Launchpad itself

Bug #174375
Comment #30

Comment 30 for bug 174375

Revision history for this message

Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote on 2012-08-06:

#30

Sorting out the ubuntu-drivers team was the original purpose of this bug, and that's now pretty much dealt with: that team is responsible for blueprint planning, and the other functions have been broken out.

However, as outlined in comment 27, we have a regression of sorts as a result of this work, because part of the problem was just moved elsewhere: the ubuntu-release team is now an amalgam of multiple largely-unrelated privileges, and we need to sort that out. I've clarified with Kate that what she meant was the ability to *target* to a series (== the ability to approve nominations), not the ability to make a nomination.

The options for how to acquire the ability to approve nominations are:

* be a driver/maintainer of any of the bug targets
* have upload access to any of the source package bug targets

In this case, neither is really appropriate. Being a driver/maintainer of either Ubuntu or one of the Ubuntu series grants quite a few permissions, and many of the people in question don't and shouldn't have upload access.

I think the thing that isn't represented well here is that we have multiple levels of QA. Access to the bug supervisor role is necessary for all kinds of QA work, such as setting bug task statuses to Triaged. Some of these are relatively junior tasks that we distribute to essentially anyone who asks and who testifies that they've understood the basics. But the ability to approve bug nominations is a senior QA task, because it involves the ability to add things to the queue to be fixed for a release, which is a queue we want to keep well under control so it should only be manipulated by people working with the development teams.

In the past, we lumped this in with the release manager role, and there is some sense to that: that's why having ~ubuntu-release-nominators as a member of ~ubuntu-release was a better compromise than the previous situation. But "Release manager" in the Launchpad UI actually means the series driver, so we've only gained a limited amount here: we've moved senior QA people from the distribution driver to all the series drivers, which has reduced privilege a bit, but not massively.

We've gone back and forward trying to use the existing available slots for this, and I don't think any of them have been quite right. Loath though I am to suggest it because I know it's more work, I think what we really need here is a new slot for people who are allowed to accept bug nominations to a distroseries, sort of a "bug drivers" role, and acknowledge that full drivership for something the size of a distribution involves a good deal more than that with broader skills.

However, as outlined in comment 27, we have a regression of sorts as a result of this work, because part of the problem was just moved elsewhere: the ubuntu-release team is now an amalgam of multiple largely-unrelated privileges, and we need to sort that out.  I've clarified with Kate that what she meant was the ability to *target* to a series (== the ability to approve nominations), not the ability to make a nomination.

The options for how to acquire the ability to approve nominations are:

* be a driver/maintainer of any of the bug targets
 * have upload access to any of the source package bug targets

In this case, neither is really appropriate.  Being a driver/maintainer of either Ubuntu or one of the Ubuntu series grants quite a few permissions, and many of the people in question don't and shouldn't have upload access.

I think the thing that isn't represented well here is that we have multiple levels of QA.  Access to the bug supervisor role is necessary for all kinds of QA work, such as setting bug task statuses to Triaged.  Some of these are relatively junior tasks that we distribute to essentially anyone who asks and who testifies that they've understood the basics.  But the ability to approve bug nominations is a senior QA task, because it involves the ability to add things to the queue to be fixed for a release, which is a queue we want to keep well under control so it should only be manipulated by people working with the development teams.

In the past, we lumped this in with the release manager role, and there is some sense to that: that's why having ~ubuntu-release-nominators as a member of ~ubuntu-release was a better compromise than the previous situation.  But "Release manager" in the Launchpad UI actually means the series driver, so we've only gained a limited amount here: we've moved senior QA people from the distribution driver to all the series drivers, which has reduced privilege a bit, but not massively.

We've gone back and forward trying to use the existing available slots for this, and I don't think any of them have been quite right.  Loath though I am to suggest it because I know it's more work, I think what we really need here is a new slot for people who are allowed to accept bug nominations to a distroseries, sort of a "bug drivers" role, and acknowledge that full drivership for something the size of a distribution involves a good deal more than that with broader skills.