Ubuntu Wiki

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.