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[Fwd: [RFC] Making NM 'by recommendation']

I think a few people on debian-devel might have comments on this.

There is a faction of debian developers who are elitists and want to
close the system to new developers (numerous attempts have bee nmade by
diffferent methods)

These sorts of arguments are devisive and counterproductive to debians
goals, but i think this topic needs to satisfactorly be discussed and
_concluded_. 
I think elitism is the only threat to debians viability. If the elitists
gain power their will no doubt be a manpower shortage as there will be a
lack of "worthy" new maintainers to do the work that the elitists want
to hand to other people.

The only way i can think that debian can protect itself from this
internal threat is through policy.

Sorry if this is going to cause a big thread, but it needs to be
concluded somehow, which i guess has to be through a dialog.


Glenn

The following comments are not from me.
--- Begin Message --- 
I have recently seen an increase in applicants who are unprepared or
don't even respond to my initial or follow-up messages.  I have the
strong suspicion that this is related to the fact that it's really
easy to sign up for NM -- simply enter your name and e-mail address,
and there you go!  You no longer have to think how serious you are
about it and what you want to do for Debian.

My proposal is this: You can no longer apply to become a Debian
developer yourself, but instead you need an existing Debian developer
to recommend you.  Nothing in the NM system changes except of the
application itself.  The developer who recommends another person as a
NM is not responsible for him or has to go through the NM process with
him (the latter will still be done by an AM) -- so this recommendation
is no report to the DAM, but simply the entry ticket to the NM
process.

How do you find someone to recommend you?  Easy, if you meet a
developer for key signing you can ask him to recommend you, or if you
are active on the Debian mailing lists or help out with boot-floppies
or a Debian port, I'm sure someone is willing to recommond you.  Or,
of course, a sponsor can do it.

This change would guarantee or at least increase the chance that
applicants

  - have a signed GPG key

  - have a sponsor

  - have had contact with Debian before

  - have seriously thought about joining Debian

What do you think of this?  I would like to implement this sooner than
later, so please share your comments.

Finally, here are some statistics; these are the number of people who
apply for NM each month.  Of course I don't know how much increase is
due to the dropping waiting time for NM and the easy-to-use web
interface, but...

     28 2000-03
     22 2000-04
     43 2000-05
     36 2000-06
     41 2000-07
     47 2000-08
     49 2000-09
     63 2000-10
     86 2000-11
     64 2000-12
     46 2001-01 (this month is not over yet)

-- 
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com


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