Anyone is welcome to apply for a developer role in the Ubuntu community. There is no requirement to work at Canonical. In fact, many of the top-level developers who work on the most significant parts of Ubuntu are volunteers. Having this level of openness has been a huge boon for transparency in the Ubuntu project, but it has also required a carefully thought-out process for assessing developers, in order to maintain packages’ standards of quality. These standards of quality are equally applied to all prospective developers, irrespective of whether they work at Canonical. I’ll talk briefly about these developer roles as they exist at the time of writing, but it should be noted that we are currently going through something of a change and adjusting the processes behind these roles. As such, I will discuss the current published processes to give you a good idea of an approach that has worked well since the beginning of the project. Just don’t be surprised if you look into the Ubuntu community at a later date and the landscape is a little different. Ubuntu is split into a number of different repositories. These are the servers that contain the collections of packages that form the Ubuntu system. There are a number of repositories, but two primary ones:
Main This is the primary, officially supported repository. All of the applications here are considered critical to Ubuntu. They receive security updates, and Canonical also supports them in its commercial support services. This repository contains everything that appears on the Ubuntu installation disk. Universe This repository is the entire archive from Debian (which Ubuntu is based on) but with packages built against Ubuntu. In other words, this repository contains the same software as Debian, but tweaked and tested to make sure it will run on Ubuntu. These applications are unsupported: end users are responsible for checking on security updates themselves, and Canonical does not provide support for universe packages in its commercial support services. Each of these repositories is matched to a specific developer role:
Main→ubuntu-core-dev Developers who have direct upload access to main are called Ubuntu Core Developers. These developers demonstrate extensive packaging ability across a wide range of areas in the Ubuntu system. To apply for this role, the developer must have produced a significant number of packages that have been reviewed by existing developers and demonstrated a consistent level of excellent work. The Ubuntu Technical Board is the governing body that makes decisions about who gets approved as an Ubuntu Core Developer. Universe→ubuntu-motu Developers who want to build packages for universe are called MOTU developers. MOTU is short for...wait for it...Masters of the Universe. Yes, the Ubuntu project loves He-Man.
GOVERNANCE
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