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.
- Review of outstanding actions; actions carried over:
- 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
- Done, with further text to be applied
Action: Colin to apply further updates to http://www.ubuntu.com/community/processes/techboard based on his new text
- 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
- Yulia Novozhilova was approved for per-package upload privileges to netbeans