Re: [Fwd: [RFC] Making NM 'by recommendation']
Le Sun, Jan 28, 2001 at 11:20:07AM +1100, Glenn McGrath écrivait:
> There is a faction of debian developers who are elitists and want to
You're wrong. And I share the consensus that is emerging from this
thread.
[the rest is martin's mail]
> My proposal is this: You can no longer apply to become a Debian
> developer yourself, but instead you need an existing Debian developer
> to recommend you. Nothing in the NM system changes except of the
This is clearly the way to go. And I speak as beeing one of the person who
managed to put in place the sponsor mechanism. We can modulate the rule
[read below] but the main idea is here ...
We clearly have developers who are already able to to the work they intend
to do and we have the other who are not yet able (that doesn't mean they
will never be able to ...).
We shouldn't treat them the same way. I know at least one very skilled
developer who resigned from the application process because it took too
long for him. Since that time (it was more than 1 year ago) the situation
has evolved, but as Martin's mail shows us, we still have the
distinction...
I don't know exactly how we can manage that but I can suggest several
ideas. First, we could have 2 type of AM, some would be dedicated to
skilled person (someone who is recommended by a Debian developer, someone
who is already sponsored, an upstream author, ...) and other would
treat the other applicants. The difference would be that recommended
applicants shouldn't take long to treat since they should already know
everything, if that's not the case, the specialized AM could redirect him
to the other AM and letting him the time to treat other skilled people.
Yes, that does mean, that we don't treat the same way all applicants, but
what does it matter ? The important thing is that you can always get in,
it's just that skilled people get in faster ... it's quite logical, and
it's the kind of elistism we need. And this kind of elitism doesn't mean
we're closing Debian. It's just that people who have not yet learned need
to learn before getting in (nothing bad in this ! that's why we have
debian-mentors).
Another point that I would mention, is that some AM are really acting
like teachers .. this is really something great but it shouldn't be put
on the AM shoulders. We have debian-mentors which is quite unused. And we
have sponsors who can teach many things to sponsored applicants. An
applicant getting to the AM should be almost ready ...
In fact, this is the same as separating the process in 2 big steps.
1) Learn (technical, human, philosophical, ...)
2) Join (check if he knows what he should know, administrative thing)
We just "materialized" the first step that always existed ... Skilled
people could directly get in at step 2.
> How do you find someone to recommend you? Easy, if you meet a
> developer for key signing you can ask him to recommend you, or if you
> are active on the Debian mailing lists or help out with boot-floppies
> or a Debian port, I'm sure someone is willing to recommond you. Or,
> of course, a sponsor can do it.
Yeah, I can't accept people telling that they would have no one. Most of
them should more or less know a developer either because they met
together, or because they discussed on a local mailing-list, ... If
really, he doesn't know anybody, I'm sure he could find someone using the
sponsor system or asking on debian-mentors.
BTW, newly accepted developers who "suffered" from the NM process, would
for sure join debian-mentors and teach other applicants what they need to
know ...
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog -+- http://strasbourg.linuxfr.org/~raphael/
Le bouche à oreille du Net : http://www.beetell.com
Naviguez sans se fatiguer à chercher : http://www.deenoo.com
Formation Linux et logiciel libre : http://www.logidee.com
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