Re: Comments on proposing NEW queue improvement (Re: Current NEW review process saps developer motivation

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Sean Whitton writes ("Re: Comments on proposing NEW queue improvement (Re: Current NEW review process saps developer motivation"):
> On Sat 27 Aug 2022 at 04:22PM +02, Vincent Bernat wrote:
> > It does not seem to work. Either people don't want to do that, either the FTP
> > team is too picky on the candidates.
> 
> Some combination of both, but I don't think I'm suffering from bias if I
> say that it's at least 80% the former.  Very few people who say they'd
> like to be trained confirm they'd still like to once they've had a look
> at the docs for trainees, and after that, hardly any do enough trainee
> reviews for the other team members to feel confident they can let them
> at it on their own.

I am in this picture.  Some years ago now I volunteered.  I was
introduced to the internal ftpmaster documentation and processes.  At
the time, these documents were not even published - including,
astonishingly, some elements which read like a manifesto.  (I don't
know if these documents are published nowadays.)

What I saw was very far away from what I had expected or hoped and
expected to see - especially in terms of process and culture.  In
particular it was far away from Debian's usual norms of transparency,
but there were many other problems.

I deecided I couldn't work with it.  I could, of course, have tried to
be the change I wanted to see in the world.  But, empirically, I'm not
the best person to be trying to lead organisational change in Debian.

As an institution, ftpmaster has been very successful in establishing
and maintaining its own norms and culture.  (It does help of course
that it is a tremendously powerful team, whose cooperation is needed
by almost every developer.)

This has upsides: I'm personally strongly aligned with ftpmaster's
primary goals, and very supportive of most of their controversial
decisions (especially, the ones about what counts as source code).

But: the difficulties we have with ftpmaster are very deep-rooted, and
not simply a lack of volunteers.

Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.  

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