[maemo-developers] adaptation of Extras QA hurdles

[From: Felipe Crochik]

My 2ct:

I assume we all agree that the two most important goals for "testing" are
making sure that the developer has "good intentions" and that the
application will not break anything. I know that in a "perfect" world we
also would like to have the testing assure that the "application" is of a
"good quality" but I think we may need to delegate this to the "entire
community"

I like the concept of "developer in good faith/standing". I think by now we
can "trust" some "developers" in the community for not having bad
intentions. These should receive special treatment. A developer could enter
this "group" after having "published" few applications/versions w/o any
major incidents and "sponsored" by one (or more) "approved developers"

A new version of an existing application should have a lower barrier to
promotion than a new application. 

I think each developer could have a "sponsor/partner" developer (one not
involved with the application) that would be the responsible for the "final"
approval. This sponsor would be responsible to assure the original developer
is not doing anything dangerous to the system and could even help the
original developer with some suggestions. We would have a "mandatory period
of time" for the application to seat on extras-testing but the "sponsor"
would be expected to check the app before this period of time. If the
sponsor failed to do so the application author could try to find another
sponsor.

A new "developer" would have to find sponsor(s) that would look into the
first few applications/versions deeper and could invite other people to
check.

For closed source applications we would need to require more. It could be
the same we have now or the developer could decide to share the code with
his sponsor to speed up the process. 

The "actual" quality would be determined by "user" votes/rating to the
application. 

We could put this into practice by maintaining a list of "trusted" sponsors.
The developer would assign a sponsor to his application using the web site
and this sponsor (as long as it was approved) would make the final decision.
The application would only be promoted after ?two? weeks. Anybody would be
welcome to make comments; vote and test applications on extras and the
sponsor would take them into consideration.

Felipe


-----Original Message-----
From: maemo-developers-bounces at maemo.org
[mailto:maemo-developers-bounces at maemo.org] On Behalf Of Dave Neary
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 9:15 AM
To: Roman Morawek
Cc: maemo-developers at maemo.org
Subject: Re: adaptation of Extras QA hurdles

Hi Roman,

Roman Morawek wrote:
> I uploaded a new release of my application
> (http://maemo.org/packages/view/babyphone/) on 5th of November, so more
> than 2.5 months ago. Right now, I have 6 positive votes (including mine)
> - thus 60% of the demanded hurdle. I guess my application is not one of
> the top apps, but downloaded ca. 100.000 times. So I expect it is also
> used and not only positioned in an extreme niche.
> 
> I think that such a period for a new release is too long.

I agree with you. I have never been completely happy with the Maemo
Extras QA process, and now that Maemo is no longer a primary focus for
many in the community, I think that it would be reasonable to lower any
bounds to promotion which we had in the past to new levels. We should
ensure that we have some protection against malicious & spammy
application uploads, but no more - a developer in good faith should be
able to ship his application quite easily in Extras.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Email: dneary at maemo.org
Jabber: bolsh at jabber.org

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