Josh Triplett wrote:
As for some debian-legal members not being developers :), that is an issue to consider as well. On the one hand, many contributors to debian-legal are not DDs. On the other hand, we don't really want single-shot opinion mails from people uninterested in rational discussion. I would tend to say that if it became necessary to adopt a formal process, then it would have to be limited to DDs, while if the process remained semi-informal like it is now, then all contributors would probably be included in the informal "do we have consensus" check.
Or in the formal process, provide a way for non-DD frequent contributors to either have a contribution, or become "registered Debian Users", or something.
Personally, I'm quite interested in using Free software in Debian, but I don't have the time to maintain a Debian package. Also, with over 8000 packages in stable/main now (and over 14000 in unstable), I don't think Debian needs more packages just so that I can be a maintainer of "something".
The freeness of a package effects much more than just the programmers. It effect the users too. Please don't exclude the users that are interested.
--Joe