UbuntuAndUpstreams

UbuntuAndUpstreams

Status

Introduction

We have a stated goal of involving upstream projects in Ubuntu, both the distribution and developer tools. This spec mostly covers involvement in the distribution, but also parts of the developer tool set related to the distribution.

Rationale

For Ubuntu to be the focus of interest and energy in the FOSS landscape, we must involve upstream in our technical and decision making processes. That way, decisions can be informed by more people who have a deeper understanding of the problem domain, and upstream developers can use Ubuntu as a resource for exposure, testing, users, broader feedback, etc.

It is the distributions that link upstream developers and real users, and we want to be the most useful and productive link for all FOSS developers.

Goals

We need to provide upstreams with clear, simple and documented points of contact with Ubuntu, so they work with relevant contributors, users and maintainers directly. To assist with this, we will introduce maintainers, teams and Ubuntu itself to upstreams via mailing lists or by speaking to individual developers.

We will identify key upstream projects that of greatest importance to Ubuntu, and develop relationships with those groups first, through the maintainers of main and universe.

Longer term, we hope to communicate to upstream developers, the benefits of other Ubuntu related projects such as bazaar(-ng) and the supermirror, malone, rosetta, soyuz and GrumpyGroundhog.

Implementation Plan

First we need to develop a list of key upstreams to focus on. Here is a quick list of important upstreams (which may be expanded later), with some contacts suggested who already have relationships with these projects:

We should participate with these upstream projects both as individuals, but in some cases we may be able to participate organizationally, perhaps joining representative organisations or advisory boards (cf. foundation.gnome.org, foundation.apache.org). This will strengthen our ties with these projects, possibly allowing us to help avoid changes that would damage the relevance of these projects, our relationship with them, or to Ubuntu itself.

The MOTU team has a unique opportunity to involve individual developers of many smaller projects in universe. In some cases, particularly when Launchpad is rocking, those developers may choose to be directly involved in package maintenance or bug triaging. Already, we are seeing a number of requests from upstream developers who wish to receive notifications about Ubuntu bugs in their software.

We should recommend that MOTU maintainers (beyond quick bugfixes) contact upstream developers about the package, and ask which distributions they recommend, whether they receive more bugs from users of particular distributions, and how we can make sure their software is totally awesome in Ubuntu.

Ubuntu can help expose upstream projects to new users, give them credit for their work, and generally raise awareness of their efforts. While we should avoid confusing "racing car" branding overload, we should credit upstreams in our documentation or user interfaces, documentation and websites - and let upstreams know we are doing it.

For example, GNOME developers appreciate seeing the "About GNOME" item in Ubuntu's System menu. There are plenty of other opportunities for Ubuntu to help upstreams with promotion: Custom LiveCDs, in-development packages, code "proximity" to upstream and fast contribution of changes back up, "powered by Ubuntu" branding, etc.

Longer term, we will introduce upstream projects to cool Ubuntu tools that may help them, such as Rosetta, Malone, Bazaar, BazaarNG, the Supermirror, and GrumpyGroundhog.

Outstanding Issues & Discussion Points

  • Debian
    • Main + Universe
    • What happens when sid opens up or if sid doesn't open up?

    • sid stays in freeze:

      • Maintain high profile packages internally
      • Bleeding edge maintenance in ubuntu
    • sid goes crazy:

  • MOTU
    • Contacting maintainer or mailing list with Ubuntu
    • Package summary for feedback

lubricate communication

  • - desktop-list, desktop-bugs, qa maint -> maintainers (malone)

get involved in upstream

  • - hard to scale

get upstream involved in ubuntu

  • - incentives
    • malone -> maybe... all about the collaboration rosetta -> good for little projects, hard for complex projects "just like sourceforge"

UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/UbuntuAndUpstreams (last edited 2008-08-06 16:19:24 by localhost)