Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Jon Dowland writes ("Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)"):
> I'm not overly interested in the word developer being eradicated, but at
> the very least having some consistency in Debian's documents would be
> very welcome. ('New Maintainer' → route to 'Developer' vs. 'Debian
> Maintainer' is another area of confusion).  Perhaps an entirely new set
> of nouns should be chosen, free of historical baggage?

Heh, like that's going to work in Debian.  What we could do though is
try harder to use the nouns we do have more consistently.

I think we have these:

 Developer, DD
      As per the constitution; includes non-uploading DDs.
      New Maintainer needs to be renamed to New Developer.

 [Non-]Uploading Developer
      To distinguish where necessary, but usually we can use
      Sponsor instead.

 Sponsor
      An uploading DD signing off on another package.

 Maintainer, package maintainer, <package> maintainer
      Someone in the Maintainer or Uploaders field.
      Uploaders needs to be abolished in favour of multiple
      Maintainers.  In wheezy perhaps ?

 DM, Debian Maintainer
      Someone in the DM keyring.  This may need renaming.
      In the meantime we need to never write "Debian maintainer"
      to mean "maintainer of a Debian package".

 User
      Might be a DD or DM or Maintainer too of course.

 Submitter
      Someone who filed a bug.  Might be zero or more of the above.

We also need a general word for "someone involved with Debian in a
positive way".  "Participant" is clumsy; "member of the community"
even more so.  "Person" might do but word with a more positive spin
would be nice.

Ian.