Saturday, June 09, 2007

Ubuntu BugSquad and Ubuntu QA Membership

I recently applied for an Ubuntu QA Membership, and today, I got an approval
from Brian Murray. So it's official.

No, this post isn't really about my membership, it's an invitation to everyone
interested in being part of a very active community. There is no data to
subtantiate my claim here but Ubuntu IS the most active and the largest
community. There's a lot of stuff you can do here, and any contribution is
very much welcome.

Quality and Useability is of utmost importance. So how do we contribute? Try
out Ubuntu. Use it for a day. Install it on a spare partition. And tell us
what you think about it. If you discover a few kinks, report it so we can fix
it.

BugSquad is the first step, your first contribution, at least for most.
Reporting bugs is easy. If you find something you think shouldn't be there,
go ahead and report it on Launchpad. Go to http://launchpad.net/ and create
an account. Then go to http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu and search for a
bug.... your bug! Remember, your bug may be a duplicate of a previously
reported bug, so be careful. But if you don't find a known report, then go
ahead and file it. Here's a few HowTo's on Bug Reporting;
BugSquad: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad
Helping with Bugs: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs

Next on the list is Ubuntu QA. The job of a QA is to triage bugs (actually
it's also the job of BugSquad members) and to set its Importance. The QA is
the "Middle Man" between Bug Reporters and Maintainers/Developers. The only
difference between BugSquad and QAs is the ability to change the Importance
of bug. This way, the Developers/Maintainers would know what to prioritize.
This might seem confusing to most, but we just don't want anyone reporting a
grammatical error or a fluke as Critical.This will piss off the devs. So,
again, here's a few HowTo's on Triaging;
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuQA
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Importance

Lastly, once you have a Launchpad account, go ahead and join the Ubuntu
BugSquad at https://launchpad.net/~bugsquad and after triaging a few bugs, go
ahead and join the Ubuntu QA at https://launchpad.net/~bugsquad

Goodluck! And we'll be there to welcome you.