Re: Xubuntu team direction
Cody A.W. Somerville wrote: Hello, Sorry for taking so long to reply. I've been thinking quite a bit about this and have been waiting for the appropriate time to jump in. *General gist*: I think a council *could* be good for Xubuntu. However, its membership should be limited to 3 people due to the small size of our community (if we can't find consensus now, putting us all on a council isn't going to give us consensus either); it can grow later as necessary. Ultimately, this change should be mostly a transparent one and not a harbinger of great change or divergence from the Ubuntu community and processes. In fact, I feel this change should instead aim to bring greater consistency, stability, and most importantly longevity to our project. On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi mailto:o...@knome.fi wrote: Jim Campbell wrote: On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 2:46 AM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi mailto:o...@knome.fi wrote: Now, where did this discussion go? It appears as though it went on vacation. It has to come back to work eventually, though! People seemed to like the council-type approach; what's next? I think it would be a good idea to revisit the document that Cody put together and see how it would need to be modified to suit a council-type approach. I can give this a try. I'll let the group know if I have questions as I put things together. Yeah, this sounds good. Maybe we should also briefly revise the general direction stuff and make any modifications to those as well if we feel they need to be changed. Agreed. The document is indeed in need of an update. Anybody has obejctions? Should we first propose this to the Community Council (or some place else) or just take the new governance into use? Once that is done, I think we should have a meeting to approve it. We could at least have that as an agenda item for our meeting (which we need to have anyway). I think that there is a general consensus around this for now, but we should formalize it. I share this feeling of consensus. Whats left to do is to determine if we're truly ready for this step and to what degree. Once we formalize our intent as a community to move in this direction, we will need to go before the community council to have our updated strategy document ratified. Cody, can you be our link to the other councils or whatever, as you seem to know them best? If we all approve of the change as a group, I think we could forward it on to the council so that they know what we're doing, but I am not so sure it would require their seal of approval. As long as we are comfortable with what we're doing, I think the community council would be ok with it. Ultimately, I don't think it will make a huge difference in how we operate as long as things get done. I could think so as well, but you never know... :) We are a Ubuntu project and to be fully recognized as a council with delegated authority from the community council we will require the community council's approval. However, thats the easy part. Coming up with a structure that will ultimately provide healthy leadership and have any sort of longevity will require careful planning and discussion between key stakeholders first. What's the situation with the technical team leadership? Cody, Lionel? I think we still need to address this. Definitely! The intention of the community leadership page was to give recognizability to the individuals who have organically grown into different leadership roles within the Xubuntu community. Its the person and not the title that permits these individuals to influence the project in the ways that they do. If anything, Lionel has only been increasingly more and more involved with the technical direction and operations of Xubuntu and so IMHO is the tech lead for Xubuntu regardless if we says so or not :-). If Lionel wishes to continue in this capacity, he is more than welcome to recognized as such IMHO. What's the situation with Michael? Can we remove Joszef's name from the leaders list - he's still not appeared from the mist. I don't know what the situation is with Michael. As for Joszef, I am of the opinion that we could remove his name from the leaders list. If he wanted to come back and contribute more, he would be welcome to do so. Okay. Let's do this parallel to the next meeting. Maybe we should also remove Michael from the leaders list or at least put his name on parenthesis if he doesn't show up in the meeting or before it? Joszef has made his intentions clear that he has left Xubuntu for other endeavors. Michael should be contacted to gauge his interest.
Re: Xubuntu team direction
On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi wrote: I understand that a complete consensus (and pleasing everyone) might not be something we can achieve with 3+ members (either), but it really gives me a more community-based feeling. And in the end, I'm only proposing 4 members, and there's not really a decent way of determining which team (leader) should not be in the council. If you have an idea which team/who should NOT be in the council, please point your finger on the team. FWIW, size-wise, the standard 5 person council which includes a chair who can break ties[0] in votes has worked very well for other teams. It's still small enough to not be a bureaucratic hassle, but tends to give good representation of the community, healthy discussions with several viewpoints that hold official weight and doesn't put strain on the council time-wise - in a 5 person council, it's ok if two members are unavailable, quorum can still be met so decisions can be made and the project moved forward. Hope this helps. [0] when taking into account absences and people abstaining, a 5 member council can have ties. -- Elizabeth Krumbach // Lyz // pleia2 http://www.princessleia.com -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
On Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:31:05 +0200 Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi wrote: Cody A.W. Somerville wrote: Hello, Sorry for taking so long to reply. I've been thinking quite a bit about this and have been waiting for the appropriate time to jump in. *General gist*: I think a council *could* be good for Xubuntu. However, its membership should be limited to 3 people due to the small size of our community (if we can't find consensus now, putting us all on a council isn't going to give us consensus either); it can grow later as necessary. Ultimately, this change should be mostly a transparent one and not a harbinger of great change or divergence from the Ubuntu community and processes. In fact, I feel this change should instead aim to bring greater consistency, stability, and most importantly longevity to our project. On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi mailto:o...@knome.fi wrote: I must disagree with this, although I see the point of only having 3 members. From our experiences from the two last releases, my feeling is that the problem hasn't been finding consensus. The problem has been, as I see it (and I hate to bring this up again), that the one-leader approach has given problems on (mostly artwork) issues when you and I have disagreed. We have fortunately always found a compromise, but I really feel that I should have had the power to decide (against you), especially the rest of the developer community agreed with me. Just as I think Lionel should make any decisions on technical side or Jim on the documentation team, even if the leader or a single developer disagreed. The advantage with a bigger council, I think, is that it really involves people more. If we only choose three members to the council, the rest are unheard and the council can just overrule their thoughts. If they participate in the council, they have a better chance to be heard. I understand that a complete consensus (and pleasing everyone) might not be something we can achieve with 3+ members (either), but it really gives me a more community-based feeling. And in the end, I'm only proposing 4 members, and there's not really a decent way of determining which team (leader) should not be in the council. If you have an idea which team/who should NOT be in the council, please point your finger on the team. All that seems to be said is something to the effect of if I don't get to do what I want The concept of each person trying to decide for themselves what will be in each release is not an answer. Somehow, somewhere, someone has to be able to make each of these items work with the others. That is the leaders job. No leader, a big council, and each person making their own decision as to what is included means nothing really works right. I don't know what organization runs on the concept of this is my decision, not any one other persons, and not any groups. Unfortunately, in my 50+ years of life, the only place that attitude ever led to was non-cooperation. Anytime each person thinks they are the deciding individual for a part of things, and someone else can try to make it work, things will have nowhere to go but down. I can not think of any successful project that got there without a leader. Can anyone else? Basically, this project does need leadership, and a group of individuals insisting that it does not will not help it along. The more this thread grows, the more it sounds like children fighting to get their own way. And yes, that is the only way I can think to word this. Watch a group of children trying to make a decision, and each one will argue he/she is right and should be the one making the decision. There is no consensus when each one has to right to satisfy their own thinking. Our artwork in Xubuntu 9.10 was good, but not great. There seems to something that says if a change might be good, forget it. If you beg the right people in the right group, you might get a change. As a whole unit, none of this is helping improve things. If a suggestion is made that the artwork might not have been great, it is disregarded or the person is told they don't have to use it. Where does this make Xubuntu a better distribution? If improvements are to be made, there must be a consesus from leadership. Without it, one individuals improvements are another individuals degradation of the the whole. Leadership by separate individuals does not really work, in reality. This entire tirade by a couple of individuals against an individual needs to stop. The fact is that Xubuntu is a better distribution BECAUSE of CODY-SOMERVILLE. -- Charlie Kravetz Linux Registered User Number 425914 [http://counter.li.org/] Never let anyone steal your DREAM. [http://keepingdreams.com] -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Charlie Kravetz wrote: On Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:31:05 +0200 Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi wrote: Cody A.W. Somerville wrote: Hello, Sorry for taking so long to reply. I've been thinking quite a bit about this and have been waiting for the appropriate time to jump in. *General gist*: I think a council *could* be good for Xubuntu. However, its membership should be limited to 3 people due to the small size of our community (if we can't find consensus now, putting us all on a council isn't going to give us consensus either); it can grow later as necessary. Ultimately, this change should be mostly a transparent one and not a harbinger of great change or divergence from the Ubuntu community and processes. In fact, I feel this change should instead aim to bring greater consistency, stability, and most importantly longevity to our project. On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi mailto:o...@knome.fi wrote: I must disagree with this, although I see the point of only having 3 members. From our experiences from the two last releases, my feeling is that the problem hasn't been finding consensus. The problem has been, as I see it (and I hate to bring this up again), that the one-leader approach has given problems on (mostly artwork) issues when you and I have disagreed. We have fortunately always found a compromise, but I really feel that I should have had the power to decide (against you), especially the rest of the developer community agreed with me. Just as I think Lionel should make any decisions on technical side or Jim on the documentation team, even if the leader or a single developer disagreed. The advantage with a bigger council, I think, is that it really involves people more. If we only choose three members to the council, the rest are unheard and the council can just overrule their thoughts. If they participate in the council, they have a better chance to be heard. I understand that a complete consensus (and pleasing everyone) might not be something we can achieve with 3+ members (either), but it really gives me a more community-based feeling. And in the end, I'm only proposing 4 members, and there's not really a decent way of determining which team (leader) should not be in the council. If you have an idea which team/who should NOT be in the council, please point your finger on the team. All that seems to be said is something to the effect of if I don't get to do what I want The concept of each person trying to decide for themselves what will be in each release is not an answer. Somehow, somewhere, someone has to be able to make each of these items work with the others. That is the leaders job. No leader, a big council, and each person making their own decision as to what is included means nothing really works right. Compromises are to be done and people will be disappointed, including me, and that's totally fine. Experts in their own field should be valued and trusted. I expect individuals would work per the strategy for a release, as they have used to. I don't know what organization runs on the concept of this is my decision, not any one other persons, and not any groups. Unfortunately, in my 50+ years of life, the only place that attitude ever led to was non-cooperation. Anytime each person thinks they are the deciding individual for a part of things, and someone else can try to make it work, things will have nowhere to go but down. I can not think of any successful project that got there without a leader. Can anyone else? Basically, this project does need leadership, and a group of individuals insisting that it does not will not help it along. The more this thread grows, the more it sounds like children fighting to get their own way. And yes, that is the only way I can think to word this. Watch a group of children trying to make a decision, and each one will argue he/she is right and should be the one making the decision. There is no consensus when each one has to right to satisfy their own thinking. Our artwork in Xubuntu 9.10 was good, but not great. There seems to something that says if a change might be good, forget it. If you beg the right people in the right group, you might get a change. As a whole unit, none of this is helping improve things. If a suggestion is made that the artwork might not have been great, it is disregarded or the person is told they don't have to use it. Where does this make Xubuntu a better distribution? If improvements are to be made, there must be a consesus from leadership. Without it, one individuals improvements are another individuals degradation of the the whole. Leadership by separate individuals does not really work, in reality. This entire tirade by a couple of individuals against an individual needs to stop. I never meant to express a tirade against anybody. Things have not worked as smoothly as they could
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Hello, Sorry for taking so long to reply. I've been thinking quite a bit about this and have been waiting for the appropriate time to jump in. *General gist*: I think a council *could* be good for Xubuntu. However, its membership should be limited to 3 people due to the small size of our community (if we can't find consensus now, putting us all on a council isn't going to give us consensus either); it can grow later as necessary. Ultimately, this change should be mostly a transparent one and not a harbinger of great change or divergence from the Ubuntu community and processes. In fact, I feel this change should instead aim to bring greater consistency, stability, and most importantly longevity to our project. On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi wrote: Jim Campbell wrote: On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 2:46 AM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi wrote: Now, where did this discussion go? It appears as though it went on vacation. It has to come back to work eventually, though! People seemed to like the council-type approach; what's next? I think it would be a good idea to revisit the document that Cody put together and see how it would need to be modified to suit a council-type approach. I can give this a try. I'll let the group know if I have questions as I put things together. Yeah, this sounds good. Maybe we should also briefly revise the general direction stuff and make any modifications to those as well if we feel they need to be changed. Agreed. The document is indeed in need of an update. Anybody has obejctions? Should we first propose this to the Community Council (or some place else) or just take the new governance into use? Once that is done, I think we should have a meeting to approve it. We could at least have that as an agenda item for our meeting (which we need to have anyway). I think that there is a general consensus around this for now, but we should formalize it. I share this feeling of consensus. Whats left to do is to determine if we're truly ready for this step and to what degree. Once we formalize our intent as a community to move in this direction, we will need to go before the community council to have our updated strategy document ratified. Cody, can you be our link to the other councils or whatever, as you seem to know them best? If we all approve of the change as a group, I think we could forward it on to the council so that they know what we're doing, but I am not so sure it would require their seal of approval. As long as we are comfortable with what we're doing, I think the community council would be ok with it. Ultimately, I don't think it will make a huge difference in how we operate as long as things get done. I could think so as well, but you never know... :) We are a Ubuntu project and to be fully recognized as a council with delegated authority from the community council we will require the community council's approval. However, thats the easy part. Coming up with a structure that will ultimately provide healthy leadership and have any sort of longevity will require careful planning and discussion between key stakeholders first. What's the situation with the technical team leadership? Cody, Lionel? I think we still need to address this. Definitely! The intention of the community leadership page was to give recognizability to the individuals who have organically grown into different leadership roles within the Xubuntu community. Its the person and not the title that permits these individuals to influence the project in the ways that they do. If anything, Lionel has only been increasingly more and more involved with the technical direction and operations of Xubuntu and so IMHO is the tech lead for Xubuntu regardless if we says so or not :-). If Lionel wishes to continue in this capacity, he is more than welcome to recognized as such IMHO. What's the situation with Michael? Can we remove Joszef's name from the leaders list - he's still not appeared from the mist. I don't know what the situation is with Michael. As for Joszef, I am of the opinion that we could remove his name from the leaders list. If he wanted to come back and contribute more, he would be welcome to do so. Okay. Let's do this parallel to the next meeting. Maybe we should also remove Michael from the leaders list or at least put his name on parenthesis if he doesn't show up in the meeting or before it? Joszef has made his intentions clear that he has left Xubuntu for other endeavors. Michael should be contacted to gauge his interest. To make Lucid be as good and stable as possible, I think we also should have a developer meeting soonish. If we can get the governance things sorted before or while the meeting, GREAT! I agree! I've put together a doodle poll to check everyone's availability for a team meeting. Please record what times will work for you using the link below. Hopefully the
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Cody A.W. Somerville wrote: Hello, Sorry for taking so long to reply. I've been thinking quite a bit about this and have been waiting for the appropriate time to jump in. *General gist*: I think a council *could* be good for Xubuntu. However, its membership should be limited to 3 people due to the small size of our community (if we can't find consensus now, putting us all on a council isn't going to give us consensus either); it can grow later as necessary. Ultimately, this change should be mostly a transparent one and not a harbinger of great change or divergence from the Ubuntu community and processes. In fact, I feel this change should instead aim to bring greater consistency, stability, and most importantly longevity to our project. I must disagree with this, although I see the point of only having 3 members. From our experiences from the two last releases, my feeling is that the problem hasn't been finding consensus. The problem has been, as I see it (and I hate to bring this up again), that the one-leader approach has given problems on (mostly artwork) issues when you and I have disagreed. We have fortunately always found a compromise, but I really feel that I should have had the power to decide (against you), especially the rest of the developer community agreed with me. Just as I think Lionel should make any decisions on technical side or Jim on the documentation team, even if the leader or a single developer disagreed. The advantage with a bigger council, I think, is that it really involves people more. If we only choose three members to the council, the rest are unheard and the council can just overrule their thoughts. If they participate in the council, they have a better chance to be heard. I understand that a complete consensus (and pleasing everyone) might not be something we can achieve with 3+ members (either), but it really gives me a more community-based feeling. And in the end, I'm only proposing 4 members, and there's not really a decent way of determining which team (leader) should not be in the council. If you have an idea which team/who should NOT be in the council, please point your finger on the team. On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi mailto:o...@knome.fi wrote: Jim Campbell wrote: On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 2:46 AM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi mailto:o...@knome.fi wrote: Now, where did this discussion go? It appears as though it went on vacation. It has to come back to work eventually, though! People seemed to like the council-type approach; what's next? I think it would be a good idea to revisit the document that Cody put together and see how it would need to be modified to suit a council-type approach. I can give this a try. I'll let the group know if I have questions as I put things together. Yeah, this sounds good. Maybe we should also briefly revise the general direction stuff and make any modifications to those as well if we feel they need to be changed. Agreed. The document is indeed in need of an update. Anybody has obejctions? Should we first propose this to the Community Council (or some place else) or just take the new governance into use? Once that is done, I think we should have a meeting to approve it. We could at least have that as an agenda item for our meeting (which we need to have anyway). I think that there is a general consensus around this for now, but we should formalize it. I share this feeling of consensus. Whats left to do is to determine if we're truly ready for this step and to what degree. Once we formalize our intent as a community to move in this direction, we will need to go before the community council to have our updated strategy document ratified. Cody, can you be our link to the other councils or whatever, as you seem to know them best? If we all approve of the change as a group, I think we could forward it on to the council so that they know what we're doing, but I am not so sure it would require their seal of approval. As long as we are comfortable with what we're doing, I think the community council would be ok with it. Ultimately, I don't think it will make a huge difference in how we operate as long as things get done. I could think so as well, but you never know... :) We are a Ubuntu project and to be fully recognized as a council with delegated authority from the community council we will require the community council's approval. However, thats the easy part. Coming up with a structure that will ultimately provide healthy leadership and have any sort of longevity will require careful planning and discussion between key stakeholders first. I'm not completely sure what/who you mean with key stakeholders, but during the change to a
Re: Xubuntu team direction
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 2:46 AM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi wrote: Now, where did this discussion go? It appears as though it went on vacation. It has to come back to work eventually, though! People seemed to like the council-type approach; what's next? I think it would be a good idea to revisit the document that Cody put together and see how it would need to be modified to suit a council-type approach. I can give this a try. I'll let the group know if I have questions as I put things together. Anybody has obejctions? Should we first propose this to the Community Council (or some place else) or just take the new governance into use? Once that is done, I think we should have a meeting to approve it. We could at least have that as an agenda item for our meeting (which we need to have anyway). I think that there is a general consensus around this for now, but we should formalize it. Cody, can you be our link to the other councils or whatever, as you seem to know them best? If we all approve of the change as a group, I think we could forward it on to the council so that they know what we're doing, but I am not so sure it would require their seal of approval. As long as we are comfortable with what we're doing, I think the community council would be ok with it. Ultimately, I don't think it will make a huge difference in how we operate as long as things get done. What's the situation with the technical team leadership? Cody, Lionel? I think we still need to address this. What's the situation with Michael? Can we remove Joszef's name from the leaders list - he's still not appeared from the mist. I don't know what the situation is with Michael. As for Joszef, I am of the opinion that we could remove his name from the leaders list. If he wanted to come back and contribute more, he would be welcome to do so. To make Lucid be as good and stable as possible, I think we also should have a developer meeting soonish. If we can get the governance things sorted before or while the meeting, GREAT! I agree! I've put together a doodle poll to check everyone's availability for a team meeting. Please record what times will work for you using the link below. Hopefully the times will work for people, but I can set up new times if I've picked times that don't work for your corner of the world. Keep in mind that this will be the best Xubuntu team meeting ever. http://www.doodle.com/6stt9n2q7t9467q5 Jim -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Jim Campbell wrote: On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 2:46 AM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi mailto:o...@knome.fi wrote: Now, where did this discussion go? It appears as though it went on vacation. It has to come back to work eventually, though! People seemed to like the council-type approach; what's next? I think it would be a good idea to revisit the document that Cody put together and see how it would need to be modified to suit a council-type approach. I can give this a try. I'll let the group know if I have questions as I put things together. Yeah, this sounds good. Maybe we should also briefly revise the general direction stuff and make any modifications to those as well if we feel they need to be changed. Anybody has obejctions? Should we first propose this to the Community Council (or some place else) or just take the new governance into use? Once that is done, I think we should have a meeting to approve it. We could at least have that as an agenda item for our meeting (which we need to have anyway). I think that there is a general consensus around this for now, but we should formalize it. Cody, can you be our link to the other councils or whatever, as you seem to know them best? If we all approve of the change as a group, I think we could forward it on to the council so that they know what we're doing, but I am not so sure it would require their seal of approval. As long as we are comfortable with what we're doing, I think the community council would be ok with it. Ultimately, I don't think it will make a huge difference in how we operate as long as things get done. I could think so as well, but you never know... :) What's the situation with the technical team leadership? Cody, Lionel? I think we still need to address this. Definitely! What's the situation with Michael? Can we remove Joszef's name from the leaders list - he's still not appeared from the mist. I don't know what the situation is with Michael. As for Joszef, I am of the opinion that we could remove his name from the leaders list. If he wanted to come back and contribute more, he would be welcome to do so. Okay. Let's do this parallel to the next meeting. Maybe we should also remove Michael from the leaders list or at least put his name on parenthesis if he doesn't show up in the meeting or before it? To make Lucid be as good and stable as possible, I think we also should have a developer meeting soonish. If we can get the governance things sorted before or while the meeting, GREAT! I agree! I've put together a doodle poll to check everyone's availability for a team meeting. Please record what times will work for you using the link below. Hopefully the times will work for people, but I can set up new times if I've picked times that don't work for your corner of the world. Keep in mind that this will be the best Xubuntu team meeting ever. http://www.doodle.com/6stt9n2q7t9467q5 Jim What I gathered from this mail we need to cover at least the following topics (read: AGENDA): 1) Review the Xubuntu strategy document - Modify to suit the council-type approach (Jim will look into this before the meeting) - Briefly revise the overall strategy and modify if needed 2) Approve (and forward) the new Xubuntu governancy - See 1), will need to have the final form ready in the document so we can approve it! 3) Review the leaders list 4) Other topics - Artwork for Lucid (Shimmer/polish Albatross)? - Default applications for Lucid? - [Insert your other topic here] Cheers, -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Now, where did this discussion go? People seemed to like the council-type approach; what's next? Anybody has obejctions? Should we first propose this to the Community Council (or some place else) or just take the new governance into use? Cody, can you be our link to the other councils or whatever, as you seem to know them best? What's the situation with the technical team leadership? Cody, Lionel? What's the situation with Michael? Can we remove Joszef's name from the leaders list - he's still not appeared from the mist. To make Lucid be as good and stable as possible, I think we also should have a developer meeting soonish. If we can get the governance things sorted before or while the meeting, GREAT! Cheers, -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Now, where did this discussion go? People seemed to like the council-type approach; what's next? Anybody has obejctions? Should we first propose this to the Community Council (or some place else) or just take the new governance into use? Cody, can you be our link to the other councils or whatever, as you seem to know them best? What's the situation with the technical team leadership? Cody, Lionel? What's the situation with Michael? Can we remove Joszef's name from the leaders list - he's still not appeared from the mist. To make Lucid be as good and stable as possible, I think we also should have a developer meeting soonish. If we can get the governance things sorted before or while the meeting, GREAT! Cheers, Well I'm more than willing to help out in any way I can. In fact, I've recently developed and deployed a Wordpress based website for a client to familiarize myself with the Wordpress system in case you needed any help. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: J. Anthony Limon wrote: Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Lionel Le Folgoc wrote: Hi there, On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 01:20:07PM -0600, Jim Campbell wrote: It seems like most people are open to a council-type approach in terms of governance (if that's the right word). It also seems like we would still need someone who can manage the seeds alongside Lionel, and perhaps do some development, too. I'm not sure what all is involved in what Cody has done, to be honest, but we will need to find a person or (perhaps more likely) a couple people who can contribute in a technical manner similar to how has been able to contribute. I wouldn't expect anyone to perform those kind of duties right away, but . . . eventually . . . they could grow into those kind of responsibilities. I know what I'm proposing above isn't terribly formal, but I'm on visiting the neighbouring city of Milwaukee this weekend, and wanted to provide some input on this matter for now. :) I'm all in favor of a council-type approach, thanks for thinking about this. ;) No problem about the people proposed either (although Micheal hasn't contributed at all to Xubuntu for more than six months, nor spoken on our ml or irc chan, so I'm not sure he's still interested). I understand Michael has a lot to do, so I'm not blaming him for this. Maybe someone should contact him if he doesn't reply soonish. I can do that. Cody and Lionel, what do you think about the technical team leader(s)? Also Cody, do you think several leaders per team would make sense? Cody and Lionel, what areas do you think you could use the most support? Is it in bug triage? Is it in development, packaging and patching? Is it in managing the seeds? There may be Xubuntu users or MOTU folks who we could recruit based on a specific need. I know that recruiting new contributors is difficult (particularly skilled ones) but identifying particular areas where we need the most development help would at least give us a chance. The biggest issue isn't packaging imho. Now, most of our packages are synced as-is from Debian, and for the remaining ones, the delta with Debian is well identified (xubuntu-specific changes such as notify-osd support, etc.). Yet, some help would be appreciated on the StableReleaseUpdates (SRU) front, as currently we fix ~0 bug after a release, and users have to live with some annoying bugs during six months. An important problem for karmic was testing (especially gnome components - xfce interactions) and reporting bugs about that. It's rather difficult to have the desktop team change something in their packages, and when we detect that a few days before/after the release, it's impossible. =] Charlie might probably need some help on bug triaging also… (I only focused on 'technical' stuff, but people may need help on documentation and artwork too ;) At least for Lucid, no big help with artwork is needed as we'll mostly polish the Albatross theme with the Shimmer team. I could use some help on renewing the website though, if somebody is interested. Documentation absolutely needs lots of help and love. Cheers, Lionel -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode What language and/or CMS is xubuntu.com? - J Currently Drupal, but the with redesign we are migrating to WordPress. -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode Is there a repo set up for the website's files or am I being too hopeful? - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Lionel Le Folgoc wrote: Hi there, On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 01:20:07PM -0600, Jim Campbell wrote: It seems like most people are open to a council-type approach in terms of governance (if that's the right word). It also seems like we would still need someone who can manage the seeds alongside Lionel, and perhaps do some development, too. I'm not sure what all is involved in what Cody has done, to be honest, but we will need to find a person or (perhaps more likely) a couple people who can contribute in a technical manner similar to how has been able to contribute. I wouldn't expect anyone to perform those kind of duties right away, but . . . eventually . . . they could grow into those kind of responsibilities. I know what I'm proposing above isn't terribly formal, but I'm on visiting the neighbouring city of Milwaukee this weekend, and wanted to provide some input on this matter for now. :) I'm all in favor of a council-type approach, thanks for thinking about this. ;) No problem about the people proposed either (although Micheal hasn't contributed at all to Xubuntu for more than six months, nor spoken on our ml or irc chan, so I'm not sure he's still interested). I understand Michael has a lot to do, so I'm not blaming him for this. Maybe someone should contact him if he doesn't reply soonish. I can do that. Cody and Lionel, what do you think about the technical team leader(s)? Also Cody, do you think several leaders per team would make sense? Cody and Lionel, what areas do you think you could use the most support? Is it in bug triage? Is it in development, packaging and patching? Is it in managing the seeds? There may be Xubuntu users or MOTU folks who we could recruit based on a specific need. I know that recruiting new contributors is difficult (particularly skilled ones) but identifying particular areas where we need the most development help would at least give us a chance. The biggest issue isn't packaging imho. Now, most of our packages are synced as-is from Debian, and for the remaining ones, the delta with Debian is well identified (xubuntu-specific changes such as notify-osd support, etc.). Yet, some help would be appreciated on the StableReleaseUpdates (SRU) front, as currently we fix ~0 bug after a release, and users have to live with some annoying bugs during six months. An important problem for karmic was testing (especially gnome components - xfce interactions) and reporting bugs about that. It's rather difficult to have the desktop team change something in their packages, and when we detect that a few days before/after the release, it's impossible. =] Charlie might probably need some help on bug triaging also… (I only focused on 'technical' stuff, but people may need help on documentation and artwork too ;) At least for Lucid, no big help with artwork is needed as we'll mostly polish the Albatross theme with the Shimmer team. I could use some help on renewing the website though, if somebody is interested. Documentation absolutely needs lots of help and love. Cheers, Lionel -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode What language and/or CMS is xubuntu.com? - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
J. Anthony Limon wrote: Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Lionel Le Folgoc wrote: Hi there, On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 01:20:07PM -0600, Jim Campbell wrote: It seems like most people are open to a council-type approach in terms of governance (if that's the right word). It also seems like we would still need someone who can manage the seeds alongside Lionel, and perhaps do some development, too. I'm not sure what all is involved in what Cody has done, to be honest, but we will need to find a person or (perhaps more likely) a couple people who can contribute in a technical manner similar to how has been able to contribute. I wouldn't expect anyone to perform those kind of duties right away, but . . . eventually . . . they could grow into those kind of responsibilities. I know what I'm proposing above isn't terribly formal, but I'm on visiting the neighbouring city of Milwaukee this weekend, and wanted to provide some input on this matter for now. :) I'm all in favor of a council-type approach, thanks for thinking about this. ;) No problem about the people proposed either (although Micheal hasn't contributed at all to Xubuntu for more than six months, nor spoken on our ml or irc chan, so I'm not sure he's still interested). I understand Michael has a lot to do, so I'm not blaming him for this. Maybe someone should contact him if he doesn't reply soonish. I can do that. Cody and Lionel, what do you think about the technical team leader(s)? Also Cody, do you think several leaders per team would make sense? Cody and Lionel, what areas do you think you could use the most support? Is it in bug triage? Is it in development, packaging and patching? Is it in managing the seeds? There may be Xubuntu users or MOTU folks who we could recruit based on a specific need. I know that recruiting new contributors is difficult (particularly skilled ones) but identifying particular areas where we need the most development help would at least give us a chance. The biggest issue isn't packaging imho. Now, most of our packages are synced as-is from Debian, and for the remaining ones, the delta with Debian is well identified (xubuntu-specific changes such as notify-osd support, etc.). Yet, some help would be appreciated on the StableReleaseUpdates (SRU) front, as currently we fix ~0 bug after a release, and users have to live with some annoying bugs during six months. An important problem for karmic was testing (especially gnome components - xfce interactions) and reporting bugs about that. It's rather difficult to have the desktop team change something in their packages, and when we detect that a few days before/after the release, it's impossible. =] Charlie might probably need some help on bug triaging also… (I only focused on 'technical' stuff, but people may need help on documentation and artwork too ;) At least for Lucid, no big help with artwork is needed as we'll mostly polish the Albatross theme with the Shimmer team. I could use some help on renewing the website though, if somebody is interested. Documentation absolutely needs lots of help and love. Cheers, Lionel -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode What language and/or CMS is xubuntu.com? - J Currently Drupal, but the with redesign we are migrating to WordPress. -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Jim Campbell jwcampb...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi wrote: Steve Dodier wrote: I agree with Pasi that Xubuntu may benefit from a multiple leaders board. A single leader system too often, in my opinion, gave the impression that it was Cody against the others when Cody was disagreeing on something with the rest of the team, because it's hard to know if its the project lead or the developer who disagrees. Having a more equal system would probably help avoiding such bizarre situations. This being said, I'm willing to take absolutely no responsibilities of any sort. :) I have enough work with my school, so all the free time I put into FOSS will go to Shimmer projects (which yet match quite a few projects used in Xubuntu, so I may not be competely useless :p). This should not restrict me from babbling all over IRC and the mailing list, though. As I'm the Shimmer Project leader, some of my time will go there as well. Again, we work on such things that help Xubuntu go forward as well, but somebody (Lionel :P) probably has to do more work to get the stuff into Xubuntu. Yeah, this is a big concern for me. Cody has access and knowledge that few people have. Lionel already does a lot (a lot!) of work himself. What can we do to find other people who can assist in this area? I'd personally love to see Cody, Pasi, Jim and Lionel (and Vincent?) as that leaders council. You guys are the guys who get the work done, and you all have a long experience with Xubuntu. Well, referring to the current leaders table [1], I'm suggesting this board could consists 6 people rather than the 4 (5) you suggested, adding Charlie to the list. I'd really love to see his experience on the council and even see him taking a bit bigger role and shouting out a bit louder :) What comes to Joszef, I really haven't seen him active since I joined as the Marketing Lead, so I really can't recommend him to join as the seventh member. I'd also like to say that new contributors or people who want to contribute should not bother too much about the leadership thing. Everyone is welcome in Xubuntu, and if you have feedback about what you feel held or slowed you down from contributing, or about how to make you feel more welcome in our little community, feel free to tell it. I like this attitude. :) Exactly. Wherever our council meetings will happen, anybody is free to join and tell their opinions as well. The whole progress should be as transparent as possible. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Leaders It seems like most people are open to a council-type approach in terms of governance (if that's the right word). It also seems like we would still need someone who can manage the seeds alongside Lionel, and perhaps do some development, too. I'm not sure what all is involved in what Cody has done, to be honest, but we will need to find a person or (perhaps more likely) a couple people who can contribute in a technical manner similar to how has been able to contribute. I wouldn't expect anyone to perform those kind of duties right away, but . . . eventually . . . they could grow into those kind of responsibilities. I know what I'm proposing above isn't terribly formal, but I'm on visiting the neighbouring city of Milwaukee this weekend, and wanted to provide some input on this matter for now. :) Jim Cody and Lionel, what areas do you think you could use the most support? Is it in bug triage? Is it in development, packaging and patching? Is it in managing the seeds? There may be Xubuntu users or MOTU folks who we could recruit based on a specific need. I know that recruiting new contributors is difficult (particularly skilled ones) but identifying particular areas where we need the most development help would at least give us a chance. Jim -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Hi there, On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 01:20:07PM -0600, Jim Campbell wrote: It seems like most people are open to a council-type approach in terms of governance (if that's the right word). It also seems like we would still need someone who can manage the seeds alongside Lionel, and perhaps do some development, too. I'm not sure what all is involved in what Cody has done, to be honest, but we will need to find a person or (perhaps more likely) a couple people who can contribute in a technical manner similar to how has been able to contribute. I wouldn't expect anyone to perform those kind of duties right away, but . . . eventually . . . they could grow into those kind of responsibilities. I know what I'm proposing above isn't terribly formal, but I'm on visiting the neighbouring city of Milwaukee this weekend, and wanted to provide some input on this matter for now. :) I'm all in favor of a council-type approach, thanks for thinking about this. ;) No problem about the people proposed either (although Micheal hasn't contributed at all to Xubuntu for more than six months, nor spoken on our ml or irc chan, so I'm not sure he's still interested). Cody and Lionel, what areas do you think you could use the most support? Is it in bug triage? Is it in development, packaging and patching? Is it in managing the seeds? There may be Xubuntu users or MOTU folks who we could recruit based on a specific need. I know that recruiting new contributors is difficult (particularly skilled ones) but identifying particular areas where we need the most development help would at least give us a chance. The biggest issue isn't packaging imho. Now, most of our packages are synced as-is from Debian, and for the remaining ones, the delta with Debian is well identified (xubuntu-specific changes such as notify-osd support, etc.). Yet, some help would be appreciated on the StableReleaseUpdates (SRU) front, as currently we fix ~0 bug after a release, and users have to live with some annoying bugs during six months. An important problem for karmic was testing (especially gnome components - xfce interactions) and reporting bugs about that. It's rather difficult to have the desktop team change something in their packages, and when we detect that a few days before/after the release, it's impossible. =] Charlie might probably need some help on bug triaging also… (I only focused on 'technical' stuff, but people may need help on documentation and artwork too ;) Cheers, Lionel -- Lionel Le Folgoc - https://launchpad.net/~mrpouit E61E 116D 4BA1 3936 0A33 F61D 65D9 A66E 10E2 969A signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Lionel Le Folgoc wrote: Hi there, On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 01:20:07PM -0600, Jim Campbell wrote: It seems like most people are open to a council-type approach in terms of governance (if that's the right word). It also seems like we would still need someone who can manage the seeds alongside Lionel, and perhaps do some development, too. I'm not sure what all is involved in what Cody has done, to be honest, but we will need to find a person or (perhaps more likely) a couple people who can contribute in a technical manner similar to how has been able to contribute. I wouldn't expect anyone to perform those kind of duties right away, but . . . eventually . . . they could grow into those kind of responsibilities. I know what I'm proposing above isn't terribly formal, but I'm on visiting the neighbouring city of Milwaukee this weekend, and wanted to provide some input on this matter for now. :) I'm all in favor of a council-type approach, thanks for thinking about this. ;) No problem about the people proposed either (although Micheal hasn't contributed at all to Xubuntu for more than six months, nor spoken on our ml or irc chan, so I'm not sure he's still interested). I understand Michael has a lot to do, so I'm not blaming him for this. Maybe someone should contact him if he doesn't reply soonish. I can do that. Cody and Lionel, what do you think about the technical team leader(s)? Also Cody, do you think several leaders per team would make sense? Cody and Lionel, what areas do you think you could use the most support? Is it in bug triage? Is it in development, packaging and patching? Is it in managing the seeds? There may be Xubuntu users or MOTU folks who we could recruit based on a specific need. I know that recruiting new contributors is difficult (particularly skilled ones) but identifying particular areas where we need the most development help would at least give us a chance. The biggest issue isn't packaging imho. Now, most of our packages are synced as-is from Debian, and for the remaining ones, the delta with Debian is well identified (xubuntu-specific changes such as notify-osd support, etc.). Yet, some help would be appreciated on the StableReleaseUpdates (SRU) front, as currently we fix ~0 bug after a release, and users have to live with some annoying bugs during six months. An important problem for karmic was testing (especially gnome components - xfce interactions) and reporting bugs about that. It's rather difficult to have the desktop team change something in their packages, and when we detect that a few days before/after the release, it's impossible. =] Charlie might probably need some help on bug triaging also… (I only focused on 'technical' stuff, but people may need help on documentation and artwork too ;) At least for Lucid, no big help with artwork is needed as we'll mostly polish the Albatross theme with the Shimmer team. I could use some help on renewing the website though, if somebody is interested. Documentation absolutely needs lots of help and love. Cheers, Lionel -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Vincent wrote: On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Steve Dodier sidnio...@gmail.com mailto:sidnio...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with Pasi that Xubuntu may benefit from a multiple leaders board. A single leader system too often, in my opinion, gave the impression that it was Cody against the others when Cody was disagreeing on something with the rest of the team, because it's hard to know if its the project lead or the developer who disagrees. Having a more equal system would probably help avoiding such bizarre situations. This being said, I'm willing to take absolutely no responsibilities of any sort. :) I have enough work with my school, so all the free time I put into FOSS will go to Shimmer projects (which yet match quite a few projects used in Xubuntu, so I may not be competely useless :p). This should not restrict me from babbling all over IRC and the mailing list, though. I'd personally love to see Cody, Pasi, Jim and Lionel (and Vincent?) as that leaders council. You guys are the guys who get the work done, and you all have a long experience with Xubuntu. I'd also like to say that new contributors or people who want to contribute should not bother too much about the leadership thing. Everyone is welcome in Xubuntu, and if you have feedback about what you feel held or slowed you down from contributing, or about how to make you feel more welcome in our little community, feel free to tell it. So, I've found time to check my email and found this conversation. Which immediately brings me to my first point: I really don't have enough time to do some really serious stuff, besides not really having any useful skill. I do share the expectation that a council could work well for Xubuntu, provided that its members can really participate. The people mentioned until now have really proven that they are a really valuable part of the project, so I would really love them to join. (And I sometimes wonder what happened to Jozsef as well.) Sorry to hear your time is so limited. I hope you will still contribute to the project as much as you feel like. Has anybody an idea what Joszef is doing right now? Furthermore, I'm excited to see another potential contributor, though I'd like to know J. Anthony Limon's first name ;-) Being a long time Xfce-user, I hope that you'll contribute in the #xubuntu IRC channel and the xubuntu-users mailinglist to help less experienced users. Another area where I think you could be very valuable (without knowing which other skills you might have :) is in documentation, so you might want to have a chat with Jim about that. Which brings me to my second point: could we expand the Documentation team to User support in general? Not sure whether it's really that necessary but it seems appropriate at first sight. Vincent, how limited your time really is? Combining the website and the documentation team wouldn't sound a bad idea either, if you feel like you don't have time to or are unwilling to lead the website team. Please do not think I'm trying to throw you out of your leader role, I was just thinking all the possibilities we have, if you are going to be available less. Best, -- Vincent I think a probably goos way to reorganize the teams/leaders would be: [ 1 ] Technical team TEAM ROLE: No change. LEADER(S): Lionel and/or Cody, depending what would be the most logical solution and on how big role Cody wishes to keep in the project. I don't think it would be bad thing to have to leaders for the technical team either. [ 2 ] Documentation team TEAM ROLE: The doc team would include the current website team. I see no point in having a separate website team, as the website really isn't *that* big issue right now. I also think it would be easier to get new contributors to the documentation team, if they could be lured in with the phrase the documentation team also administrates our website... LEADER(S): Jim and/or Vincent. Two leaders here would also be plausible. [ 3 ] Marketing team TEAM ROLE: Current marketing and artwork teams combined. LEADER(S): Myself. Any objections are welcome. :) [ 4 ] Testing/QA team TEAM ROLE: No change. LEADER(S): Charlie. Again I have to ask; what's the situation with Michael? How closely is he tied to the Xubuntu team? While he could totally keep his Debian Liaison title, would it be better to locate his position in the technical team? Feel free to disagree on everything or anything. Cheers, -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 12:12 AM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi wrote: Vincent wrote: On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Steve Dodier sidnio...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with Pasi that Xubuntu may benefit from a multiple leaders board. A single leader system too often, in my opinion, gave the impression that it was Cody against the others when Cody was disagreeing on something with the rest of the team, because it's hard to know if its the project lead or the developer who disagrees. Having a more equal system would probably help avoiding such bizarre situations. This being said, I'm willing to take absolutely no responsibilities of any sort. :) I have enough work with my school, so all the free time I put into FOSS will go to Shimmer projects (which yet match quite a few projects used in Xubuntu, so I may not be competely useless :p). This should not restrict me from babbling all over IRC and the mailing list, though. I'd personally love to see Cody, Pasi, Jim and Lionel (and Vincent?) as that leaders council. You guys are the guys who get the work done, and you all have a long experience with Xubuntu. I'd also like to say that new contributors or people who want to contribute should not bother too much about the leadership thing. Everyone is welcome in Xubuntu, and if you have feedback about what you feel held or slowed you down from contributing, or about how to make you feel more welcome in our little community, feel free to tell it. So, I've found time to check my email and found this conversation. Which immediately brings me to my first point: I really don't have enough time to do some really serious stuff, besides not really having any useful skill. I do share the expectation that a council could work well for Xubuntu, provided that its members can really participate. The people mentioned until now have really proven that they are a really valuable part of the project, so I would really love them to join. (And I sometimes wonder what happened to Jozsef as well.) Sorry to hear your time is so limited. I hope you will still contribute to the project as much as you feel like. Yeah well, I've been kind of a bad citizen in not really contributing much in the past -well, a long time- anyway ;-) If someone asked to update something on the website now it would've taken three days or so for me to do it... Has anybody an idea what Joszef is doing right now? Furthermore, I'm excited to see another potential contributor, though I'd like to know J. Anthony Limon's first name ;-) Being a long time Xfce-user, I hope that you'll contribute in the #xubuntu IRC channel and the xubuntu-users mailinglist to help less experienced users. Another area where I think you could be very valuable (without knowing which other skills you might have :) is in documentation, so you might want to have a chat with Jim about that. Which brings me to my second point: could we expand the Documentation team to User support in general? Not sure whether it's really that necessary but it seems appropriate at first sight. Vincent, how limited your time really is? When was the last time you saw me on IRC? ;-) Combining the website and the documentation team wouldn't sound a bad idea either, if you feel like you don't have time to or are unwilling to lead the website team. Please do not think I'm trying to throw you out of your leader role, I was just thinking all the possibilities we have, if you are going to be available less. No offense taken, I think it's a good idea. Best, -- Vincent I think a probably goos way to reorganize the teams/leaders would be: [ 1 ] Technical team TEAM ROLE: No change. LEADER(S): Lionel and/or Cody, depending what would be the most logical solution and on how big role Cody wishes to keep in the project. I don't think it would be bad thing to have to leaders for the technical team either. Sounds good. [ 2 ] Documentation team TEAM ROLE: The doc team would include the current website team. I see no point in having a separate website team, as the website really isn't *that* big issue right now. I also think it would be easier to get new contributors to the documentation team, if they could be lured in with the phrase the documentation team also administrates our website... LEADER(S): Jim and/or Vincent. Two leaders here would also be plausible. Jim, if he wants :) [ 3 ] Marketing team TEAM ROLE: Current marketing and artwork teams combined. LEADER(S): Myself. Any objections are welcome. :) None over here :) [ 4 ] Testing/QA team TEAM ROLE: No change. LEADER(S): Charlie. Hell yeah. Again I have to ask; what's the situation with Michael? How closely is he tied to the Xubuntu team? While he could totally keep his Debian Liaison title, would it be better to locate his position in the technical team? I'll leave it for Michael to respond :) Feel free to disagree on everything or anything.
Re: Xubuntu team direction
I agree with Pasi that Xubuntu may benefit from a multiple leaders board. A single leader system too often, in my opinion, gave the impression that it was Cody against the others when Cody was disagreeing on something with the rest of the team, because it's hard to know if its the project lead or the developer who disagrees. Having a more equal system would probably help avoiding such bizarre situations. This being said, I'm willing to take absolutely no responsibilities of any sort. :) I have enough work with my school, so all the free time I put into FOSS will go to Shimmer projects (which yet match quite a few projects used in Xubuntu, so I may not be competely useless :p). This should not restrict me from babbling all over IRC and the mailing list, though. I'd personally love to see Cody, Pasi, Jim and Lionel (and Vincent?) as that leaders council. You guys are the guys who get the work done, and you all have a long experience with Xubuntu. I'd also like to say that new contributors or people who want to contribute should not bother too much about the leadership thing. Everyone is welcome in Xubuntu, and if you have feedback about what you feel held or slowed you down from contributing, or about how to make you feel more welcome in our little community, feel free to tell it. -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Steve Dodier wrote: I agree with Pasi that Xubuntu may benefit from a multiple leaders board. A single leader system too often, in my opinion, gave the impression that it was Cody against the others when Cody was disagreeing on something with the rest of the team, because it's hard to know if its the project lead or the developer who disagrees. Having a more equal system would probably help avoiding such bizarre situations. This being said, I'm willing to take absolutely no responsibilities of any sort. :) I have enough work with my school, so all the free time I put into FOSS will go to Shimmer projects (which yet match quite a few projects used in Xubuntu, so I may not be competely useless :p). This should not restrict me from babbling all over IRC and the mailing list, though. As I'm the Shimmer Project leader, some of my time will go there as well. Again, we work on such things that help Xubuntu go forward as well, but somebody (Lionel :P) probably has to do more work to get the stuff into Xubuntu. I'd personally love to see Cody, Pasi, Jim and Lionel (and Vincent?) as that leaders council. You guys are the guys who get the work done, and you all have a long experience with Xubuntu. Well, referring to the current leaders table [1], I'm suggesting this board could consists 6 people rather than the 4 (5) you suggested, adding Charlie to the list. I'd really love to see his experience on the council and even see him taking a bit bigger role and shouting out a bit louder :) What comes to Joszef, I really haven't seen him active since I joined as the Marketing Lead, so I really can't recommend him to join as the seventh member. I'd also like to say that new contributors or people who want to contribute should not bother too much about the leadership thing. Everyone is welcome in Xubuntu, and if you have feedback about what you feel held or slowed you down from contributing, or about how to make you feel more welcome in our little community, feel free to tell it. Exactly. Wherever our council meetings will happen, anybody is free to join and tell their opinions as well. The whole progress should be as transparent as possible. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Leaders -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
See, I knew I was going to forget someone in that list. -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Hi all, On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi wrote: Steve Dodier wrote: I agree with Pasi that Xubuntu may benefit from a multiple leaders board. A single leader system too often, in my opinion, gave the impression that it was Cody against the others when Cody was disagreeing on something with the rest of the team, because it's hard to know if its the project lead or the developer who disagrees. Having a more equal system would probably help avoiding such bizarre situations. This being said, I'm willing to take absolutely no responsibilities of any sort. :) I have enough work with my school, so all the free time I put into FOSS will go to Shimmer projects (which yet match quite a few projects used in Xubuntu, so I may not be competely useless :p). This should not restrict me from babbling all over IRC and the mailing list, though. As I'm the Shimmer Project leader, some of my time will go there as well. Again, we work on such things that help Xubuntu go forward as well, but somebody (Lionel :P) probably has to do more work to get the stuff into Xubuntu. Yeah, this is a big concern for me. Cody has access and knowledge that few people have. Lionel already does a lot (a lot!) of work himself. What can we do to find other people who can assist in this area? I'd personally love to see Cody, Pasi, Jim and Lionel (and Vincent?) as that leaders council. You guys are the guys who get the work done, and you all have a long experience with Xubuntu. Well, referring to the current leaders table [1], I'm suggesting this board could consists 6 people rather than the 4 (5) you suggested, adding Charlie to the list. I'd really love to see his experience on the council and even see him taking a bit bigger role and shouting out a bit louder :) What comes to Joszef, I really haven't seen him active since I joined as the Marketing Lead, so I really can't recommend him to join as the seventh member. I'd also like to say that new contributors or people who want to contribute should not bother too much about the leadership thing. Everyone is welcome in Xubuntu, and if you have feedback about what you feel held or slowed you down from contributing, or about how to make you feel more welcome in our little community, feel free to tell it. I like this attitude. :) Exactly. Wherever our council meetings will happen, anybody is free to join and tell their opinions as well. The whole progress should be as transparent as possible. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Leaders It seems like most people are open to a council-type approach in terms of governance (if that's the right word). It also seems like we would still need someone who can manage the seeds alongside Lionel, and perhaps do some development, too. I'm not sure what all is involved in what Cody has done, to be honest, but we will need to find a person or (perhaps more likely) a couple people who can contribute in a technical manner similar to how has been able to contribute. I wouldn't expect anyone to perform those kind of duties right away, but . . . eventually . . . they could grow into those kind of responsibilities. I know what I'm proposing above isn't terribly formal, but I'm on visiting the neighbouring city of Milwaukee this weekend, and wanted to provide some input on this matter for now. :) Jim -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Jim Campbell wrote: Hi All, Although I was only there for two of the days, and Cody was sick for one of those two days, Cody and I we were able to meet during UDS, and talk about possible plans for the 10.04 release of Xubuntu. Of course we talked about some of the regular topics (and I'll have a separate email about those), but I wanted to separate out a key component of our plans from any discussions about regular distro-related issues. Specifically, we need to talk about team leadership and team member roles. As you know, after several releases as the project lead for Xubuntu, Cody wants to step down and assume the role of a regular contributor. I spoke briefly with Daniel Holbach while at UDS, and the community council would prefer that we attempt to come to a decision as a group instead of just bringing the matter to the community council. It makes sense, as we should be self-directed rather than dependent on an outside group to come to a decision that we may not like (and that may not work for us). With that, it's really up to us to decide how we handle the transition. Do we want to continue to have a singular project leader? If so, what responsibilities would that entail, and who could that be? If we choose not to go that route, or if no one wishes to assume that role, could a group of people assume particular leadership roles? What could this look like? We need to decide this as a community, so please share your thoughts. What would be best for Xubuntu? What would you like to see? What concerns do you have, and how could those concerns be addressed? What role(s) would you be willing and able to assume? Feel free to share any other questions or thoughts. Thanks very much, Jim Hi, Some changes I've had in mind since the 9.10 release is the possibility of removing gnome-app-install from the default metapackage because it gives a false impression of what is actually available in the apt repositories. Perhaps mine was never configured properly but I also hardly ever used it.. I've since removed it completely. It would also be nice to encourage the developer (or even help with the code) to further xfce4-taskmanager due to the bloated nature of Gnome System Monitor. I'm not trying to sound like an anti-gnome troll or anything, but even the most hardcore GNOME fan can tell you the shortcomings of that app. (Specifically simply starting it usually makes a system hang and it has had serious performance issues for many releases.) (Source: http://abock.org/2008/09/03/stay-classy-gnome) If anything else comes to mind I will bring them up in the future and will keep an eye on developing comments. I look forward to seeing how this thread develops. :) - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Jim Campbell wrote: On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:05 PM, J. Anthony Limon j...@flippo.net mailto:j...@flippo.net wrote: Hi, Some changes I've had in mind since the 9.10 release is the possibility of removing gnome-app-install from the default metapackage because it gives a false impression of what is actually available in the apt repositories. Perhaps mine was never configured properly but I also hardly ever used it.. I've since removed it completely. It would also be nice to encourage the developer (or even help with the code) to further xfce4-taskmanager due to the bloated nature of Gnome System Monitor. I'm not trying to sound like an anti-gnome troll or anything, but even the most hardcore GNOME fan can tell you the shortcomings of that app. (Specifically simply starting it usually makes a system hang and it has had serious performance issues for many releases.) (Source: http://abock.org/2008/09/03/stay-classy-gnome) If anything else comes to mind I will bring them up in the future and will keep an eye on developing comments. I look forward to seeing how this thread develops. :) - J Hi J, These are good suggestions for the distro itself, but I really wanted this thread to focus on the team leadership and team direction for the coming release. We'll start a separate thread for specific distro-related improvements and changes once we get the team aspect in order. I'm not as familiar with you and your background, but we could sure use your help if you are interested in contributing during this release. Jim Ah, I see. :) To keep in the spirit of the intended purpose for this thread, I will say that I would like to help in any way I can. (We'll see how far reaching my skills can help!) I've been a Linux user for years but fairly recent to the Debian style system and not too familiar with the debian package creation process, but I've been an XFce user since the early 4.0.x betas. I've just recently come to the Xubuntu distro and subscribed to the mailing list hoping to get an inside ear on the Lucid release process and hopefully help steer it in a good direction. (As well as helping folk when I can!) - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Jim Campbell wrote: Hi All, Although I was only there for two of the days, and Cody was sick for one of those two days, Cody and I we were able to meet during UDS, and talk about possible plans for the 10.04 release of Xubuntu. Of course we talked about some of the regular topics (and I'll have a separate email about those), but I wanted to separate out a key component of our plans from any discussions about regular distro-related issues. Specifically, we need to talk about team leadership and team member roles. As you know, after several releases as the project lead for Xubuntu, Cody wants to step down and assume the role of a regular contributor. I spoke briefly with Daniel Holbach while at UDS, and the community council would prefer that we attempt to come to a decision as a group instead of just bringing the matter to the community council. It makes sense, as we should be self-directed rather than dependent on an outside group to come to a decision that we may not like (and that may not work for us). With that, it's really up to us to decide how we handle the transition. Do we want to continue to have a singular project leader? If so, what responsibilities would that entail, and who could that be? If we choose not to go that route, or if no one wishes to assume that role, could a group of people assume particular leadership roles? What could this look like? We need to decide this as a community, so please share your thoughts. What would be best for Xubuntu? What would you like to see? What concerns do you have, and how could those concerns be addressed? What role(s) would you be willing and able to assume? Feel free to share any other questions or thoughts. Thanks very much, Jim Thanks Jim for bringing this topic up. I appreciate it very much. With all respect to Cody, I think the singular project leader approach didn't work out too great on some of the situations. Too many times I thought there was this one guy who always could veto anything any other leader had done. This was discussed once thoroughly and as Cody said, he thought working with the rest of the team was easier and kind of more pleasant. And I couldn't agree more. There wasn't that much decisions to be done after that, so I don't know if this approach would have worked in the long run after all. Thank you again, Cody. So where am I coming here? Well, I think Xubuntu could benefit from several leadership roles. Maybe these leaders could form some kind of council to discuss some important things and bring a shared conclusion/settlement if the developer community seems to disagree a lot. If there still would be disagreement and the council couldn't come to any conclusion, then I think the leader for the particular team would have the final word. I once left the Amarok project as I wasn't listened to when I spoke on artwork and web – even if I was clearly the guy with most experience on those areas. I've had a fear that the Xubuntu team would slowly slide into this situation and several coordinated and equal powered leaders would definitely take away this fear. Referring to my previous email to the development mailing list [1] I will focus on other things than previously, but I'm willing to continue as the Xubuntu Marketing Lead if nobody has any objections about that. This would probably also mean that I'd be one of the several leaders, representing marketing and, obviously, artwork. Whatever the path is we choose to follow, one thing is for sure: we need more developers. [1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/xubuntu-devel/2009-October/007158.html Cheers, -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Jim Campbell wrote: Hi All, Although I was only there for two of the days, and Cody was sick for one of those two days, Cody and I we were able to meet during UDS, and talk about possible plans for the 10.04 release of Xubuntu. Of course we talked about some of the regular topics (and I'll have a separate email about those), but I wanted to separate out a key component of our plans from any discussions about regular distro-related issues. Specifically, we need to talk about team leadership and team member roles. As you know, after several releases as the project lead for Xubuntu, Cody wants to step down and assume the role of a regular contributor. I spoke briefly with Daniel Holbach while at UDS, and the community council would prefer that we attempt to come to a decision as a group instead of just bringing the matter to the community council. It makes sense, as we should be self-directed rather than dependent on an outside group to come to a decision that we may not like (and that may not work for us). With that, it's really up to us to decide how we handle the transition. Do we want to continue to have a singular project leader? If so, what responsibilities would that entail, and who could that be? If we choose not to go that route, or if no one wishes to assume that role, could a group of people assume particular leadership roles? What could this look like? We need to decide this as a community, so please share your thoughts. What would be best for Xubuntu? What would you like to see? What concerns do you have, and how could those concerns be addressed? What role(s) would you be willing and able to assume? Feel free to share any other questions or thoughts. Thanks very much, Jim Thanks Jim for bringing this topic up. I appreciate it very much. With all respect to Cody, I think the singular project leader approach didn't work out too great on some of the situations. Too many times I thought there was this one guy who always could veto anything any other leader had done. This was discussed once thoroughly and as Cody said, he thought working with the rest of the team was easier and kind of more pleasant. And I couldn't agree more. There wasn't that much decisions to be done after that, so I don't know if this approach would have worked in the long run after all. Thank you again, Cody. So where am I coming here? Well, I think Xubuntu could benefit from several leadership roles. Maybe these leaders could form some kind of council to discuss some important things and bring a shared conclusion/settlement if the developer community seems to disagree a lot. If there still would be disagreement and the council couldn't come to any conclusion, then I think the leader for the particular team would have the final word. I once left the Amarok project as I wasn't listened to when I spoke on artwork and web – even if I was clearly the guy with most experience on those areas. I've had a fear that the Xubuntu team would slowly slide into this situation and several coordinated and equal powered leaders would definitely take away this fear. Referring to my previous email to the development mailing list [1] I will focus on other things than previously, but I'm willing to continue as the Xubuntu Marketing Lead if nobody has any objections about that. This would probably also mean that I'd be one of the several leaders, representing marketing and, obviously, artwork. Whatever the path is we choose to follow, one thing is for sure: we need more developers. [1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/xubuntu-devel/2009-October/007158.html Cheers, -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode I concur completely with Pasi, A council of some sort is (almost) always the best way to handle community projects. It allows more thought and process as well as serves as a sort of fail-safe for when someone cannot perform their duties. As a new member of the community I will continue to find my place within it that best serves the users and further development of the system itself. I have several ideas and criticisms I'd like to bring into 'play' concerning the Lucid development process and I think the council idea would make it easier for smaller voices to be heard and considered. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
J. Anthony Limon wrote: Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Jim Campbell wrote: Hi All, Although I was only there for two of the days, and Cody was sick for one of those two days, Cody and I we were able to meet during UDS, and talk about possible plans for the 10.04 release of Xubuntu. Of course we talked about some of the regular topics (and I'll have a separate email about those), but I wanted to separate out a key component of our plans from any discussions about regular distro-related issues. Specifically, we need to talk about team leadership and team member roles. As you know, after several releases as the project lead for Xubuntu, Cody wants to step down and assume the role of a regular contributor. I spoke briefly with Daniel Holbach while at UDS, and the community council would prefer that we attempt to come to a decision as a group instead of just bringing the matter to the community council. It makes sense, as we should be self-directed rather than dependent on an outside group to come to a decision that we may not like (and that may not work for us). With that, it's really up to us to decide how we handle the transition. Do we want to continue to have a singular project leader? If so, what responsibilities would that entail, and who could that be? If we choose not to go that route, or if no one wishes to assume that role, could a group of people assume particular leadership roles? What could this look like? We need to decide this as a community, so please share your thoughts. What would be best for Xubuntu? What would you like to see? What concerns do you have, and how could those concerns be addressed? What role(s) would you be willing and able to assume? Feel free to share any other questions or thoughts. Thanks very much, Jim Thanks Jim for bringing this topic up. I appreciate it very much. With all respect to Cody, I think the singular project leader approach didn't work out too great on some of the situations. Too many times I thought there was this one guy who always could veto anything any other leader had done. This was discussed once thoroughly and as Cody said, he thought working with the rest of the team was easier and kind of more pleasant. And I couldn't agree more. There wasn't that much decisions to be done after that, so I don't know if this approach would have worked in the long run after all. Thank you again, Cody. So where am I coming here? Well, I think Xubuntu could benefit from several leadership roles. Maybe these leaders could form some kind of council to discuss some important things and bring a shared conclusion/settlement if the developer community seems to disagree a lot. If there still would be disagreement and the council couldn't come to any conclusion, then I think the leader for the particular team would have the final word. I once left the Amarok project as I wasn't listened to when I spoke on artwork and web – even if I was clearly the guy with most experience on those areas. I've had a fear that the Xubuntu team would slowly slide into this situation and several coordinated and equal powered leaders would definitely take away this fear. Referring to my previous email to the development mailing list [1] I will focus on other things than previously, but I'm willing to continue as the Xubuntu Marketing Lead if nobody has any objections about that. This would probably also mean that I'd be one of the several leaders, representing marketing and, obviously, artwork. Whatever the path is we choose to follow, one thing is for sure: we need more developers. [1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/xubuntu-devel/2009-October/007158.html Cheers, -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode I concur completely with Pasi, A council of some sort is (almost) always the best way to handle community projects. It allows more thought and process as well as serves as a sort of fail-safe for when someone cannot perform their duties. As a new member of the community I will continue to find my place within it that best serves the users and further development of the system itself. I have several ideas and criticisms I'd like to bring into 'play' concerning the Lucid development process and I think the council idea would make it easier for smaller voices to be heard and considered. - J The different teams should be able to work on their selves, so not all of the decisions must go through the council, but only the specific team leader. If he thinks the subject would raise some constructive criticism, good discussion or bloody disagreement, he should bring the subject for the community (council) to review. The teams should work on what they are experts on as much as possible without too much bureaucracy and unneeded governance. We all have a
