On Fri Oct 24 11:44, 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. > > I think we should go in the opposite direction: massively simplify > the whole membership thing. While I think this suggestion is a good one, I think you go far too far. I would certainly vote against the suggestion you gave. I would much rather see simplification of the number of 'statuses' by decoupling permissions from 'status'. I am very firmly of the opinion that some basic competency checks are required before full upload rights are granted to the whole archive. I'd like, therefore, to make a proposal which is a compromise between the options and based at least in part on my previous proposal[0]. Proposal -------- There is just one status, Debian Developer. Being a DD gets you voting rights and an @debian.org address. It signifies that we (the other DDs) think that you are a peer in the community and should be able to influence its governance, stand for DPL etc. In order to become a DD you must have passed an ID/key check and have been advocated by some number of other DDs (I'm not really bothered what this number is, what the actual procedure is for checking these is or who is in charge of it). You must also agree to uphold the SC (GPG signed etc). I'd also like something like the P&P checks in NM, but probably just a less formal outline in the mail they send when applying is fine. DDs may have some, all or none of the following rights. Regardless of whether you have these you are still a DD, you are just a DD who can NMU without supervision. - Access to Debian machines - Upload certain packages - Upload other people's packages - Add new packages I think each of these should have a specific check associated with them to ensure a basic level on competency. You might argue whether or not the current NM checks are too stringent (I didn't think they were, for me getting through the checks was the _easy_ part), but I think there definitely should be something. I've seen enough things in the short time I've been involved with Debian to make me certain that not everyone who applies should be given full upload rights straight away. What I would like to see, however, is a move away from "you must do this written test" and towards "look, I've done all these NMUs via sponsors, I've got the hang of it now." So, I have some suggested prerequisites for some of these rights: Access to Debian machines - you just have to agree to the DMUP. We can probably just lump this in with the SC above and grant it to all DDs, but I include it here for completeness. Upload certain packages - a small demonstration that you understand how that package works and are vaguely competent in that language. Perhaps just convincing one of the maintainers / a sponsor to add you as uploader is sufficient, but I'd like you to either be able to point to other similar packages you look after, or a basic check on packaging. Knowing how SONAMEs work and about ABI should definitely be a prerequisite before taking on a C library package, for example. There are many people who get this wrong, upstreams included. Upload for other people's packages - I definitely think that something akin to the current full T&S is needed here, but again, a history of producing good NMUs and maintaining several different types of package would be sufficient for this. Several people have in the past said "it's a good thing that it takes you a long time to become a DD". The feeling behind this is that it takes a long time to really become proficient in what we do, it's quite complex. Giving people some access early and then more later is a good way to ease into this complexity and was one of the motivations behind the current DMs. I definitely think that an apprenticeship-type approach and people proving their competence through actual work is the way to go. One think in the proposal given in the parent post which I do agree with in the new MIA procedure. If you have not uploaded or voted in anything in two years, removal would seem sensible. 0. http://wiki.debian.org/Projects/AltReformedMembershipProcess -- Matthew Johnson
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