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Bug 541665 - Mango needs to be able to deal with l10n teams without existing SVN accounts
Mango needs to be able to deal with l10n teams without existing SVN accounts
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Product: sysadmin
Classification: Infrastructure
Component: Mango (obsolete)
unspecified
Other All
: Normal major
: ---
Assigned To: GNOME Sysadmins
GNOME Sysadmins
Depends on:
Blocks: 508482 508487 541495
 
 
Reported: 2008-07-05 14:37 UTC by Christian Rose
Modified: 2008-07-08 15:55 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Christian Rose 2008-07-05 14:37:05 UTC
As witnessed in bug 508487, bug 508482, and bug 541495, currently Mango does not support nor include translation teams in https://mango.gnome.org/new_account.php where the team coordinator does not already have a gnome.org (SVN) account. 
According to bug 508482 comment #1, this is because the team coordinator has to be able to vouch for the applicant using Mango, and this is only possible for the coordinator if he or she already has an account.

While this is understandable, it is a catch-22 for new translation teams, where noone in the team has an account. All new account requests should go through Mango, but since the coordinator does not have an account, no account requests for that team can be approved...

I propose the following solution:

* Include all teams from Damned Lies at l10n.gnome.org/teams and make them selectable at https://mango.gnome.org/new_account.php
* If the coordinator of the chosen team does not have a (valid) gnome.org account, automatically defer the account request to the GTP spokespersons (http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/SpokesPersons) for approval.

I don't know if this is easily implementable, but it would be a way for the catch-22 situation to be avoided.
Comment 1 Olav Vitters 2008-07-05 19:51:33 UTC
I don't agree with this. A module *requires* an maintainer/coordinator. That person will receive the account request.

The proposal is not possible as:
* No userid exists, so the language cannot be added
* The userid is required
* If the l10n coordinator doesn't have an account, why should that person be able to approve other members to receive one (even if 'magically' possible)

In future, I plan to make Mango the authorative source for l10n coordinator / maintainer information. I am not going to put fake information in there (spokepersons are not the coordinators).

A solution I plan (however, lack of time, etc), is that after bug 541505 is fixed, l10n spokepersons could edit l10n module information. Then they could add a l10n-other and the initial coordinator could just request there.
Then l10n coordinators should *all* request an LDAP account (with/without SVN access), then they could be listed.
Comment 2 Christian Rose 2008-07-05 20:22:23 UTC
What you're saying makes perfect sense when dealing with ordinary modules, where a maintainer is in absolute control, and has to have an account to begin with.
 
However, this is not the way the GTP works, so what you're saying sounds kind of weird in this context, as this is what we're talking about. We're not talking source code modules here, we're talking translation teams.

If you prefer, a more realistic analogy of this would be to consider GTP/l10n a module of it's own, with the translation teams as subcomponents (in fact, this is how it's organized in Bugzilla). All teams (or subcomponents) have coordinators, some with account, some without, depending on other factors.

The "maintainers", or coordinators, of the GTP/l10n module are the GTP spokespersons (http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/SpokesPersons), with some of the administrativia deferred to the GTP Coordination Team (http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/CoordinationTeam). That's how it is organized, regardless of how Mango currently thinks it is.

What you are saying is in effect that the GTP should be reorganized to fit how Mango is currently implemented. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Comment 3 Olav Vitters 2008-07-05 20:24:50 UTC
I don't understand this.

Who approved a l10n account? Isn't that the coordinator of a language?
Comment 4 Christian Rose 2008-07-05 20:55:25 UTC
It is, and should be, a chain of trust. As you yourself pointed out, it makes no sense for a person who does not have an account of his own, to vouch for a person who wants an account. 

At the same time, as http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/RequestingAnAccount points out, a person does not automatically get an account just because he or she is assigned coordinatorship for a language. The team coordinatorship is just a result of the person expressing an interest, and the GTP formally saying "in matters related to this language, please contact this person". Since anyone can become a coordinator at any time (past contribution not required), that privilege should not be confused with accounts (past contribution required).

As a result, a translation team may very well entirely consist of people without accounts, including the team coordinator. In that case, they still do the translation work themselves, but rely on other people, with accounts, to commit for them. It is perfectly allowed, and even recommended, to do so. The contribution must have the coordinator's approval, but the coordinator doesn't have to have an account in order to approve a translation.


Thus, what I am proposing is the following:

  1) Include all translation teams from Damned Lies (DL is the authorative source of GTP team information) and make them selectable at https://mango.gnome.org/new_account.php 
  2) If the coordinator of the chosen team has an account, let him or her approve of the account
  3) If the coordinator of the chosen team does not have a (valid) gnome.org
account, automatically defer the account request to the GTP coordinators, i.e. the GTP spokespersons (http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/SpokesPersons), for approval.

That way, an account request will always be approved by a person with an account, and we have a chain of trust for accounts. I think it's safe to assume that GTP coordinators (i.e. the spokespersons) will always have accounts.
Comment 5 Olav Vitters 2008-07-05 21:12:28 UTC
The link says:

> Approval from the Team Coordinator
> 
> The coordinator for the affected language team must approve of the account
> request. If it is the coordinator for a language team that requests an account,
> the Translation Project spokespersons must approve of the account request. 

I don't understand why languages should be listed if the coordinator does not have an LDAP account; this makes no sense to me.

The modules/l10n languages should list the coordinators/maintainers. I am willing to add some intelligence to that.

E.g.:
* every coordinator must have an *LDAP* account
* intelligence part: if the coordinator doesn't have SVN, then Mango will defer to GTP coordinators
* otherwise: works as is

Regarding DL being the source of information: There is a manual link between Mango and DL, which is annoying to update. Such manual links can stay, but.. then you'll always have a mismatch between DL (and ehr.. MAINTAINERS files) and Mango.

Note that LDAP/account != SVN.
Comment 6 Christian Rose 2008-07-05 22:52:36 UTC
Oh, so you differentiate between bare LDAP accounts and SVN accounts. My apologies for misunderstanding.

I guess that requiring all team coordinators to have bare LDAP accounts makes perfect sense.
The only possible problem I can think of is pressing the team coordinators for an account name that is acceptable (we sometimes have difficulty even asking them for basic details like their proper name or the proper code of the language they want to translate), but I guess that can be solved.

And your suggested workflow sounds fine. I guess the only difference is we require the team coordinators to have an LDAP account, but not SVN, right from the start. And with your suggested solution the chain of trust is preserved; a coordinator can only approve of SVN accounts if he or she has the same privileges, i.e. SVN privileges. Excellent.

Regarding the authority of DL: DL is what we have, and DL is what we already use for authorative GTP team information. I know manual synchronization sucks big time, but since DL has an XML format with a defined DTD, and you now know that information is authorative, it would be a one way synchronization, in a machine parseable format. That should be possible to automate, no?
Comment 7 Ankit Patel 2008-07-06 08:44:48 UTC
Now I can understand that there are quite a few steps needs to be completed by all l10n coordinators. But, I don't think all other language coordinators are watching this bug. Moreover there is no document (as far as I know) describing these steps, which needs to be completed by l10n coordinators.

So, may I request any of you
* to document these steps somewhere on the l10n GTP docs page
* to inform all existing l10n coordinators to complete the steps they are supposed to
* respond to the existing thread on the mailing list with all information.

Thanks!
Ankit Patel
Comment 8 Christian Rose 2008-07-08 15:55:04 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> Now I can understand that there are quite a few steps needs to be completed by
> all l10n coordinators. But, I don't think all other language coordinators are
> watching this bug. Moreover there is no document (as far as I know) describing
> these steps, which needs to be completed by l10n coordinators.
> 
> So, may I request any of you
> * to document these steps somewhere on the l10n GTP docs page
> * to inform all existing l10n coordinators to complete the steps they are
> supposed to
> * respond to the existing thread on the mailing list with all information.

There isn't any new policy in place yet. In fact, this report is still in "WONTFIX" state. I trust that Olav will update the status of this report when/if things change with respect to Mango. Only then it would make sense to update our docs and send out an announcement to all coordinators.