I didn’t comment earlier because I thought this was going to be discussed at the next CC meeting. I didn’t realize this was meant to be the answer.

I believe that your meditation cycle would be “CLA, Unity, Investement, Time, ROI” in an infinite loop until u come to peace/balance with yourself. Then U just sit down and write a blog entry. You are now bothered how to find the best man in the list of “contributors”. I see that u are finding difficulties in searching for the topper. Just remember, a class has just one topper and all “others” in the second. If you concentrate on the topper u are going to to lose all the “others”. In summary, I believe, Mark, that u may not make as much money from ubuntu GNU/Linux as u did with your first project, Unless you come out with some magical situation where the entire freedom software community/users are with you. Otherwise it would be better to have a go at corporate customers wherein, the entire support responsibility falls on canonical(which might be a bit hard for you considering your present strength). That was free advice and what I thought. I (hope) may not be flamed. Just with unity, nothings changed.

There are so many people who have contributed to Ubuntu indirectly like through non-profits that give away computers with Ubuntu yet provide direct support (FreeGeek) and those people cannot count on that being an accepted contribution.

I guess the question is if the standard of contributing is broadened will it create a burden for reviewing applications?

Yes, I think you’ve summarised it neatly there.

It’s always been the case that we look for “substantial and sustained” contributions in as diverse a range of forms as possible. I think we just need to be open to recognising that people might well express their contribution by doing some lifting upstream or downstream.

Mark

Good point, if the RMB’s are comfortable handling such applications right away that’s probably the best way to do it. As Jonathan says, we can take them one at a time and formulate a set of precedents and policies once patterns emerge.

Mark