DeveloperResponsibilities

Revision 16 as of 2008-12-06 00:33:05

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General advice

For those new to Ubuntu development, it can be difficult to find out who is responsible for particular components. Often, it is sufficient to just file a bug and trust Launchpad to deliver the information to the right people for you. However, it can be useful to talk to people informally first.

Many Ubuntu packages do not have maintainers in Ubuntu as such. Since we inherit many packages from Debian unchanged, the responsible person is often the corresponding Debian maintainer. When there is a responsible person in Ubuntu, sometimes the Maintainer field will tell you. For example:

$ apt-cache show upstart | grep ^Maintainer:
Maintainer: Scott James Remnant <[email protected]>

However, sometimes this will just be a generic mailing list. For example:

$ apt-cache show hal | grep ^Maintainer:
Maintainer: Ubuntu Core Developers <[email protected]>

You can look for consistent contributors in the changelog (/usr/share/doc/PACKAGE/changelog.Debian.gz, or /usr/share/doc/PACKAGE/changelog.gz for native packages). Remember that the last uploader may just have been making a "drive-by" fix and not have a significant ongoing interest in or knowledge of the package.

The list of Launchpad bug contacts for the package (which can be found at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/PACKAGE) may be helpful. However, it may also contain non-developers who registered an interest in bugs filed on the package but do not contribute to it.

Specific responsibilities

Where general techniques do not help, the following list may do. This is not a canonical list of maintainers by any stretch of the imagination, but it may be a useful guideline. Please help to keep this list up to date! Please do not be offended if your name has been omitted, but instead add it where appropriate.

Component

Developer(s) (ircnick)

Accessibility

Henrik Nilsen Omma (heno), Luke Yelavich (TheMuso)

ACPI, power management

Matthew Garrett (mjg59)

apport

Martin Pitt (pitti)

APT, Synaptic, update-manager, etc.

Michael Vogt (mvo)

Artwork

Ken Wimer (kwwii)

Build daemons

Adam Conrad (infinity) , LaMont Jones (lamont)

Cluster tools

Compiz

Michael Vogt (mvo), Travis Watkins (Amaranth)

Documentation (includes ubuntu-docs, gnome-user-docs)

DocumentationTeam/Contact or contact MatthewEast (mdke)

Edubuntu

Oliver Grawert (ogra)

Encrypted file systems

Martin Pitt (pitti), Reinhard Tartler (siretart), Dustin Kirkland (kirkland)

Germinate, seeds

Colin Watson (cjwatson)

GNOME desktop

Sebastien Bacher (seb128), Loic Minier (lool), Ted Gould, many others

HAL/PolicyKit/Mounting

Martin Pitt (pitti)

Installer (debian-installer, ubiquity, oem-config)

Colin Watson (cjwatson), Evan Dandrea (evand)

Internationalisation (fonts, input methods, etc.)

Arne Götje (ArneGoetje)

Java

Matthias Klose (doko)

Jockey (formerly known as Restricted Manager)

Martin Pitt (pitti)

KDE desktop

Jonathan Riddell (Riddell), Sarah Hobbs (Hobbsee)

Language packs

Martin Pitt (pitti), Arne Götje (ArneGoetje)

Linux kernel

Ben Collins (BenC), Tim Gardner (rtg), Matthew Garrett (mjg59)

Mobile

Tollef Fog Heen (Mithrandir)

Mozilla (Firefox, Thunderbird)

Alexander Sack (asac), Fabien Tassin (Ubulette)

MythTV

Mario Limonciello (mario_limonciell)

NetworkManager

Alexander Sack (asac), Reinhard Tartler (siretart)

OpenOffice.org

Chris Cheney (calc)

Printing

Till Kamppeter, Martin Pitt (pitti)

Python

Matthias Klose (doko)

Release management

Steve Langasek (slangasek)

Security

Kees Cook (kees), Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)

Server

Rick Clark (dendrobates)

Sound

Daniel T. Chen (crimsun) , Martin Pitt (pitti), Luke Yelavich (TheMuso)

Toolchain (GCC, glibc, etc.)

Matthias Klose (doko)

Translation

<[email protected]> (ubuntu and canonical addresses whitelisted)

Ubuntu Studio

Cory Kontros (_MMA_)

udev

Scott James Remnant (Keybuk)

Upstart

Scott James Remnant (Keybuk)

USplash

Matthew Garrett (mjg59), Kees Cook (kees)

X.org

Bryce Harrington (bryce), Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)

Xubuntu

Cody Somerville, Lionel de Folgoc (Xfce4 packages)


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