Re: Re-thinking Debian membership
On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 11:44:03AM +0300, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> I do not like the way Joerg wants to change the way people become and
> are members of the Debian project. (...)
> I think we should go in the opposite direction: massively simplify
> the whole membership thing.
I am naturally quite inclined to like the kind of scheme you propose,
but I don't think it scales to the size Debian has now.
> Proposal
> --------
> * People should be allowed to join Debian when there is reasonably
> wide-spread consensus that they agree with the project's goals, are
> committed to working on those goals, and are trustworthy. The best way
> to determine this is to have some number of people endorse a candidate.
> However, there should not be too much opposition to a candidate, either.
> Concrete proposal: max(Q, 20) endorsements,
On the one hand, 20 out of 1000 or Q is *very* far from "reasonably
wide-spread consensus" (so that number is low); on the other hand,
that number is high: getting 20 (or more) people to know you enough to
emit a judgement is hard and mostly unrelated to technical skill,
thrustworthiness, commitment, ... It mainly depends on how many
existing Debian members you hang out with socially or collaborate
rather closely with. It feels to me like it makes the joining process
an acutely social process, not something I look unto positively.
That's what I mean with "this doesn't scale to big groups". Above some
size (which Debian has - by far - exceeded), the opposite constraints
on the number of people that have to endorse become contradictory.
> two existing members together can veto.
That seems incredibly low; it allows a tiny minority to completely
block the whole process.
--
Lionel
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