Re: NM queue is still OPEN -- at least, officially (Re: (calmer reply) Re: New-maintainer)
<greatbigsnip>
> on Sun, 14 Jan 2001 14:26:30 +1100,
> Daniel Stone <daniel@kabuki.eyep.net> wrote:
>
> > are fine. What I was saying is that between school, work, and some semblance
> > of a life, I don't have much spare time, but that I do, I try to spend on
> > Debian. I probably could maintain 10-ish (minor) packages, but I don't want
> > to throw myself into the deep end wrt BTS, etc. Just the exact same way as
> > you don't throw a baby into the middle of the Pacific Ocean to teach it to
> > swim. Of course not. You put it in a wading pool, it gets used to water,
> > then eventually learns to swim and, hell, maybe it becomes another Tammy van
> > Wisse (long-distance swimmer) and swims from .au to $FARAWAYPLACE.
>
> Current Debian system is not so good for training gymnasium.
> (or in-door pool, for the baby swimmer).
> The maintainer script is executed as root, so a small careless mistake
> could bring up the disaster on the user's system, or porter's one.
Yeah. What I meant was that things like BTS. I, for one, don't want to be
grappling with BTS with 10000000000 bug reports flooding in. Start small,
and work your way up.
> And, if the most of the package maintainer would not take care of our
> infrastructure system, the Debian could not release the bug-free stable
> version anymore, since there are many left bug reports in our BTS even
> now.
>
> "Do what I can do" is good principle basically, I agree.
> But the Debian requires the quality. And that quality requires
> a lot of resource from the members.
That is exactly my point. I could do a good job on 3 packages, or a
shithouse job on 10 packages. I can resource maybe 3. Who knows, even more?
> I don't think all the new members are inferior to the current one.
> Some of them are quite impressive, far more superior to me for ex.
> But we can't rely the optimist. If you look our database, you'll
> find the "on-hold" section. Some of them are very honest people.
> They requsts to be placed there in their own mails.
> And some of them just vanised. No reply to the mails sent to them.
>
> So, we can't adopt automatic registering system where anyone can
> enter the project. And manual handling takes longer time. so what?
>
> > with many others. Keep the NMs rolling. I'm very happy re: the proposal to
>
> Again, NM queue is still running, at least officially.
> Just Don't spread the FUD. We (at least, me) are not proud of the delay
> for processing, but at least we do at our best, and we ARE proud of
> the quality of our work. (It may not be perfect, of course. We mortals
> know it).
I thank all the AMs very much. My AM has been fantastic. Always nice, polite
and willing to give me a hand when I fsck up, he's been brilliant, and being
an AM would require $TOOMANY hours. I'm not saying AMs, or sponsors, as
someone else suggested, are bad. They're great. I love them. Each and every
one of them. Flowers and chocolate are pending.
> > I know I don't have to work 23.9 hours a day to become a maintainer. In the
> > last flamewar, Ben Collins was bemoaning the single, double or triple
> > package people and waving around the "ded*cation" word. Basically, I'm happy
> > to do whatever I can whenever I can, and if that means only maintaining 3
> > packages, but doing it bloody well, great.
>
> I agree that "doing it bloody well (on a few packages), great".
> But you need to know it may require the up-to-date knowledge of
> the recent change in the policy, dpkg, kernel or X packages,
> debhelper or debconf, our installer, our supported architectures,
> and our archive.
> And if you can contribute somthing to those fundamentals, if you
> can make them better, then it will be highly appreciated.
Yeah, exactly. It's easier for me to keep up to date on everything if I have
3 packages to worry about, than 11.
> > Nonono, you see, what I meant was that the sponsors wouldn't be getting any
> > of *THEIR* work done. They'd spend all their Debian time doing sponsoring.
> > I'm saying that the sponsors now do (inefficently) work, but getting an
> > account is a far, far, FAR better way. If we closed NM off and made every NM
>
> Again, NM queue is still running, at least officially.
yay!
> > work through a sponsor, not only would the number balloon, making it far
> > more inefficient, said sponsors would get fed up and leave, but there'd be
> > no-one who had risen through the NM queue to become a developer and felt
> > like being a sponsor to sponsor people, rinse, repeat.
>
> While I agree that sponsored is the second to the best (I know it
> since I myself had sponsored a few packages), but I know that my
> first applicant chose the sponsor job as his first task other than
> maintaining his own packages.
*nod*
> Though this is a follow to a mail, this is not a personal reply at all.
> So I send this only to the list.
>
> # BTW, I don't subscribe this list, only read it via netnews.
> # So if you wish to reach me, you can cc to me. Don't expect the quick
> # reply though, since I have injured my left arm. I wrote (or typed)
> # all of this mail with my right hand only. It takes longer than usual.
> # sigh.
Ouch. Sorry to hear that.
Coming from someone who's never broken, sprained, dislocated, or otherwise
seriously injured any part of his body, except split his upper lip with a
rock. But that's another story.
d
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