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28 January 2009

Minutes from the Technical Board meeting, 2009-01-27

= Attendees =

* Scott James Remnant (chair)
* Colin Watson

= Agenda =

* Welcome Colin Watson
* Verify outstanding ubuntu-core-dev applications
* Calendar follow-up
* Per-package uploader proposal
* Archive reorg update

= Minutes =

== Welcome Colin Watson ==

Colin Watson joined as the newest member of the Ubuntu Technical Board,
his membership in the Launchpad group and to the Mailing List have been
confirmed.

== Verify outstanding ubuntu-core-dev applications ==

Daniel Holbach confirmed that there were no outstanding ubuntu-core-dev
applications for the TB to consider, and that there was one pending in
the MOTU Council queue awaiting further information according to their
new process.

== Calendar follow-up ==

The Ubuntu News Team have, as requested, switched to Google Calendar for
the fridge and documented the procedure for adding meetings to it.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fridge/Calendar

The TB meeting has been added to this calendar.

== Per-package uploader proposal ==

Emmet Hikory proposed a set of criteria for reviewing per-package
uploaders. The proposal is quoted verbatim here, however please note
that this was not approved in the meeting:

> 1) Sufficient technical knowledge of the package in question (as
> upstream, as developer without upload rights, or from Debian).
>
> 2) An understanding that such an access grant does not grant
> sole-maintainership, but rather the right to participate in the
> maintenance of the package as part of a team.
>
> 3) An understanding of the broad strokes of the release schedule,
> relevant freezes that would affect the package in question, and
> appropriate means by which to handle any exceptions.
>
> 4) Advocation and support of existing developers indicating that
> previous work on the package indicated that unsupervised upload is
> warranted.
>
> For the avoidance of doubt, I believe this differs from the expected
> qualifications for MOTU in three important ways:
>
> 1) There is no expectation that the applicant meets the requirements
> of Ubuntu Membership, so the prior demonstration of significant and
> sustained contribution to Ubuntu is waived.
>
> 2) There is no expectation that the applicant understands best
> practices with a variety of software : simple technical expertise in
> the package in question is sufficient.
>
> 3) There is no expectation that the applicant is socially integrated
> with the larger development team, other than sufficiently that they
> have been able to create a history of effective updates to the package
> in question.

The discussion was fairly long and quite constructive; the general
consensus was that per-package upload rights do not waive the
requirements of Ubuntu Membership.

It was felt that a prospective candidate must still have shown a
significant and sustained contribution to Ubuntu (albeit for a single
package), and that the candidate must still be socially integrated with
the larger development team.


Emmet Hikory will review the meeting log and redraft the proposal
according to the discussion.

The current candidates will remain on hold until the criteria have been
approved.

== Archive reorg update ==

* The notion of restricted layers has been added to the spec
* Sections on how the ogre model will work and on some anticipated
community factors have been added
* The proposed permissioning has been changed around to match current
consensus

The permissioning has one rather curious feature it has a "core" layer,
which remains necessary for the ogre model and for partial mirrors but
the permissions on the "core" layer are simply "Ubuntu [generalist]
developers", the same as for all packages in no layers

Next steps:

* prepare rough set of requirements for the Soyuz Team, including
transition plan
* work on an example layerised archive to be published on
people.ubuntu.com for development of APT, etc.

Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
scott@canonical.com

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