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Re: long term goals of debian membership



i hope that neither of you two will mind me adding what i think about this. i 
am currently not a developer and have not applied yet. i do however hope  to 
do so in the future. i personally was drawn to debian because of its 
reputation for being a distribution that made so that you had to know what 
you were doing and being a distribution that is maintained and developed 
completely by volunteers. this being said when i first installed debian i had 
the goal of becoming a devoloper eventually and did not think that it would 
be a quick or easy process. i expected to be scrutinized by the current 
community and expected to have to prove myself beyond a shadow of a doubt 
that i was worthy enough to be considered a devoloper. i do not agree that 
the debian community should allow anyone who wants to, to become a developer. 
i believe that the process should be a trying one so that debian will benefit 
from it to the largest extent possible. if someone really believes in debian 
and really wants to develop for debian then they should be willing to go 
through whatever trails the debian community has established in order to 
continue to allow debian to be the best it can. this will most likely cut 
down on the number of applicants and will almost certianly reduce the 
percentage that becomes developers, however this does not mean that the 
volunteer base has to be deminished. without having developer status there is 
plenty that a volunteer can do, even if he has been rejected by the applicant 
committee. the rigorous testing only ensures that those in charge and in 
control are worthy of that position. this might even mean that debian will 
not be able to do quite as much as it could if it let the standards become 
lax, but at least everyone who is involved would know that what was 
accomplished really deserved the debian label and was the best it can be. 
this way debian will continue to maintain the quality that it is known for. 
to allow just anyone to be a developer is just asking for the integrity of 
the distribution and the community to be destroyed. i am currently in college 
and there has been a lot of talk that the rigorousness of the school is 
lacking in order to allow more students to pass and please more people. i 
truly wish i had been here a few years earlier in order to see the cs program 
here at it strickest. this probably would have hurt my gpa and i may not have 
made it through but if i had i would have been a better student, programmer, 
and possibly person. if i had not made it through then i could try again, 
settle for the fact that i was not good enough to meet the exceptional 
standards, or whine and complain that life isn't fair. the fact remains that 
i would have tried and not gotten the diploma because i was not able to make 
the cut. either way i still would have learned more from failing out then 
from breezing through because the standards have been lowered. this is the 
same for debian, even those who are rejected will be able to learn from that 
experience and will be able to add to the community more efficently because 
of this. 
thank you for listening.
--  
Joseph Holland King
insane@jtang.org



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