On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 10:58 PM, Jeremy Bicha <jer...@bicha.net> wrote: > > I disagree with your recommendation. I recently got my Ubuntu > membership through the Regional Boards and it turns out I was a good > candidate for the Ubuntu Contributing Developer (UCD) route which I > had actually not heard of yet. UCD provides no extra privileges or > status, and there's no point in anybody who is already a Ubuntu Member > getting UCD status before applying for MOTU or core-dev.
Getting your Ubuntu membership granted through the IRC Council doesn't grant you any special rights either, why can the IRC Council bestow membership? It's not necessarily about the rights which you can receive; it's more about the who is best fit to evaluate your contribution. Though it must be said that the Ubuntu Contributing Developer (UCD) route has never been very well defined or particularly compelling. In retrospect, I probably first applied to the UCD more out of my own insecurities about applying directly to the MOTU then any desire to necessarily become a UCD. There are currently only 24 direct members of ~universe-contributors. [0] Some have probably let their direct membership expire after obtaining membership in motu or core-dev, but the fact remains that many more people have become members ~ubuntu-dev without going through UCD. At the same time, even more people upload to Ubuntu each development cycle than ever become MOTU, core-devs or UCDs. UCD status could potentially play a role in retaining those contributors and increasing their involvement. The more connections someone has with a project the more likely they will continue to contribute and increase their level of commitment. My fear about archive reorg has been that when people gain per-package upload rights for the small set of packages they care about they may never feel the urge to go beyond their narrow involvement. In some cases, that might mean that we gained an upstream or Debian developer that would only care about their small sample of packages either way. In other cases, we might be failing to increase the involvement of someone otherwise would have otherwise gone deeper. It seems to me that the social factor of becoming a MOTU encourages people to have an attachment to the distro as a whole rather than to just a specific set of packages. The trick is to figure out a way to not lose the contributions of those who have no desire to go deeper, but at the same time cultivate an atmosphere that encourages those who would potentially do so. Perhaps lowering the bar to becoming an UCD but at the same time increasing the social pressure to become one before becoming a MOTU, core-dev, or even a PPU might help create this atmosphere. (As an aside, I'd just like to disagree with the previous proposal to change the name of Ubuntu Contributing Developers to Ubuntu Development Members. It seems even more confusing to my ear. If that name change goes ahead, we'll just have this same conversation again. It does not make the status anymore clear. If you came in with little to no previous knowledge, would you be able to tell the difference between an Ubuntu Development Member or an Ubuntu Developer? I'd rather see the UCD program go away altogether but allow the DMB to directly create Ubuntu Members without any other title.) -- Andrew Starr-Bochicchio Ubuntu Developer <https://launchpad.net/~andrewsomething> Debian Contributor <http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=a.starr.b%40gmail.com> PGP/GPG Key ID: D53FDCB1 [0] https://launchpad.net/~universe-contributors/+members -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
