On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 01:14:18PM +0100, Toni Mueller wrote:
> > the number of DDs has not been going up for quite a while now.
> If it hasn't declined very much, that'd be a good thing already.
FWIW, the total number of DDs is not a particularly good indicator of
the work force we have in Debian. Until recently, with the introduction
of (periodic) WAT runs, the number of DDs was just meant to go up and
up, given that people basically needed to voluntarily resign, even if
they have been inactive for very long time. In this election the number
of DDs which have the right to vote will be significantly lower than in
the past, just because the last WAT runs have been more "incisive". I
won't derive any more conclusion from that.
The number of _active_ DDs (in terms at least of uploads, vote, BTS
activity, ...) would be much more indicative of the Debian work
force. There is an interesting study conducted by Gaudenz Steinlin and
presented at last DebConf [1,2]. It has shows how the number of Debian
"contributors" (a large category which also includes people like bug
reporters) has significantly faded in favor of Ubuntu, but that at the
same time the amount of "active developers" in Debian has continued its
steady growth, sustained by people that get first in touch with Ubuntu
and then start contributing directly to Debian.
Cheers.
[1] https://penta.debconf.org/dc9_schedule/events/456.en.html
[2] http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2009/11/on_mail_addresses_and_upload_rights/
(blog post of mine where I discussed [1] a bit)
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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