Re: [followup question] Career path for non-maintainer DD's
Anthony Towns wrote:
The perspective I take instead is one of making it easier for people who
have a use for developer status to get it. If translators, artists, and
lawyers don't have any use for accounts, uploading priveleges and
whatever else, then that's fine, IMO -- I don't think all the political
stuff in Debian should be the focus. I mean, there are plenty of
upstream developers who provide far huge contributions to Debian without
being given a vote, so I don't think this should be taken as an insult
in any way.
What use do developers have for the right to vote? Surely if you can
say that someone spending hours translating stuff for Debian doesn't
need to vote you can just as easily say that someone spending hours
maintaining packages doesn't need to vote either.
I imagine that there are many people out there who are contributing to
Debian because they have a strong interest in its ideals. I think that
allowing these people to contribute to the decisions made about those
ideals, through Debian's voting process would be a very positive thing
for Debian and for those contributors.
Personally, I feel very uneasy about the idea that I am on track to get
to vote in Debian elections (not this one, I expect) only because my
interest in Debian happens to be on the packaging side.
Otherwise, I think it's fine for people who don't program or don't do
packaging work, but who contribute to Debian in other ways to go through
the new-maintainer process and become a developer. I'm all for "tasks
and skills" checks appropriately reflecting all the tasks Debian
involves, and all the skills Debian can make use of.
Does that mean that you would be happy for someone who doesn't need to
be able to upload to Debian (for example a lawyer working on licensing
issues) to become a Developer?
I likewise think it's a perfectly good idea for translation teams (and
similar) to acknowledge the contributors to that effort, even without
the formalities of running the new-maintainer gauntlet.
Yes.
Helen.
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