vanity packages (was: mentors.debian.net reloading)
On Sun, Oct 28, 2007 at 09:19:12PM +0000, Neil Williams wrote:
[...]
> What kind of popcon score? i.e. does anyone else think it is a useful
> addition?
I would consider its popularity low (187 popcon installs with 46
votes). Admittedly, Russ sponsored it because he said thought he was
likely to find it useful. If it's consensus among the Debian
community, or even merely the opinion of my sponsor, that the
package I currently maintain is of little enough worth as not to
outweigh its drain on (security team, mirror operator, release
management) resources, I would certainly not protest its removal.
Still, I will potentially be looking to maintain more of my projects
within Debian, as they reach functional maturity, and may then
revisit entering NM; but for now it seems unnecessary given my
limited availability to participate in a more project-centric
capacity, attend conferences and so on (I know none of that is
*necessary* to be a DD, but I take any comittment, even those of a
voluntary nature, very seriously).
At any rate, the goal was not to talk about myself per se (as I
entertain no illusions that either I or my work is of any great
value to Debian, nor will I claim to be more than even a marginal
example in favor of my point), but merely to stand up and be
counted. I don't expect to sway your opinion that only packages
maintained by people intent on becoming official DDs are of any
quality or worth; but just as you seemed inclined to provide it, I
felt compelled to present a counter-argument against such broad
generalization.
In recent years, I have seen several discussions on devel in which
it was suggested that the number of DDs is unnecessarily high, and
that it's entirely possible to provide a wide variety of valuable
resources to the project without requiring official DD status. These
arguments seemed (to me) quite cogent, just as have the arguments
suggesting the number of packages in main is unnecessarily high. If
you (or others) feel that I am "part of the problem," I suppose I'll
just have to live with that.
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