Re: Re-thinking Debian membership
Hi,
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. It's not all bad, but on the whole it
> makes some of the worst parts of Debian become worse. It concentrates
> power into fewer hands, removes some of the benefits of the Debian
> Maintainer process, adds more hoops to jump through, and makes the whole
> question of what it means to be a member of Debian massively
> complicated.
<snip>
I wholeheartedly second this proposal (one question below). I believe
that there is no alternative to making the membership structure/process
_much_ simpler. Being a Debian Contributer (whatever that really is)
for some years, I recently had more and more trouble to explain the
different status groups to outsiders. With the addition of even more
groups I fear that I would completely loose it.
> 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, two existing members
> together can veto. The veto can be done anonymously via the Debian
> Account Manager to avoid peer pressure to not veto. The DAM only
> counts the endorsements and vetos, and does not make judgement calls.
> All endorsements and vetos must happen within 30 days.
>
> * Membership in the project gives both voting and upload rights.
>
> * Membership ends 24 months after they're given, or after the latest
> participation in a vote arranged by the project's Secretary. Members
> may retire themselves earlier, of course.
What does this mean? It automatically ends after a vote or two years? Or
is it rather (semi)automatically extended by continued contributions of a yet
to be defined type (e.g. package uploads, bug reports/fixes)?
> * Members may be expelled via the normal General Resolution process, with
> a simple majority. Ftpmasters may temporarily limit upload rights in an
> emergency.
>
> * Membership is controlled via GnuPG keyrings, primarily maintained by the
> Debian Account Manager. The keyrings shall be maintained in a way that
> allows any member to change them, and that is fully transparent to the
> members in general, and that further makes it easy to undo mistakes.
>
> * Upload sponsorships and the limited upload rights via the Debian
> Maintainer status are unaffected by this proposal.
Michael
--
GPG key: 1024D/3144BE0F Michael Hanke
http://apsy.gse.uni-magdeburg.de/hanke
ICQ: 48230050
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