Re: [New maintainer] Working for Debian and becoming a registered Debian developer
>> Or so I would think... my point was that there is all this social baggage
>> holding the distribution back.
>Is it?
Obviously, I must speak from my own point of view when I do not qualify my
statements.
The intent of my original mail was to get you all to THINK about what
effect the new-developer process has on teh distribution. If the majority
of developers agrees that the current system is great, then it will remain
the same. My point is, I don't think that it has been openly, verbally
considered.
>> I can verify if you require that, at least twice in the past week, someone
>> asking how to be a new maintainer wsa told, on this list, that 'they will
>> be more likely to accept you if you work on a wnpp'.
>Were these statements from the new-maintainer team?
The messages were on this list, to a prospective developer. Whether they
state true debian policy or not is irrelevent; social conditioning comes
not only from authorioty sources, but from peers as well. The pressure to
work on wnpp instead of new packages is real and widepsread. Whether the
consensus of developers considers it a problem is another issue.
>> There is control over who joins: You have to verify your identity with a
>> current member before you can join, and you have to swear that
>> you uphold the idea of free software, etc.
>I was not required to swear anything before I joined.
>From the 'Developer's Reference':
2.2 Registering as a Debian developer
Before you decide to register with the Debian Project, you will
need to read the Debian Social Contract. Registering as a developer
means that you agree with and pledge to uphold the Debian Social
Contract; it is very important that maintainers are in accord
with the essential ideas behind Debian GNU/Linux. Reading the
GNU Manifesto would also be a good idea.
n.b. the words 'requires', 'agree with', 'pledge' and 'very important'
>> There is control over who stays: you have to upload packages, keep them
>> current, fix the bugs. If you don't, I assume there is a way to remove
>> idle developers from the list.
>Assumptions are dangerous. AFAIK, no developer has been removed from
>the project because of idleness.
I trust that the fact that there is no way to remove a competely idle
developer form the distribution, if it is true, will be remedied as soon
as it becomes a problem. What happens when someone dies? The
distribution is still young, so this may never have come up. But it will,
eventually.
Carl
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