NM lurking behind the scene (quite long)
I hope you would like to excuse me if I'll annoy any of you, but I
feel my self a bit involved in the discussion, so i'm going to reply.
May be i've misunderstood the never ending series of thred about NM and
developper behaviour, but let me make you apart of my disappointment.
I was following this ml since the end of december, and the most impressive
thread i've read are:
* bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)
a self appointed constructive criticism (formerly a too easy to flame thread)
* "PERL MAINTAINERS SUCK - COMPLETE MORONS"
* "STOP THIS SHIT"
All of them within 15 days.
Many members that falme each other, NM that flame members because of their
dissatisfaction in the procedure to became a member (and not only), members
that flame NM becouse of a "supposed" attraction toward status simbol that
some one called the "Debian ring".
All this time spent on reading and writing non constructive (really near
destructive) mails instead of focalizing the problem, get a sort of
consensus from other member about the existence of such a problem and then try
to find a solution...
Wasted time.
The strange thing is that you all are right about many of the points of the
discussion, but it seems you find easyer flame than solve the problem:
- Unstable (testing) packages were/are very bugged, and in many occasions they
coused many problems to sysadmins. Well, in the students labs at cs
departmente at Bologna University, we (me and the other admins) have about
40 host (with 16 sun/spark and 9 iMac) 3 servers all of witch with unstable:
I'll not hide the numerous problems coused by the X upgrade, but i didn't
flamed Branden for his package (well I didn't fill any bug report too... but
i'm learning how to make one now), nor I flamed other developpers. We taked a
host and said "this is our testing host: if upgrade goes well, we upgrade
all, else we fix the problem and then upgrade all other host.". Next step
will be the filling of a bug report.
Yes, a local solution, but a Debian solution may be the creation of group to
work to X packages, where Branden leads a group of members to build and
follow this package. This may be applied to any other package such as perl
etc.
I don't know... but this may be an idea...
On Sat, Jan 13, 2001 at 11:34:33PM -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> Man, this whole response was a real waste. I don't care if you maintain
> 1 package, or 10 million. The point is that not every joe shmoe working
> on or with Debian needs a freaking @debian.org email address and an
> account on our servers. For christ sake, it's not like we are talking
> about season tickers to a game, these are highly precious parts of
> Debian.
>
> People with @debian.org email addresses represent Debian, even if they
> don't intend to be. Some one posting to whatever, using that email
> address reflects on Debian.
>
> Access to our machines is a security issue. For every new account,
> there's more effort in assuring our systems are secure. It gives them
> physical access to our resources (can we say warez and irc kiddies using
> foo.debian.org to distribute warez or take part in a packet fest on
> efnet?)
- IMHO this is correct. To contribute debian, it is not necessary to have
neither the @debian.org nor a shell (even if I'd like to have both ;) ).
To commit changes to sources, or to make package upload one need only a fake
account (I'm thinking to something like rbash), while the account may be
gived only to people how occupy some sort of position inside debian or
express the need of some facility that Debian system offers and he doesn't
have access to elsewhere (if you wish, a second level of fake shell)... and
os on.
The NM procedure to became a member cant controll the real ideas of an
NM, and many developper may never be encountered personaly... you know this
MAY appen.
Many AM, olso, use the HOWTO version of questions for the
philosofy/procedure check (the why they do, is not the point of the
discussion). This is not the better way (IMHO).
Well, let me consider the number of debian member... we say... 3000? ok say
less... 1000 (it's the same): what if all of this people send a tipical
question they whould do to an Applicant? we may build an automated, random
question generator... bettar then the HOWTO one.
- Some of the workgroup inside debian needs some help? why make New Member
build a package? Let him answer some workgroup related question to test his
skills: I think that the www-debian guys will surely like to make a set of
question to let people help them.
...
some thoughts.
Perhaps, these are some sort of ideas... better then flames.
I didn't understimate the difficulties of an implementation of what i've said,
but if you like, we can go ahead.
P.S.: how many typo errors?... ;) I hope I made me understand... this matter.
--
Luca - De Whiskey's - De Vitis
Undergraduate Student of Computer Science at Bologna University.
aliases: Luca ^De [A-Z][A-Za-z\-]*[iy]'\?s$
e-mail: devitis at (students dot )?cs dot unibo dot it
homepage: http://www.Students.CS.UniBO.IT/~devitis
anti SPAM: s/\ dot\ /./ , s/ at /@/ && solve_regex(e-mail)
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