How to sponsor

Members of the Ubuntu Sponsors and Ubuntu Security Sponsors teams have the right to sponsor patches or new packages. If you are interested in sponsoring, and have gained upload rights, you can apply to join these teams.

See Path to upload rights for details on how to apply for upload rights.

Sponsor a package

This is similar to uploading your own .changes file, except that after ensuring that the upload follows all quality standards, you will sign the content of the proposing person with your key.

To achieve that, the tools used in package build (like dpkg-buildpackage and debsign) need to be told to use your key. Otherwise these tools would identify the person referred to in the changelog stanza (the person who requested sponsorship), and try to sign with their key instead.

To define the key you want to be used for signing you can:

• Set the environment variable DEB_SIGN_KEYID (see the dpkg-buildpackage(1) manual page for more details)

• Or, where desired, add the argument -k${GPGKEY} – assuming you have your key stored in that variable and in long (>=16) format.