-mentors dropped
On Sun, Jan 14, 2001 at 10:49:00PM +0100, Marek Habersack wrote:
> What if he/anybody else can't afford even a bigger HDD, not to mention a
> computer?
So what? We're volunteers already, we're not obligated to help the needy.
If we do, it's because we choose to. If we don't, it's because we choose
not to. If you can't help, you can't help. Big deal.
> As much as I agree with you as far as the meritoric side of what you wrote
> goes, I can see only one downfall - such a person which does all of the
> above, or some of it is, to put it in a nice words, a mule. S/he does the
> job, but has no rights as a part of community. Is that fair?
Who ever said anything about fair?
Of course it's not fair that people who just want to help get left in limbo,
unable to do anything for no better reason than that someone else is just
too busy.
Maybe it's "fair" for those poor deprived souls to then get their revenge
by starting YA pointless flamewar-come-bitch-session about it and waste
everyone's time as well as their own. If so, I begin to see why people
say "life wasn't met to be fair".
> > I mean, is it really difficult to see how approving someone who'll
> > maintain a couple of packages that'll get dropped into optional or extra
> > isn't really a high priority? Is it difficult to see how someone might
> How can you tell that beforehand?
You can ask, maybe? Daniel's specifically said in this thread that
that's all he feels capable of doing at the moment. By contrast, when
Chris Rutter and Phil Blundell joined, they were prepared to setup and
maintain an autobuilder for the arm port, which they've since done and
done tremendously well.
By contrast, when I joined, eg, I was prepared to maintain a single
non-free package. Fortunately, the "DAM" at the time (Joey) wasn't also
the head ftpmaster, and he wasn't in the midst of converting the archive
to a completely new layout and rewriting all the applicable scripts. Nor
was it December/January, which is a pretty common time for people to
take breaks and not be able to share the load, and it was also a few
years ago now when there weren't as many new people trying to join as
there are now; all of which means I didn't have to wait that long at all.
> > Is it also difficult to see how maybe publically whining and bitching
> > about it when one DAM explicitly says to stop all the whining and
> > bitching mightn't really convince anyone that all the people waiting in
> > the new maintainer queue will actually be helpful productive members of
> > the project once approved?
> Give us/me the chance to prove it -
You've had a million chances to prove it already, why is having an
@d.o account going to make all that much of a difference? Take Neal
Walfield, for example. He's worked on the "upstream" side of the GNU/Hurd
port of Debian for quite some time and gave a pretty enjoyable talk
on it at the zeroth Debian conference in Bordeaux last year. And he
managed to do all this without being in the keyring, or able to upload
packages. Coincidently or not, it seems he managed to get approved
pretty quickly (applied 2000-11-27, AM assigned 2001-01-03, account
created 2001-01-13).
There are better things you can do to while away your time waiting for
an account than vent on -devel or -mentors. We've got a ridiculously
high bug count you could be working on. There are a bunch of development
projects that could use some help that you can work on with anonymous
CVS. Doing some of these might even decrease the time you're waiting.
What's your choice saying about how you should be prioritized?
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``Thanks to all avid pokers out there''
-- linux.conf.au, 17-20 January 2001
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