Re: fresh blood gets congested: long way to become DD
Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com> writes:
> [Andrew Suffield]
>> AMs aren't much better, as a group. The FD checks their applications so
>> as not to waste the DAM's time reviewing bogus ones, and the DAM checks
>> them to filter out people who shouldn't get in. The reason why we need
>> both these checks is most simply explained by pointing out that both of
>> them reject a significant number of applicants - if we didn't have
>> them, people would get in who shouldn't, or the DAM's already limited
>> time would be wasted, slowing the process down more.
> You seem to assume that all rejections are correct, and get rid of some
> people which should not be accepted as debian developers, while all
> approvals are suspect and might let through a person which should have
> been rejected. Is this correct?
> Do you have any good arguments why it isn't the other way around, that
> some of the rejections get rid of people which could have done a great
> job as a debian developer?
Have you read the reasons for holds and rejections at the FD and DAM
stage?
Really, folks, quite a bit of this information is public. I admit that,
being in NM myself, I have had more reason to go poking around on the web
site and reading up on various records, but it's worth spending some time
on the site before participating in these sorts of threads.
Like Andrew says, the three stages of checks are only pointless
bureaucracy if the last two steps are rubber stamps. As you can see
clearly from the NM site, they're not. Given that, you have to dig a
little deeper and figure out why people may get all the way through the AM
stage but still not get approved.
Looking at the records on the site, you'll find that, of the three current
front desk holds, two are for incomplete skills testing and one is for a
key problem. Particularly given the rest of this thread and the desire to
see more people jump in to be AMs, you do need this sort of check by a
third party. Not all AMs are experienced; not all AMs are going to
remember everything.
Looking at the DAM holds, you'll see that most of them are for lack of
activity. Now, you might argue (reasonably) that the current extended
length of the process is partly to blame for that, but on the other hand,
joining Debian really is a committment. While I wouldn't say that it's as
easy to participate in Debian without being a DD as some of the other
folks on this list, it most certainly is possible. I'll also point out
that, for every other open source project I've been involved in, it's
taken at *least* a year of steady activity on the project and regular
patch submission before I got direct commit access. I wouldn't expect
Debian to be that different.
I do think that the amount of time NM takes at the moment is a bit too
long, but I don't think it should be quick. I think it's important to
verify that people really *want* to be DDs before approving them, and
while sheer time lag isn't necessarily the most friendly way of doing
this, it can still be rather effective.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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