On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:19 PM, Mark A. Hershberger <mah(a)everybody.org>wrote;wrote:
On 02/21/2013 04:13 AM, Siebrand Mazeland (WMF)
wrote:
B. Who is MediaWiki's release manager, and
what can we expect of the
person
who has that role?
I had a conversation with Maria Miteva (Robla at least got copies of
these emails) last week when she asked if I was planning on doing the
release of MW 1.21 and whether
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21 could point to me as the
release manager for MediaWiki.
I told her I was still planning on doing that release, probably shortly
before going to Amsterdam.
Yay! Thanks for that plan.
I think a lot of the confusion here (including my own) comes from the
decisions that have been made outside of the Foundation surrounding the
future of MediaWiki itself.
Yes, I agree.
As these decisions have been made (LTS, MW's Release Schedule, etc.), it
appears that the Foundation has become more focused on its goals --
Wikipedia and its sister sites -- and less concerned with the logistics
of MediaWiki outside of the Foundations use.
As Siebrand pointed out, this seems to extend to the description of the
duties of the newly hired release manager.
Absent an explicit statement from anyone inside Foundation, we've been a
bit confused.
So, I'll WP:Bold and answer Siebrand's question: I am MediaWiki's
release manager.
That makes me very happy, and creates at least some clarity.
Thank you, Mark.
Here is what you can expect of me:
* Manage the release schedule. At least initially, I will be making
the releases.
* Work to get bugfixes backported to 1.19. I don't have Gerrit
rights to commit to the REL1_19 branch, but that will keep me from
fixing "bugs" by fiat.
We also have REL1_20, of course. I have just nominated you to be added
as a MediaWiki core maintainer. Feedback is requested at
http://hexm.de/MarkForCore.
* Champion features that non-WMF users want. This includes things like
searching inside a category and a WYSIWYG editor.
As a non-native speaker I sometimes have to look things up in a dictionary.
In this case I found out that "to champion" means "to fight for or defend
a
cause." Very noble of you. Please do ask for help, because those fights can
be very lonely otherwise :).
* Work with community members to triage non-security
bugs in released
versions of MediaWiki.
Will it help if you get access to the Security area of bugzilla, or at
least are informed
of upcoming security fixes by Wikimedia employees on Mediawiki master?
Up to now, Chris Steipp has done backports and made security releases when
security issues were fixed on master and in Wikimedia deployments, but it is
unclear to me if this support will continue. It's probably a good idea
demand
clarity on this, Mark.
Is there something else the MW release manager should be doing? Let me
know.
We probably now expect the world of you, but there's nothing explicit I can
think of at the moment.
Is there anyone in the WMF who disagrees with this assessment? Now is
the time to speak up.
The above are my own opinions, and not necessarily those of any of my
clients.
Cheers!
--
Siebrand
M: +31 6 50 69 1239
Skype: siebrand