid to work on Ubuntu by 
other companies or donations. So, to assume that just because they don't 
work for Canonical that they aren't paid to work on Ubuntu, even 
full-time, and can dedicate that time as a part of their job or even as 
their job, is a gross shortsighted assumption. I simply cannot dismiss 
this, and I believe this very pattern of thought is blocking open 
collaboration in Ubuntu teams.

So, what I'm seeing here, and have been watching since Sebastien sent 
the initial email over six months ago is a pattern of favoritism and 
exclusiveness that flies directly in the face of the Code of Conduct. 
Additionally, the SRU team, Release Team, and Archive Admin team have 
not done any work on what it means to onboard any team members, which is 
in itself a breach of the Code of Conduct:

"The poorest decision of all is no decision: clarity of direction has 
value in itself. Sometimes all the data are not available, or consensus 
is elusive. A decision must still be made. There is no guarantee of a 
perfect decision every time - we prefer to err, learn, and err less in 
future than to postpone action indefinitely."

So, I hate to, once again, be the whistleblower, but if someone isn't 
watching and flashing the yellow card every once in a while, nobody will.

[1] https://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2023/12/15/%23ubuntu-release.html#t12:23
[2] https://launchpad.net/bugs/2046360
[3] https://launchpad.net/bugs/2043000
  
--
Erich Eickmeyer
Project Leader - Ubuntu Studio
Technical Lead - Edubuntu