[Greenhouse] Contributor stages in the DAT

[Andrew Starr-Bochicchio]

On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 5:31 PM, David Lu <daveeloo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Andrew,
> My main question for you is how did you decide the criteria for the
> different stages and terms for contributors? I'm trying to get more insight
> into this so we can define more Debian specific stages. I'm abstracting the
> stages right now so they are easier to tweak, and in version 2 I'm probably
> going to move it to the Django admin. These are the terms and stages as I
> understand them. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.

> Terms:
> is_active- last_upload < 4 months

This was more or less arbitrary. I just wanted a quick way to see if
someone has been active recently without having to do a more expensive
query of the Uploads model.

> ppu_candidates-list of packages uploaded by a person more than 5 times

In Ubuntu, we have a set of permissions called Per-Package Uploader.
It's more or less equivalent to the permissions that are granted to a
Debian Maintainer for specific packages. Though in Debian, there is a
much greater focus on a maintainer "owning" their package. In Ubuntu,
a lot of the work done by developers may involve touching many
different packages that they don't have a particularly strong interest
in, more akin to the Debian QA team. There isn't the concept of
Non-Maintainer Uploads in Ubuntu as the whole archive is "team
maintained." So a package that someone has repeatedly uploaded might
be a good candidate  for PPU rights. It's useful for us to know this
as we may suggest that someone who isn't ready to become a "full"
Ubuntu Developer apply for those more limited rights. This seems like
it might be much less interesting in Debian.

> The stages as I understand:
> first_timers- !ubuntu_dev && (first_upload < 3 months)
> experienced- !ubuntu_dev && (total_uploads > 40) && is_active
> inactive/lost- (total_uploads > 5) && (2 months < last_upload < 1 year)
> potential_devs- (total_uploads > 40) && is_active && !ubuntu_dev &&
> (first_upload < 6 months)
> recent- last_upload < 2 months

This is more or less right (without actually looking at the code).
Though for potential_devs it is active for at least 6 months. To
become an Ubuntu Developer, one requirement is a "sustained and
significant contribution." The sustained part is generally understood
to mean at least 6 months (one full Ubuntu development cycle) of
contributions. Again, this is all arbitrary to some extent. Membership
rights in Ubuntu are granted by a board that one applies to; the
decision is totally at their discretion. There are no real hard
metrics.

Some of that is also just me not getting around to doing some needed
refactoring. experienced and potential_devs should probably be the
same. The "dashboard" and the views should probably be using the same
queries....

> I remember vaguely from somewhere that experienced also includes 7 uploads
> of one package, but I can't find that code or information anywhere. Maybe I
> remembered wrong?

This doesn't ring a bell with me.

Let me know if there's anything else that would be helpful for me to explain....

-- Andrew Starr-Bochicchio

   Ubuntu Developer <https://launchpad.net/~andrewsomething>
   Debian Developer <http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=asb>
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