(for context that's an email I sent the techboard before I joined the
board, the discussion picked up recently and TB members agreed that we
should have it on the mailing list)
Dear Technical Board,
I would like to bring that topic for consideration. I believe that the
lack of open application process for core Ubuntu teams (Archive Admin,
Release Team, SRU team) is hurting the project and has lead to an
ongoing under-staffing of those groups.
I'm unsure how to best approach the topic so I'm going to list a few
examples of situations I've witnessed or experienced and found problematic.
1. Could be an obvious one but the Archive and SRU teams don't have
defined contact points, which makes quite difficult for anyone to engage
with them. You can't try to IRC ping and hope someone reply but it is
not great
2. Laney's application to become Archive Admin
The core teams members are usually quite busy people. That's a topic
that is coming on regular basis as people try to restore some sort of
on-duty-rotation for the members, which has not had much success in
recent years.
Iain proposed to join the ~ubuntu-archive team to help in early 2020. We
had a in person discussion with several of the archive admins in
Frankfurt in March at a Canonical event where everyone agreed that Iain
is trusted and should be added, yet we couldn't move to the next step
since there is no documented process to follow. Since we were a bit lost
on how to get that moving I sent a group email end of June asking us to
vote on adding Iain hoping it would unblock the situation. We got most
people replying with a +1 position, then Steve replied by requesting
that Iain got trained with an existing archive admin on specific tasks
before being added. He also added that
'Regarding process: the de facto process up to now has been that you
convince one of the administrators of the ~ubuntu-archive team, and
you're in.'
3. Christian Ehrhardt applied to join the Archive team as well this
year, he started by emailing me/a few others with an emailed titled
'What does it take to become an Archive-Admin?'
which included those questions
'That made me wonder what exactly it would take to become an
ArchiveAdmin myself.
There are plenty of docs about how to become a CoreDev or any of the
lower tier upload permissions. But the ArchiveAdmin role seems to be
freestyle - at least from what I can tell from the Wiki.
Thereby I was wondering - and hereby asking you - about:
- Are there things considered a strict requirement or qualification to
become an AA?
- Is there a formal process to become an Archive Admin?
- Are there regular rotations on AA-tasks like NBS, New queue, ...?
- if so how much time per week is expected/required?'
To which he got as a reply
'So the Archive Admin team, similarly to the Ubuntu SRU and Ubuntu
Release teams, is a strict invite-only team with no formal process of
becoming one. The main reason is that being an AA gives a lot of power
in Ubuntu, basically giving full control over the Ubuntu archive
as-is, so it's not something anyone can get by just requesting
membership. This is also why there is no formal process as we do not
want it to be possible for arbitrary people to apply by themselves.'
That's not the first time I hear that position and I don't believe the
claim to be true. I don't see how having an open process would lower the
bar? The same people would take the decision of who is getting added.
The application could go through a private list if needed. I also don't
believe that we would have such a flow of low qualified applicants.
4. Those teams are understaffed and it is problematic for the project.
Random recent quotes from IRC
https://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2022/10/06/%23ubuntu-release.html#t09:28
GunnarHj The kinetic unapproved queue is longer than I would have
expected a week before Final Freeze. Specifically gnome-user-docs is a
concern of mine, but there are quite a few others. Is there a plan to
attend to the queue soon? 09:28
xnox GunnarHj: i think a few release team people are out.
...
Eickmeyer[m]ginggs: I'm confused too. AIUI, the release team (partially
meaning you) is supposed to be processing the unapproved queue this time
of the release cycle. It hasn't budged all week.
...
rs2009: am interested in joining the release team, but wasn't sure how
to apply
https://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2022/10/17/%23ubuntu-devel.html
pitti: what's up with SRUs? looks like the jammy queue hasn't been
processed since mid-August?
5. Another anecdotal fact,
https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-release/+members shows only 3 members
added in the last 6 years and they are all coming from the Canonical
Foundation team.
I've been told one new member is being onboarded which isn't from
Foundations (but from another Canonical team) but I don't think that
change the picture and it does look like people wanting their group to
be the only ones to have control and reflect bad on the project (unless
you believe we don't have members outside of Canonical-foundations that
would be suited for the job or wanting to do it, which I don't think is
true)
I've been talking to members of those teams and their admin over the
years and I don't believe they are interested in seeing more openness in
the process which I why I'm bringing the topic to the TB at this point.
I'm happy to provide more examples or to discuss the situation directly
with TB members if needed.
Also as a disclosure, I find the lack of manpower and the review delays
from those teams problematic and I tried to proposed my help to the SRU
team several times in the past in private conversation with current
members who seemed to be open to the idea to never hear back. We also
tried to get someone from ~ubuntu-desktop added to the release group
after Laney left Canonical and had less time to contribute to hit a
similar walls.
I'm busy enough and already member of other key teams and I might not
been the right applicant for those but I would have like to at least
have someone tell me that because at this point I still don't know if
the idea of having me helping got rejected or not considered? And if it
was not if that's because of the lack of process which means we just end
up in a situation where those teams don't even realize that the project
has some members that would be wanted to help?
I've also to admit the situation has made me wonder a few times in the
recent cycles if I should reconsider my involvement in the project
Thanks for reading,
Sebastien Bacher
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