This page is intended to list all of the miscellaneous pieces of DMB knowledge that have accumulated over the years.

This page is authoritative. If you think you've found a mistake, please email the DMB.

Conducting meetings

Scheduling

Meetings currently run every other week, alternating between 1500 UTC and 1900 UTC. In the case of vacation such as over New Year, cancel or move individual meetings as appropriate, but please try not to push all future meetings around, as this can cause some confusion.

The meeting schedule can be changed by the DMB by majority vote, and it is expected for the schedule to be confirmed or changed as necessary at the first meeting after new DMB members are elected. Please also consider the needs of pending and future applicants if changing the schedule, as doing so may affect their plans.

Agenda

We maintain an agenda page with the dates of upcoming meetings, the agendas for them and outstanding meeting actions.

Chair

We share the responsibility of chairing the meetings. There should be a list on the agenda page. If you have just chaired, rotate the list and update the entry at the top of the page so we know who is chairing next.

Quorum

Quorum was last publicly discussed on the community forum.

We require a absolute majority to pass a motion, so we can pass motions with >50% of members present if we are unanimously in favour. If we aren’t unanimously in favour, then we fall back to having to get enough +1 votes such that the absent members would not be able to swing the vote below a simple majority even if they were to all vote -1.

In other words, quorum doesn’t really exist as a formal concept for us. We simply need an absolute majority to pass a motion, and quorum is our informal way of describing what we need to achieve that in a single meeting with some members absent.

For the avoidance of doubt: absolute majority means that the requirement is that >50% of all DMB members are in favour, whether present or not.

As an aside, we have agreed (by absolute majority) that some types of decision can be made by only one member agreeing. These specific cases should be documented on this page.

Informally, our "quorum" is 50% rounded up. The DMB has seven members, so our informal quorum is 4. This number is the minimum number of +1 votes that we need for any resolution to pass immediately. Members are allowed to submit their votes in advance of a meeting, which will count as if they are present when considering quorum.

Handling applications

• Try to handle applicants in the order they applied, earliest first.

• Applicants will usually attend an IRC meeting to be questioned by the DMB on matters that members wish to clarify before they can vote. If the applicants or the DMB are having trouble meeting each other then the application may be handled over email, but it is important this happens in a timely fashion.

• Many of our applicants do not have English as their first language.
  • Be understanding if the answers you get are not 100% clear
  • Ask questions one at a time. Let the meeting know when you are done questioning so that others can take over.

Voting

Applications have to reach +1 in order to pass. If the meeting is quorate and all members present vote in the same way (+1 or -1), then the application will have passed or failed - the remaining members cannot overturn the vote. If the vote is in doubt then it is hung and the remaining members will be asked to vote by email or at the next meeting. In this case those members are entitled to ask the applicant further questions if they still have any on reviewing the meeting log.

Actions after a successful application

1. Assign two meeting actions: one to make ACL changes, and one to announce the successful applicant. This is to make sure that the announcement does not get forgotten.
2. Adjust ACLs.
   • Modification of the membership list for an existing packageset team can be done directly by the DMB.
   • If the action requires creation of a new packageset, or changes to the package list for a packageset or PPU, it must be done by the TB, so the DMB member must:

     1. Open a bug against the ubuntu-community project, and the bug description should include the exact "edit-acl" command to run.

        • For PPU changes, file a bug with this subject and include the PPU member name

        • For packageset changes, file a bug with this subject and include the packageset name

     2. Email technical-board@lists.ubuntu.com to inform them of the opened bug (include a link to the bug).

3. If not already a member, add the applicant to either ~ubuntu-dev or ~ubuntu-uploaders. See #Teams_to_add_uploaders_to.

4. Announce successful applicants (this can be done in a single email or multiple emails as appropriate), as the community council would like to see these announced and we agreed in a subsequent meeting. Send emails to:

   1. A reply to the original devel-permissions@lists.ubuntu.com thread (useful for future reference).

   2. An email to ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com

   3. An email to ubuntu-news-team@lists.ubuntu.com

5. Remove the applicant's agenda item if it is still present.

Actions after an unsuccessful application

1. Assign a meeting action to close the application. Closing an application involves:

2. Reply with regrets to the devel-permissions@lists.ubuntu.com thread only (useful for future reference when the applicant reapplies, and to make it clear that voting is complete).

3. Remove the applicant's agenda item if it is still present.

Packagesets

Packagesets exist per-release and are defined in the Launchpad database accessible by API (using the edit-acl command). For easy viewing, see https://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-archive/packagesets/

Consider making packagesets if someone applies and the grouping makes logical sense. The application process is more or less the same as for developer upload rights. The differences are

• Each packageset needs a description. This is so that developers can mail devel-permissions after the set is created in order to have packages added. One DMB member then needs to judge the description against the reqested change and may make it if they decide it is warranted.

• We create packagesets with just one uploader, which is a team that we then add developers to. The team should be configured like so
  • Owned by the DMB (but without having the DMB as a member)
  • Self renewal
  • 720 day expiry period

    • Note, for 'Ubuntu Flavor' packageset teams, the TB requested a 180 day expiry period

  • ~ubuntu-core-dev as a member

  • Member of ~ubuntu-uploaders (in rare cases the DMB may require membership of packageset uploaders: in this case make the team a member of ~ubuntu-dev instead.)

If necessary, we can modify the description later on following a full vote, either by email or in a meeting.

Quick set of steps for creating packageset team:

1. Start at new team registration page

2. Make sure Membership Policy is Restricted Team

3. Set both the Subscription Period and Self Renewal Period to 720 (or 180 for 'flavor' teams)

4. Change renewal option to invite them to renew their own membership

5. Create the team
6. On the new team page:

   1. Click Change Details and then Change Owner

   2. Change the team owner to developer-membership-board

7. On the new team member page:

   1. Add ubuntu-core-dev

   2. Remove (deactivate) yourself

   3. Remove (deactivate) developer-membership-board

8. Go to ~ubuntu-uploaders member page (or, if appropriate, ~ubuntu-dev member page) and add the new team as a member

Special packagesets

Automatically managed packagesets

Flavour packagesets are automatically managed from seeds. There is a script to control this, which contains a list of overrides too. See lp:~developer-membership-board/+git/packageset. We should look at automating runs of this script, but currently we need to remember to manually run it from time to time.

The script encodes the logic about which packagesets packages should go to, based on how sources are shared between flavours. Broadly, kubuntu/ubuntu/ubuntu-server are considered top-tier flavours and if they contain a package that is shared with others then they win and it goes into their set. core and desktop-core win out over all flavour sets too. See the seed-sets mapping at the top of the packageset-push script in the above branch.

Personal packagesets and glob expansions

Where an individual has a special reason for upload rights to a large number of packages that the DMB expects to need to manage frequently, we can create a "personal packageset" for this person, named "personal-<lpid>". Currently there is only one: personal-gunnarhj. This is defined as the set that the DMB has agreed that Gunnar may upload, which includes individual packages to which he has PPU, as well as glob expansions. The globs are defined in the packageset description. This way, any DMB member may update the glob expansions for Gunnar (by relying on their existing definition) without needing to refer to the full DMB for agreement or the TB to make the change.

Currently this is managed manually, but it may be advisable to script updates if they are frequent.

See the thread starting at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/devel-permissions/2016-May/000924.html, but extending over June, July, August and September for details.

Delegating packageset uploader permissions

The DMB can decide to delegate the granting of upload rights to a packageset to a different group of developers. An example is that the Ubuntu desktop team is self managed. This means that applicants to that packageset do not come to the DMB, but they come to the team itself instead. The procedure is the same as for most other applications: somebody approaches the DMB with the proposal and it is voted on at the meeting. If approved, the body delegated should be added as an administrator of the team. It is very important that the teams come with a policy that says how applications will be managed. That is the document which you approve. You can see some examples on DeveloperMembershipBoard, and it is important that this list is kept current.

SRU Developers

Based on this thread, the DMB agreed to create a new team for SRU developers. This was announced to ubuntu-devel on 28 February 2017. See UbuntuDevelopers#SRU_developers for details.

This team is for contributors who work mostly on SRUs but don't necessarily yet have experience in wider Ubuntu development. Team membership allows the sponsors to get out of the way for SRUs only.

This team grants Ubuntu membership. In other words, the DMB must determine that an applicant meets the requirements for Ubuntu membership before granting an applicant membership of this team.

Add successful applicants to the https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-sru-developers team.

Removals

There was some concern about potential bad uploads bothering the SRU team, so to mitigate this the DMB also agreed that individual ~ubuntu-sru-developers membership will be removed if any of:

1. ~ubuntu-sru resolves to remove the member (how they do so is up to them); or
2. the DMB resolves to remove the member by a quorate vote, and a vote will be held if any member of ~ubuntu-sru requests it.

Teams to add uploaders to

By default, uploaders to packagesets and per-package uploaders should be granted membership. This does not happen automatically - they must be added to the ~ubuntu-dev team. The reason for this is that occasionally the DMB may want to grant people upload rights if they do not meet the usual significant and sustained (interpreted as 6 months of contributions). That is: when adding a new packageset or PPU uploader, add the individual to ~ubuntu-dev if they are being granted membership or (for PPU only) to ~ubuntu-uploaders if they are not.

An exception to the above is that some packagesets require membership. You can identify these because the uploading teams are a member of ~ubuntu-dev instead of ~ubuntu-uploaders. In these cases applicants must satisfy the membership critera: granting upload rights without membership is not possible.

Applications from DDs

DDs who are PPU through the normal process can apply by email to have their access extended to further packages they (or a team they are a member of) maintain. This only requires one DMB member to agree in order to pass.

DMB Restaffing

Running a DMB election

1. Decide which seats are expiring and who will run the election. Ideally this is a DMB member whose seat is not expiring. Make sure you understand when each seat is expiring as the newly elected candidates will be filling those seats as they expire in order.

2. Choose the relevant dates: the deadline for nominations, when the vote will start, and when the vote will finish. Consider adding a period between the nomination deadline and the start of the vote to allow the nominees to present a platform and/or for the electorate to question nominees. These dates should all appear in the initial call for nominations. See the example below for time periods used in the past.

3. Send out a call for nominations. Example.

4. You may need to chase for enough nominations. Example.

5. If you chose to allow a questioning period, announce the nominees and invite discussion.

6. When the voting is due to begin, generate a list of email addresses of the electorate (the electorate is ~ubuntu-dev). This script is useful to get the email addresses of members of ubuntu-dev. Keep a record of which members have been issued ballots so that you can manage any missing ballot requests should they arrive later.

7. Create a CIVS poll with the nominees and one additional "No further candidates" ordinary choice. The default options are fine. You will then be sent a link to the poll control page. Start the poll from there. Example.

8. Announce the poll. Newer example; older example. This ensures that any members of the electorate who do not receive a poll for whatever reason (eg. no email address listed) can still have the opportunity to vote.

9. When the poll is due to finish, go to the poll control page and end the poll.

10. Announce the election results. Example.

11. Complete the "Checklist after a DMB election" section below.

Checklist after a DMB election

• Point new members to this page (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeveloperMembershipBoard/KnowledgeBase).

• Update:
  • (TB) ~developer-membership-board Launchpad team

  • (TB) developer-membership-board@lists.ubuntu.com membership and then send welcome email

  • (self-subscribe) devel-permissions@lists.ubuntu.com membership

  • Private IRC channel access
  • List of DMB member IRC nicknames in ubottu's !dmb-ping

    • Can be requested by typing: !dmb-ping is <comma separated list of IRC usernames>: DMB ping.

  • Calendar meeting event invitation list