NM process (was: Question to all candidates about the NM process)

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr> wrote:

> My own opinion is that if an applicant is doing a sizable job in Debian
> already, they should be exempted of much of T&S. They have shown the 
> skill to do the work they are more likely to do anyway, and they will
> have time to learn new skills as they need them. That might speed up the
> process a bit.

(I don't know how you define sizable, but anyway:)  I think the NM
process is also something that the applicant can profit from a lot.

When I became a DD, I had already been involved in teTeX packaging for
quite a while, and there were some uploads that contained mainly changes
made by me.  I tried to make the packages both more policy-compliant and
more user-friendly with respect to conf(iguration) file handling, I
addressed licensing issues, etc.  When you had asked me before the NM
process, I'd probably have thought that I already knew most of the
things important for handling teTeX.

However, I did learn a lot both in the T&S and P&P (philosophy and
procedures, or what's the name) part of the process, most importantly
about library handling (which became important with the libkpathsea3->4
transition), evaluating licenses (which is important now, see the
several bugs on the tetex-base source package) and internal structure of
a binary package (knowledge which I seem to use every week).

Not that I couldn't have learned that also later, when I really needed
it.  But the NM process was in fact a good opportunity to learn it
right, get immediate feedback on my achievements (and not via the
BTS...), and to take it serious.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)