The Ubuntu Technical Board is responsible for the technical direction that Ubuntu takes. The Technical Board makes final decisions over package selection, packaging policy, installation system and process, toolchain, kernel, X server, library versions and dependencies, and any other matter which requires technical supervision in Ubuntu.
Purpose
The Technical Board is responsible for the following documents and processes:
- The Ubuntu Package Policy, which describes the standards with which Ubuntu packages must comply. Each release of Ubuntu will be associated with a specific version of the package policy. You may propose updates and changes to the package policy.
- Ubuntu Release Feature Goals, which determine specific features which we aim to include in each release of Ubuntu. These are documented on the wiki pages for each release. You may propose additional feature goals until that release is in Feature Freeze, after which feature goals will be deferred to the next release.
- Ubuntu Package Selection, the list of packages that will be installed in a base or desktop Ubuntu installation, as well as the list of packages that qualify for full support in main as opposed to universe. You may propose packages for inclusion in the base install, or the desktop install, or in main where they will be immediately available to Ubuntu users.
The Ubuntu Technical Board operates on the following basis:
- The Board meets at least every two weeks, on IRC.
You can submit an item or proposal for discussion by the Technical Board using the wiki page TechnicalBoardAgenda.
- Technical Board meetings are open to all interested parties, but the Board seeks only to find consensus amongst Board members, and representatives from the team that submitted the proposal.
- Full transcripts of the Board meeting will be published immediately after the meeting.
The Technical Board can be reached at technical-board@lists.ubuntu.com. This list is publicly archived; if you wish to raise confidential issues, please mail the members of the Board directly.
The list of Technical Board members can be found on Launchpad.
- Nominations for the Technical Board will be considered for each release (every six months). Mark Shuttleworth, as project sponsor, is responsible for nominating candidates, and a poll of Ubuntu developers will be conducted to select, or veto, the final membership. Appointments are made for a period of two years.
- Ubuntu developers include all developers who have upload rights to the Ubuntu archives, including both main and universe, or specific packages, or sets of packages.
Policy
Standing decisions made by the Technical Board that are relevant for Ubuntu Developers' activities in the future are now documented here: https://canonical-ubuntu-governance-docs.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/policy/
Policy made in the past still applies. We welcome merge proposals against the new policy documentation to help document these all in one place.
Agenda
If you would like to add an item to the Technical Board Agenda for discussion, please add it to the TechnicalBoardAgenda page.
Meeting Chair Duties
Review Agenda for this meeting.
- Facilitate meeting
- Round up people needed for the meeting as necessary
Drive meetingology
- Review actions from last meeting
- Follow Agenda
Update Agenda for next meeting.
Members
Team Delegations
The technical board delegates some duties to privileged teams. Where these have been formalised, they are documented here.
Backporters Team
The backporters team is responsible for the following:
- Maintain the Ubuntu "backports" pocket.
- Establish and manage an effective process and a set of policies to handle contributions to the "backports" pocket.
- Define a set of rules to handle the Backports Team memberships, its internal structure and members' responsibilities.
Security Team
The security team is responsible for the "security" pocket. The membership process is detailed in https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/spec-ubuntu-security-membership/44299
SRU Team
The process for adding new members is documented at https://canonical-sru-docs.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/internal/#adding-members-to-the-team and the required criteria for new members documented at https://canonical-sru-docs.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/internal/#criteria-for-new-sru-team-members.