Making it easier for people to work with upstreams

[Jorge O. Castro]

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Sense Hofstede <sense at qense.nl> wrote:
> Then there is the Upstream Contact. An Upstream Contact is the formalised
> link between upstream and Ubuntu. However, is this for a whole upstream, or
> like Adopt-an-Upstream mostly centred around one application? What is the
> relation between the tasks of the Upstream Contact and the Adopt-an-Upstream
> group, who should do what? The list of tasks on the wiki[3] seems a bit too much
> for one person to me.

Daniel and I discussed this today during our call.

I think this is getting too complicated, so I think we should just
grab what's in Upstream/Contacts and merge it into Adopt-an-Upstream.
Me personally, I don't care too much about what the person's title is
or whether the relationship is formal or informal. As long as
$potential_volunteer has a place where they can see what kinds of
things they can do to work better with upstreams then I'm ok with
that.

Does anyone have any objection to Daniel and I just merging
Upstream/Contacts into Adopt-an-upstream?

> I would suggest to make the Bug Squad's Adopt-a-Package[2] initiative a part of
> the Adopt-an-Upstream group, or a subteam, depending on the size of the group.
> This because the description of the Upstream Contact[3] does suggest the Contact
> to take ownership of all bugs and work on them with a group of volunteers. This
> group of volunteers could be what's now the Adopt-a-Package group[4] and this
> subteam would also report to the Bug Squad in order to allow us to keep an eye
> on the bug status of Ubuntu. A separate adoption team could be created for
> moving bugs without package to the right one.

This is starting to get complicated with teams and subteams, etc. At
the end of the day it breaks down to "My name is Jorge and I care
about making Banshee better in Ubuntu; I read/write X wiki pages,
handle Y bugs, on occasions I try to run a Bug Day, I help filter out
junk bugs for upstreams, I help new users on IRC ...."

Some people will want to do some or all of those things, some people
will just want to do one bit, or whatever, as long as there's a common
place on the wiki to help these people link together. I don't think
people will care that it's actually adopt-a-package or
adopt-an-upstream, I think they'll start someplace and then as they
get to know it they might work on the package or in the direct
upstream bug tracker or whatever and will figure out what to do.

Or am I oversimplifying? Maybe I'm just paranoid because I expect
someone to jump in with "Then we'll have a council to oversee ...." :p

-- 
Jorge Castro
jorge (at) ubuntu.com
External Project Developer Relations
Canonical Ltd.