Re: The Debian Mentors Project

[Luca - De Whiskey's - De Vitis <luca@debian.org>]

On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 12:07:12PM +0200, Emile van Bergen wrote:
[...]
> Regardless, I actually think it's a wonderful scaleability measure to
> provide some infrastructure that allows DDs to delegate some of the
> packaging work to NMs in the queue, who can prove that they are worth
> their salt, or to non-DDs, who can contribute to the project in a
> controlled manner that way.

This is conceptually wrong: if a DD wishes to co-maintain his package, Debian
offers alioth.d.o which is already up and running; if he wishes to delegate...
who wishes to delegate the maintainership of a package? I'd rather say that a
DD sponsors other non-DD contributions.

There is a plenty of ways a NM can contribute/join Debian: packaging is only
the simpliest. Try to take some job or a package from the QA, a task from
http://www.debian.org/devel/todo/ or anything that can came out from the
"Developer's corner" section on the main site.

Non-DDs contributing in this way do not help Debian: have you ever read of our
lacks of packages? You don't, because we haven't. Do you want to proove your
salt? You can do the same things a NM can do (see above). You insist in
maintaining a package, well take one and work on alioth in the mean while.

> I think there is a niche for such non-DD contributors.

No there is not. The fact is that if one wants to contribute Debian, that is to
say help the DDs, he should work in those fields Debian needs help.

> Allowing DDs to take advantage of the work of lesser gods, whenever that
> is practical and useful, seems a good thing for all parties concerned.

that's a pity... there is no one here who feels to be a god: unfortunately,
there are many outside here that think to be... looser gods.

> And no, IANADD.

We don't need you to tell us: db.debian.org does it.

Finally, i do not understand why you quoted my mail...
I was only objecting with this sentence:

	But becoming a DD is a long and painful way. Many developers just want
	to make their software available to Debian users but not become DDs.
	They are invited to upload their packages here and tell other users
	about this server.

If you ask me what i think about mentors.debian.net i'd say we do not need
such a service: i would have made any contributor to use alioth (register,
work on your favorite package and release it). A better service would have
been to create a place to coordinate people looking for sponsorship with those
willing to offer it.

ciao,
-- 
Luca - De Whiskey's - De Vitis              | Elegant or ugly code as well
aliases: Luca ^De [A-Z][A-Za-z\-]*[iy]'\?s$ | as fine or rude sentences have
Luca, a wannabe ``Good guy''.               | something in common: they
local LANG="it_IT@euro"                     | don't depend on the language.