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

Hello everybody,

with only a week to go until 12.04 is released, it might be a good time
to think about what MOTU is to you and what you feel it should be in the
next few releases.

This team has been existing for as long as Ubuntu has been around and
one thing we've been doing since the early days is: being there for new
contributors and bringing them into the fold. In my mind this is (among
many others of course) the most important thing MOTU has contributed to
Ubuntu.

Not limited to my personal assessment above, I'd still like to hear from
you (no matter if you're a MOTU old-timer or a new contributor) is what
do you feel we do well and what do you feel we should change?

The feedback should be a good preparation for a MOTU session at UDS.

I'm looking forward to your answers and thanks a lot for your great work
on the team!

Have a great day,
Daniel

--
Get involved in Ubuntu development! developer.ubuntu.com/packaging
And follow @ubuntudev on identi.ca/twitter.com/facebook.com/gplus.to

--
Ubuntu-motu mailing list
Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu

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

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Daniel Holbach
<daniel.holbach@ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> with only a week to go until 12.04 is released, it might be a good time
> to think about what MOTU is to you and what you feel it should be in the
> next few releases.
>
> This team has been existing for as long as Ubuntu has been around and
> one thing we've been doing since the early days is: being there for new
> contributors and bringing them into the fold. In my mind this is (among
> many others of course) the most important thing MOTU has contributed to
> Ubuntu.
>
> Not limited to my personal assessment above, I'd still like to hear from
> you (no matter if you're a MOTU old-timer or a new contributor) is what
> do you feel we do well and what do you feel we should change?

A lot of time has gone by with no response to this thread. The silence
in both this thread and this list in general saddens me a bit. For
myself, and I imagine for at least some others, the lack of response
hasn't been because I don't care about the future of the MOTU. 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. More developers are now scattered about their smaller
teams focused on their particular package-sets or pluging away alone
on the few packages they care about.

As Daniel mentioned, one of the most important contributions of this
team has been bringing new contributors into the fold. 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. Lowering
barriers to entry is extremely important and I wouldn't want us to
move backwards on this, but I wonder if maybe we could come up with
ideas to assert some sort of positive social pressure (in contrast to
the negative/restrictive pressure of saying you can't work on what you
want until you help with other things) for contributors to participate
in the maintenance of unseeded packages?

Another place where MOTU was valuable in the past that we seem to be
missing a bit now was as a kind of catch all team for pursuing random
bits like the Packaging Guide, training sessions, etc... Maybe these
things need to be pushed to ~ubuntu-dev? It just seems to me that
these kinds of things are less and less taking place/being planned in
public and more so by smaller groups of people.

One of the last discussions on the future of the MOTU defined the
team's mission as:

* 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?

> The feedback should be a good preparation for a MOTU session at UDS.

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

Thanks!

-- Andrew Starr-Bochicchio

Ubuntu Developer <https://launchpad.net/~andrewsomething>
Debian Maintainer
<http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=a.starr.b%40gmail.com>
PGP/GPG Key ID: D53FDCB1

--
Ubuntu-motu mailing list
Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu

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

On Thursday, May 03, 2012 02:59:19 PM Andrew Starr-Bochicchio wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Daniel Holbach
>
> <daniel.holbach@ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > Hello everybody,
> >
> > with only a week to go until 12.04 is released, it might be a good time
> > to think about what MOTU is to you and what you feel it should be in the
> > next few releases.
> >
> > This team has been existing for as long as Ubuntu has been around and
> > one thing we've been doing since the early days is: being there for new
> > contributors and bringing them into the fold. In my mind this is (among
> > many others of course) the most important thing MOTU has contributed to
> > Ubuntu.
> >
> > Not limited to my personal assessment above, I'd still like to hear from
> > you (no matter if you're a MOTU old-timer or a new contributor) is what
> > do you feel we do well and what do you feel we should change?
>
> A lot of time has gone by with no response to this thread. The silence
> in both this thread and this list in general saddens me a bit. For
> myself, and I imagine for at least some others, the lack of response
> hasn't been because I don't care about the future of the MOTU. 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. More developers are now scattered about their smaller
> teams focused on their particular package-sets or pluging away alone
> on the few packages they care about.
>
> As Daniel mentioned, one of the most important contributions of this
> team has been bringing new contributors into the fold. 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. Lowering
> barriers to entry is extremely important and I wouldn't want us to
> move backwards on this, but I wonder if maybe we could come up with
> ideas to assert some sort of positive social pressure (in contrast to
> the negative/restrictive pressure of saying you can't work on what you
> want until you help with other things) for contributors to participate
> in the maintenance of unseeded packages?
>
> Another place where MOTU was valuable in the past that we seem to be
> missing a bit now was as a kind of catch all team for pursuing random
> bits like the Packaging Guide, training sessions, etc... Maybe these
> things need to be pushed to ~ubuntu-dev? It just seems to me that
> these kinds of things are less and less taking place/being planned in
> public and more so by smaller groups of people.
>
> One of the last discussions on the future of the MOTU defined the
> team's mission as:
>
> * Maintaining packages that do not belong in any package-sets.
> * Providing guidance and training for new generalist developers.
> * Extended Quality Assurance functions.

I'm not going to UDS, but I have some thoughts on the matter.

MOTU is still accomplish a lot in getting the archive in shape and fixing
things for unseeded Universe/Multiverse. This is mostly done by a small
number of very productive developers who have been at it for awhile. I don't
see a lot of new blood coming in and sticking with MOTU.

Due to the more fragmented developer model we have now the incentive just
isn't there for most. (this is a foreseeable (and FWIW foreseen) consequence
of archive reorg, packagesets, and relaxed requirements associated with PPU
permissions.

I did see in the last cycle a few new people start to show up and contribute
and I think that's great. We need to build on that.

Scott K



--
Ubuntu-motu mailing list
Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu

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

Hi,

I'm not going to UDS either, but I wanted to share some thoughts about
the MOTU team with you:
I think that MOTU has still a great role to play in keeping the
Unseeded part of the archive in a good shape, to ensure that the less
looked part of Ubuntu is still usable. There are a lot of people that
depends and uses unseeded applications and this is also part of
Ubuntu.
In that sense, I see MOTU more like a kind of 'QA' team than 'developpers'.

My only concern is about new comers: we are loosing people because of
real life events (I'm less active than before because of that) and I
don't feel like we are able to replace them.
I first came to Ubuntu because I wanted an app to be packaged for
Ubuntu and I thought that the right way was to help first with other
packages to get some credibility before having it uploaded.
Now, the 'recommended' path is to go thru Debian, meaning that we
redirect possible new contributors to Debian. I know that having
people just dropping some random application in Ubuntu without
maintaining it afterward is not good either, but I feel like we are
loosing some possible direct contributors that way.

My 2 cts.

Fabrice

2012/5/3 Scott Kitterman <ubuntu@kitterman.com>:
> On Thursday, May 03, 2012 02:59:19 PM Andrew Starr-Bochicchio wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Daniel Holbach
>>
>> <daniel.holbach@ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> > Hello everybody,
>> >
>> > with only a week to go until 12.04 is released, it might be a good time
>> > to think about what MOTU is to you and what you feel it should be in the
>> > next few releases.
>> >
>> > This team has been existing for as long as Ubuntu has been around and
>> > one thing we've been doing since the early days is: being there for new
>> > contributors and bringing them into the fold. In my mind this is (among
>> > many others of course) the most important thing MOTU has contributed to
>> > Ubuntu.
>> >
>> > Not limited to my personal assessment above, I'd still like to hear from
>> > you (no matter if you're a MOTU old-timer or a new contributor) is what
>> > do you feel we do well and what do you feel we should change?
>>
>> A lot of time has gone by with no response to this thread. The silence
>> in both this thread and this list in general saddens me a bit. For
>> myself, and I imagine for at least some others, the lack of response
>> hasn't been because I don't care about the future of the MOTU. 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. More developers are now scattered about their smaller
>> teams focused on their particular package-sets or pluging away alone
>> on the few packages they care about.
>>
>> As Daniel mentioned, one of the most important contributions of this
>> team has been bringing new contributors into the fold. 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. Lowering
>> barriers to entry is extremely important and I wouldn't want us to
>> move backwards on this, but I wonder if maybe we could come up with
>> ideas to assert some sort of positive social pressure (in contrast to
>> the negative/restrictive pressure of saying you can't work on what you
>> want until you help with other things) for contributors to participate
>> in the maintenance of unseeded packages?
>>
>> Another place where MOTU was valuable in the past that we seem to be
>> missing a bit now was as a kind of catch all team for pursuing random
>> bits like the Packaging Guide, training sessions, etc... Maybe these
>> things need to be pushed to ~ubuntu-dev? It just seems to me that
>> these kinds of things are less and less taking place/being planned in
>> public and more so by smaller groups of people.
>>
>> One of the last discussions on the future of the MOTU defined the
>> team's mission as:
>>
>> ** Maintaining packages that do not belong in any package-sets.
>> ** Providing guidance and training for new generalist developers.
>> ** Extended Quality Assurance functions.
>
> I'm not going to UDS, but I have some thoughts on the matter.
>
> MOTU is still accomplish a lot in getting the archive in shape and fixing
> things for unseeded Universe/Multiverse. *This is mostly done by a small
> number of very productive developers who have been at it for awhile. *I don't
> see a lot of new blood coming in and sticking with MOTU.
>
> Due to the more fragmented developer model we have now the incentive just
> isn't there for most. *(this is a foreseeable (and FWIW foreseen) consequence
> of archive reorg, packagesets, and relaxed requirements associated with PPU
> permissions.
>
> I did see in the last cycle a few new people start to show up and contribute
> and I think that's great. *We need to build on that.
>
> Scott K
>
>
>
> --
> Ubuntu-motu mailing list
> Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu

--
Ubuntu-motu mailing list
Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu

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

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

--
Ubuntu-motu mailing list
Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu

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

On 05/03/2012 05:05 PM, Stefano Rivera wrote:
> 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
>
I hope to apply for MOTU during the Q-Cycle and my motivation is in fact
to help with
some of the "gardening" that Stefano speaks of along with getting more
needs-packaging
work done. I think it would also be interesting to mentor other
individuals interested in the
path to becoming a MOTU.

I'm still waiting for the right opportunity to apply but maybe this
cycle maybe next... I guess
I will know when the time is right but I would love to be apart of the
group and helping it evolve.

--
Ubuntu-motu mailing list
Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu

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

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 8:05 PM, Stefano Rivera <stefanor@ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> 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 :/

Well, I'm glad to see that my ping to this thread generated some
discussion. I went ahead and registered:

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/other-q-motu-bof

Thanks!

-- Andrew Starr-Bochicchio

Ubuntu Developer <https://launchpad.net/~andrewsomething>
Debian Maintainer
<http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=a.starr.b%40gmail.com>
PGP/GPG Key ID: D53FDCB1

--
Ubuntu-motu mailing list
Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu

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

Hello everybody,

thanks Andrew for reviving the thread again. :)

On 04.05.2012 02:05, Stefano Rivera wrote:
> 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.

I agree with this sentiment. What MOTU I feel lacks most is a sense of
team spirit. Sure, MOTU consists of a lot of people, who know and value
each other, some of you found friends here. Still a general sense of
joint achievement is missing.


> 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.

Maybe we should set ourselves some goals again, and track their progress
in MOTU meetings. We haven't done any of those meetings in a long while
and I feel they might help a lot to agree on things we want to do
together. It also wouldn't limit the chance to discuss and plan to one
UDS session you might or might not make it to. :-)

When I mention 'goals' above, I'm referring to things like bringing down
the number of open *verse merges, handling the libxyz transition, and
maybe teaming up with the Debian QA team to sort out some of the more
pressing issues identified by lintian.

One piece of feedback we have received in the Dev Advisory Team was that
newcomers are looking for specific targets to work on. To me it sounds
like working together on some of these initiatives would kill a couple
of birds with one stone. From an organisational POV this shouldn't be
too much work either.


> 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.

I could imagine that more social cohesion and joint achievements can go
a long way here.

Have a great day,
Daniel

--
Get involved in Ubuntu development! developer.ubuntu.com/packaging
And follow @ubuntudev on identi.ca/twitter.com/facebook.com/gplus.to

--
Ubuntu-motu mailing list
Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu

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

On 2012-04-19 16:44:48 +0200, Daniel Holbach wrote:
Hello,

> This team has been existing for as long as Ubuntu has been around and
> one thing we've been doing since the early days is: being there for new
> contributors and bringing them into the fold. In my mind this is (among
> many others of course) the most important thing MOTU has contributed to
> Ubuntu.
>
> Not limited to my personal assessment above, I'd still like to hear from
> you (no matter if you're a MOTU old-timer or a new contributor) is what
> do you feel we do well and what do you feel we should change?

At much as I don't like the idea myself (being a long-time MOTU and like
to keep MOTU as tradition), but perhaps it gets slowly time to
"dissolve" MOTU (or parts of it like lists or IRC channel) and merge it
into the more general dev "resources". I'm not saying that MOTU should
stop doing what it is doing, but to continue doing it in those "bigger"
teams. This moves shouldn't necessarily happen during quantal but
perhaps during the r-series or s-series if the trend of the last
series continues (less fresh MOTUS, existing MOTUs get sucked up into RL
or other tasks).

- the MOTU IRC channel:
The traffic is much lower than compared to a couple years before (when
I joined MOTU). Currently the few traffic is mostly only two
categories:
- development release related
This traffic could move to #ubuntu-devel which isn't high-traffic
anymore either.
- packaging questions
As those questions are currently split between #ubuntu-motu and
#ubuntu-packaging (and sometimes happening in both channels at the
same time), it would be good to merge this traffic into one channel
(#ubuntu-packaging).

- the MOTU mailing list:
The list is very low traffic and sort of dieing. There are only really
a few really MOTU-related topics. The other mails are either requests
for packaging new versions or bug reports. Both should be better filed
as bugs and those mails are seldom answered or result in any tasks
performed.
The few really MOTU-related traffic could move to the ubuntu-devel
mailing list (if it isn't already CCed there).

- the MOTU LP team
This should be kept as it's still performing its function and will so
for the forseeable future. Although ArchiveReorg tried to merge it
into core-dev, this didn't happen and I don't expect that the status
of MOTU will change very soon (during r-, q- or s-series).


I think we have to be realistic: the good times of MOTU are past, MOTU
won't die in the next 3 Ubuntu releases, but I don't expect that MOTU
gets a flood of new MOTUs either.
IMHO the traffic on the IRC channel and mailing list don't warrant to be
seperated anymore, it should be about time to think into merging them
into more general channels or lists.

Michael

--
Ubuntu-motu mailing list
Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu

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

Servus Daniel,

This topic seem to crop up for every UDS lately :-)

I remember having expressed my feelings already a couple of times about
this, however, here we go again.


If you look at my wiki-page on Ubuntu, you will see that I originally
stated my goal was to become a MOTU.
However, over the last 5 year, the goal post seem to have been moved
constantly and a couple of life-changing

events in my life certainly give me more time for it.

Nevertheless, I have created/updated/maintained about 60 packages in
that time. However, because of different reasons, I felt less and less
compelled to pursue MOTU membership.


In some way, it seemed to develop more to be an award/trophy to get the
"badge". I am not interested in that. The reason to be a MOTU for me is
the responsibility/ability to be able to help, not to get another patch
for the Ubuntu-Eagle-Scout Uniform. When I first got involved, people
were invited to be MOTUs. I understand that that process was maybe not
so objective, however, the way of application felt even less objective
due to no public objective criteria.


Given, perception is subjective, and objective it may be different now,
however, perception reality for whoever has the perception.


Furthermore, I worked often on KDE packages which have been in the main
archive. Hence, MOTU would not really made a difference, and we often
heard to rather become Kubuntu-devs than MOTUs. I also have to say that
the workflow seemed more inclusive in the Kubuntu team, so even without
upload rights, I was always able to contribute easily.


In addition, I have found I was able to contribute by using my own ppa.
Due to this, it felt for the last couple of years a lot easier for me
and my limited time, to work around the inability to upload as a MOTU,
and instead of using time not available in my life to rather spend the
time to be constructive in the areas I have access to.


Not every Ubuntu contributor has unlimited time available. So if you
want to attract people like me, you might want to consider how to allow
people to more efficiently be able to contribute. If I have to do 100s
of packages in a couple of month to meet some criteria, it is not
possible for me to meet.


Anyhow, just my 2cents... hope it helps,

Ralph (txwikinger)


On 12-04-19 10:44 AM, Daniel Holbach wrote:

Hello everybody,

with only a week to go until 12.04 is released, it might be a good time
to think about what MOTU is to you and what you feel it should be in the
next few releases.

This team has been existing for as long as Ubuntu has been around and
one thing we've been doing since the early days is: being there for new
contributors and bringing them into the fold. In my mind this is (among
many others of course) the most important thing MOTU has contributed to
Ubuntu.

Not limited to my personal assessment above, I'd still like to hear from
you (no matter if you're a MOTU old-timer or a new contributor) is what
do you feel we do well and what do you feel we should change?

The feedback should be a good preparation for a MOTU session at UDS.

I'm looking forward to your answers and thanks a lot for your great work
on the team!

Have a great day,
Daniel




--
Ubuntu-motu mailing list
Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu