August2009

August 2009 Team Reports

If your team is not making team reports, see these guidelines for how to do so.

Ubuntu Governance

Community Council

Discussion from 4 August 2009 meeting

  1. Update on the nominations for new Community Council members: the Council is currently considering approximately 12 candidates for nomination. The election will start after the nominees have confirmed they are willing to stand. Discussion took place on the best way to vote and has continued on the mailing list. As with the Technical Board nominations, we plan for voting to take place by Condorcet Internet Voting Service.

  2. Team wiki licensing issues: a blog post in the Fedora community highlighted the fact that material on the Ubuntu wiki is not available under a free license. Discussion took place about the best way to achieve a free license on the wiki. Particular issues are whether there is a need to permit users to apply exceptions for certain content types, how to relicense existing content and whether it is possible for copyright in the material to be assigned to Canonical to make any relicensing easier. A preference for CC-BY-SA was expressed. MatthewEast and DanielHolbach will prepare a specification to address these issues and to identify any blockers, based on the WikiLicensing spec that was done for the help wiki.

Forum Council

Ubuntu Forums Council August 2009

  • Ubuntu August was a busy month for several of us outside of the forums and we were unable to have a FC IRC meeting. We will attempt to resolve pending agenda items via mailing list.

    Ubuntu The Ubuntu Forums Unanswered team is organizing it's leadership and has organizational meetings scheduled.

    Ubuntu The Testimonial Team has started to improve user experience in Forums Help and Feedback.

LoCo Council

MOTU Council

  • MC Meeting 2009-08-14,
    • We are very happy to have Julien Lavergne (gilir) join the MOTU team. His great work in Ubuntu and great passion for collaborating with Debian made the decision very easy.

    • Yulia Novozhilova was recommended for upload privileges for netbeans (and related packages). We're very happy to have somebody new being very active with Java-related packages!

    • Andy Whitcroft was recommended for upload prileges for the Kernel. His great work clearly spoke for himself. Smile :-)

Technical Board

  • Technical Board meeting, 2009-08-11 http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2009/08/11/%23ubuntu-meeting.html#t14:59

    • Review of outstanding actions; actions carried over:
      • Action: Scott to implement Developer Membership Board proposal (LP, mailing list, documentation, etc.)
      • Action: Jono to see that documentation is updated to reflect the Developer Membership Board (blocked on above)

      • Action: Colin to update http://www.ubuntu.com/community/processes/techboard

      • Action: Jono to draft text to communicate the TB's willingness to review key topics submitted by the community
    • Debian TC liaison
      • Brief discussion of the role of a Debian representative on the TB, in order to follow up to Bdale; Colin will take it back to e-mail.

    • Technical Board nominations (MattZimmerman)

      • All nominees have agreed, but there is a Launchpad-related hitch: m-of-n votes are not supported. As a fallback, the board agreed to use the Condorcet Internet Voting Service.

      • The vote will run from the 17th to the 31st of August, and will elect board members for a two-year term.
      • Action: Mark to create and announce TB vote

    • Ubuntu security policies (KeesCook)

      • The board approved all the non-draft items in revision 15 of this wiki page.

      • Action: Jamie Strandboge to add a reference to the previously-approved mDNS policy

      • Discussion on the execute bit policy will continue by e-mail; there are obvious difficulties around WINE and Java, and disagreement on the proper semantics for .desktop files.

    • Handling community problems (JonoBacon)

      • No objections to Jono proceeding with this; the TB will add a standing agenda item to review the bug list.

    • Investigate alternative to Google CSE (305905, 402767) (PaulSladen)

      • The multisearch experiment in Firefox has ended, so this is no longer of immediate concern, although the desktop team still needs to decide on and implement the final experience for 9.10.

      • It appears that the desktop team is not wedded to the implementation tried out in Alpha 3, and is aware of the issues, so it does not appear that the TB needs to intervene at this time.
      • There is likely to be further discussion on search options at UDS in November.

    • Statistics gathering policy (PaulSladen)

      • Paul proposed a draft policy with best practices for developers in the field of active statistics gathering.
      • Mark indicated that he would not be happy with a policy that required Canonical to share all the statistics it gathers; although that was not the intent of Paul's draft.
      • The members of the Technical Board are not domain experts in statistics. There is some overlap with usability testing, for which there is certainly expertise in the Ubuntu community, although active statistics gathering is a more precise art.
      • We asked Paul to bring his proposal to the attention of a wider audience, in order to attract attention from people with direct experience with this kind of problem; it may come back to the board later.
    • Chair for next meeting to be discussed by mail.
  • Technical Board meeting, 2009-08-25
    • Yulia Novozhilova was approved for per-package upload privileges to netbeans
      • Action: cjwatson to implement
    • Andy Whitcroft was approved for per-package upload privileges to the kernel
      • Action: cjwatson to implement
    • Review of outstanding actions; actions carried over:
      • Action: TB to review Jono's draft text to communicate the TB's willingness to review key topics submitted by the community

      • Action: Colin to update http://www.ubuntu.com/community/processes/techboard

      • Action: Colin to discuss role of a Debian representative on the TB by e-mail.
        • No reply from Debian TC, Colin to chase and continue discussions

      • Action: Jamie Strandboge to add a reference to the previously-approved mDNS policy

        • Done.
      • Action: Mark to create and announce TB vote
        • Done, the vote in is in progress. 78 votes have been cast out of 130 voters.

    • Developer Membership Board (ScottJamesRemnant)

      • LP changes have been implemented
      • RT tickets filed (#35428, #35429) for mailing list changes
      • Action: Scott to complete implementation of Developer Membership Board proposal
      • Action: Jono to see that documentation is updated to reflect the Developer Membership Board (blocked on above)

    • Archive reorganisation (ColinWatson)

      • The majority of MOTUs have responded to the initial feelers about their final privileges, most want to be generalists
      • Action: cjwatson to do a final check with the Soyuz team on the details, and start pushing initial sets into LP
      • After that, the next step is to start talking with the release teams about unifying processes there
    • Check up on community bugs
      • Zarro boogs.

    • Drivers for Ubuntu (MattZimmerman, Curtis Hovey)

      • We received an authorative explanation from the LP team about what the driver teams can currently do, and they are now looking for us to tell them what they *should* be able to do
      • cjwatson to draft proposed ubuntu drivers scheme for consensus

    • Base-2 prefix names (BenjaminDrung)

      • Benjamin Drung asked that the Technical Board discuss the use of units in Ubuntu, specifically the distinction between IEC base-2 multiple units such as kibibyte (KiB) vs. SI base-10 multiple units such as kilobyte (kB) vs. the current scattered implementations.
      • (as an aside, there's a third "standard" in the form of the O'Reilly Style Guide which species a base-2 multiple unit (KB))
      • The Technical Board agreed that the current scattered forms are a mess, and that we should have a nuanced policy on their use in Ubuntu
      • Action: bdrung to draft an initial policy to serve as a basis for discussion
    • Select a chair for the next meeting
      • The next meeting takes place after the TB vote has been completed.
      • It seems unfair to bestow the chair on a newly elected member
      • If mdz is elected for a further turn, he is the next chair on rotation
      • If mdz is not elected, the next chair on rotation would fall to cjwatson

Ubuntu Development Teams

Xubuntu Team

Xubuntu team report for August 2009

Packaging, Development, & Testing

  • Cody updated xubuntu-artwork package to include MurrinaXubuntu theme for testing.

  • Cody/Mario patched gnome-screensaver to recommend gnome-power-manager OR xfce4-power-manager to prevent gnome-screensaver from pulling in gnome-power-manager.
  • Cody seeded libasound2-plugins to fix no sound issue.
  • Cody patched exaile to drop bad and ugly gstreamer plugins to suggests instead of recommends to fix ISO oversize issue.

  • SiDi wrote a notify-osd patch that allows building notify-osd with xfconf for use of XFCE's font settings

  • SiDi wrote a notify-osd patch to enable color / opacity / text size gconf/xfconf keys for a11y reasons

  • SiDi fixed one of the two bugs in xfce4-volumed (crashes when no sound card is available)

  • Lionel uploaded a new upstream version of xfce4-power-manager.
  • Lionel uploaded a new upstream version of xfce4-volumed.
  • Lionel merged exo from Debian.
  • Lionel updated firefox panel launcher icon for Firefox-3.5.

Ubuntu LoCo Teams

Cameroonian Team

Catalan Team

Chilean Team

  • IRC Triagging Session I (Taller de Triage). By VictorVargas and MarlonCisternas (August 1st, #ubuntu-cl).

  • IRC Activity for Bug Jam (August 8th and 9th, #ubuntu-cl)

  • IRC Monthly Meeting (August 24th, #ubuntu-cl). The meeting page with the log is here.

Danish Team

Ecuador Team

Greek Team

  • An Ubuntu repository has been created for educational software used in Greek schools. Members of our loco team where involved in the project.

  • 5th issue of Ubuntistas, our team's e-magazine was released.

Honduras Team

Irish Team

Japanese Team

Korean Team

Norwegian team

Romanian Team

  • We were at the FLOSSCamp 2009 where we befriend with members from other communities.

  • Ubuntu Romanian Team was present at the "Linux and Virtual Learning" conference where we talk about the Ubuntu project and it's localization and how it can be used in schools.

Russian Team

Kuban Team

  • Ongoing effort in spreading Ubuntu 9.04 and Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS.
  • Distribution of actual repository snapshots for Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS.
  • Work on preparation for Software Freedom Day 2009.

  • Kuban Ubuntu Team and regional Non-Governmental Organization "Project beneficium" entered into a contract to create Automatic Information System for medicine service applications (1, 2) based on Ubuntu LTS series.

Saratov Team

  • Work on preparation for Software Freedom Day 2009:
    • Program compilation;
    • Preparation of reports and master classes;
    • Conference pack received;
    • Linux ADs translation into Russian (to show between speakers).

United States Teams

US Teams Project

Chicago Team

FloridaTeam

New York State Team

Ohio Team

Pennsylvania Team

Ubuntu Beginners Team

  • Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting 2009-08-11

    • Explain Folding@Home and how to install and setup origami

    • Agree to stop using the Ubuntu Beginners Team Calendar and to use the Fridge Calendar instead

    • Agree to drop ##beginners-classroom and use #ubuntu-classroom instead

  • Ubuntu Beginners Team Meeting 2009-08-25

    • Status update about ##beginners-classroom being dropped and progress being made on new mailing list creation

    • Yvan Pierre joined the Ubuntu Beginners Team. He has been a great participant in all team activities, and has done an excellent job of helping people in #ubuntu-beginners-help.

    • Agree to try and revive the quiz that is given to Padawans

Ubuntu NGO Team

Ubuntu Community Learning Project

TeamReports/August2009 (last edited 2009-10-20 18:14:00 by adsl-070-155-203-163)