Re: [Fwd: [RFC] Making NM 'by recommendation']
Let me toss in a rider here: the recommending DD becomes their AM. THAT
will open the door.
On Sun, 28 Jan 2001, Julian Gilbey wrote:
>On Sun, Jan 28, 2001 at 11:20:07AM +1100, Glenn McGrath wrote:
>> I think a few people on debian-devel might have comments on this.
>>
>> There is a faction of debian developers who are elitists and want to
>> close the system to new developers (numerous attempts have bee nmade by
>> diffferent methods)
>
>I think this is not, in any way, what Michael was suggesting. I don't
>know whether you have been following what has been happening in the
>New Maintainer arena for the last two years, but the rate at which
>people are currently being accepted into Debian is far higher than it
>has ever been before.
>
>However, this is due to the stirling work of a large number of
>volunteers who are devoting part of their time to acting as
>Application Managers, gathering the required information from
>prospective developers and ensuring that they have the technical
>competence to do what they wish to do for Debian.
>
>What many of the AMs are noticing, however, is that over the last
>couple of months, the people who are in the NM queue are more and more
>often either not interested in becoming developers, or they don't
>respond to emails, or they have no idea what they are doing, or they
>don't know what they want to do in Debian. I effectively ended up
>sponsoring one of my applicants until he was technically up to the
>level I felt was required of a developer (and if the developer
>concerned is reading this, I don't mean this personally).
>
>What is the result of this? Applications are handled in general on a
>first-come, first-served basis, and the rate of applications being
>received is now significantly greater than that of them being
>processed. So the queue is going to grow again, despite our best
>efforts, but critically, those people who are actively already working
>for Debian and need to become registered developers to effectively do
>their work are being lost among those who have no idea. There is a
>system for putting applicants "on hold" if they are not ready, or
>don't respond, but it wastes the small amount of time that the AMs
>have to devote to this work, and thereby holds up those people who
>really ought to be in the queue.
>
>The proposal is a simple one. Already, someone is only accepted as a
>new maintainer if they pass the requirements (all of which are
>documented explicitly on the website, see under
>http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint). The suggestion is that
>they have to convince an existing maintainer to recommend them to the
>NM team before they will join the queue. Now, anyone who is seriously
>interested in becoming a new maintainer should already be actively
>involved in some aspect of Debian, either active on a list or working
>on a package through the sponsorship system. If they are so unknown
>that they cannot even find even one developer who is willing to put
>their name forward to the NM team, why are they applying in the first
>place?
>
>If this proposal means that the number of applicants who just drop out
>of the process after wasting people's time is significantly reduced,
>then it is worth it. And if it means that applicants enter the NM
>system actually ready to become maintainers (with all the docs and
>experience etc required), then it will help many more people to join
>Debian far more quickly. And I do not envisage that a single
>applicant who would have got through will be prevented from doing so
>by this proposal.
>
>So I see this proposal as a way of helping Debian to open its doors
>rather than the opposite.
>
> Julian
>
>
--
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