Ok, I'll admit I over stepped my definite knowledge and said some things I
should not...
And on to the message...
On Fri, Oct 30, 1998 at 02:04:37PM +0100, Martin Schulze wrote:
> [I'm sort of upset so this mail might be offending.]
>
> Bo Branton wrote:
> > I think think is unacebtable! If someone is interested in becoming a
> > package maintainer and put a lot of work in building a package with a
> > program he think is usable to the debian comunity he should be treated
> > with respect and that includes getting an answer on the
> > new-maintainer request within a week.
>
> I also think this is inacceptable.
>
> a) Somebody (B) is trying to force some other folk (J2) to spend
> their time only on B. It is their free time and they (J2) have to
> decide what has higher priority. The day has only 24hours
> (currently) and some of us do have a real life where they study,
> work, have a family or g/f or similar.
As I have suggested it may work better to try and spread the work out
a bit, nobody can do everything...
<snip>
> d) If you want to speed up things, why don't you work on things that
> are really urgently needed?
>
(Grouping all 3 together)
> . We have no cd-creation tool.
> . We have no definitive way of splitting the main archive.
> . We have nobody working on this issue.
Not everyone has the disk space (over a gig) to try messing with this
stuff, and its kinda hard to work on such things if you can't have even
a partial copy to work with..
> . We have unmet packages dependencies.
Last time I tried tracking this stuff down and filing bug reports I did
not get a very friendly response, granted it got semi-fixed in the end,
however....
> . We have packages in main that depend or recommend packages
> outside of main.
Again, attempting to file bug reports against a number of packages at a
time for the same reason has not been taken well, perhaps I somehow went
about it the wrong way, however..
> . Do we have a current installation manual?
Something which is hard to do right, but yes, it is something which we
need...
> . There is still a lot of work to do for the boot-floppies. I
> begin to realize that *only* Enrique is working on this.
Yeks, I'll look into seeing how I can help with that, hmm, now if I only
had a system I could install on over and over and over...
(I'm actually working on one, however...)
>
> Work on this and present us with solutions and then come back and
> nag the people who are trying to resolve these issues instead of
> processing a new maintainer who would - in the worst case - only
> introduce new bugs.
And in most cases would actually be able to help with the above mentioned
problems..
>
> e) What makes you think that your tiny package is more important than
> the other 2500 packages in main?
Who is to judge which package is the most important?
Last I looked that what one of the beauty's of free software..
>
>
> Zephaniah wrote:
> > Interesting, as NO ONE seems to know who actually does it...
>
> So you want to join a group of nobody's? Give me a reason for that.
I've been trying to find a list of who actually handles the new
maintainer requests, I've asked people on the irc channel, I've looked
on the web pages, and I still can't find it, perhaps I'm missing
something really obvious, but no one who I have talked to actually knows
who all actually works on the new maintainer requests..
>
> > Also might it be reasonable for said people to reduce the number of
> > packages they maintain so what time they do have could be spent
> > processing new maintainers instead of digging through bug reports and
> > such? (Work which could be filled in by say, the new maintainers?)
>
> Cool. Look at d) and take over them.
Its a little hard to take over packages before your a registered
developer..
(Note that I have /not/ submitted my request yet, I'm waiting to get a
few more signatures on my key from people who verified I'm me at the
ALS, have stu's already tho)
>
> Please pick packages with long-standing open bugs and *FIX THEM*
> before just spreading junk.
I've been working on some..
(Ask wichert about the shell subbing in modutils *ducks*)
>
> If you haven't noticed yet, we're about to freeze the distribution and
> this has a much higher priority than approving new maintainer
> that... look at the end of d) in the list above.
*cough* X when Overfiend could be working on other things *cough*
>
> Zephaniah wrote:
> > How about opening the positions for handling new maintainers?
>
> Huh? If people want to work on a particular job they are always
> invited to ask for help. Wrt. new-maintainer this has happened a year
> ago when we took over it because *nothing* happened. Like I said
> above, preparing the new release has a much higher priority. Wait and
> become happily a part of the project or continue to spread FUD and
> retract your submission.
Its sounding like you could use some help, I've not seen any requests
for help, so I suggested a clear way for people to offer help with this,
keeping in mind that it was mentioned that we don't want just anyone
doing the job....
>
> > First someone steps up and says they want to, then a vote is called (or
> > it is handled the same way policy changes now are), if the vote passes
> > then they get the position, simple..
>
> Aha, so you want your request be processed in half a year? Fine with
> me.
*blinks*
Erm, I must not have been entirely clear, the vote and sure is for new
people wanting to help out with new maintainer requests...
>
> > I'd offer to submit a proposal for a policy change however I'm not a
> > developer yet.. *cough*
>
> Isn't everybody able to make *proposals*? Wether the policy team
> accepts them as regular topic is up to them.
Was not positive about this..
>
> I'm currently preparing Debian for a large bookware distribution in
> Germany. This will spread the words of free software to *many* new
> people who have never gotton in touch with free software, partially
> even with non-ms software, before. Don't you think this is important?
> I feel that this is soo much important that I for myself spend *all*
> of my spare time to this task and to the freeze thing and reduce
> *everything* (including sleep). If you don't like it, your problem.
I don't have a problem with this, as long as your not the ONLY person
who can manage the other matters....
(There is, after all, a reason for things like NMU's, among other things
so things don't go completely unmaintained well the maintainer is overly
busy with other things)
Sorry for any FUD I may have spread..
Zephaniah E, Hull..
>
> Joey
>
> --
> There are lies, statistics and benchmarks.
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
>
--
--
PGP fingerprint (http://whitestar.soark.net/~warp/public_key.pgp.asc)
1024/EA5198D1 1998/03/16 Zephaniah E, Hull <warp@whitestar.soark.net>
Key fingerprint = 68 55 F2 C1 4B 95 1A 73 85 FC DB B3 35 B9 6E 15
GPG fingerprint (http://whitestar.soark.net/~warp/public_key.gpg.asc)
1024D/E65A7801 1998-10-29 Zephaniah E, Hull <warp@whitestar.soark.net>
Key fingerprint = 92ED 94E4 B1E6 3624 226D 5727 4453 008B E65A 7801
Attachment:
pgpSO2gEAaBVJ.pgp
Description: PGP signature