Re: New contributor experience
Ahmad Khalifa <ahmad@khalifa.ws> writes:
> But something has to break the cycle. There is no daily standup or a
> project manager to come in and ask for updates here :)
> Debian has the RFA process, orphaning, submitting another RFH, etc...
> I don't know, but seems no one wants to solve this and the status quo is
> fantastic as it is.
I think you are reading lack of interest or opposition into a situation
where the primary problem is lack of resources.
I would love to solve this. I do not like the status quo. I certainly
don't think the status quo is fantastic. I'm also massively behind on the
packages that I already agreed to be responsible for and other Debian work
that I am supposed to be doing, and given that my day job exhausts nearly
all of my available energy for high-interaction discussions, I don't have
the bandwidth to mentor newcomers. I suspect this is a very common problem
among experienced Debian maintainers.
This says bad things about the project's sustainability and I think
everyone knows that. No one thinks the situation is good. But knowing that
things need to improve does not create the time and energy required to
improve them; in fact, in my experience, it sadly often does the opposite.
It's a trap and I'm not sure how to get out of it, but the problem isn't
lack of caring. It's that we have to figure out a way to get out of the
trap without piling more work on people who can't handle more and will
start dropping even more things if people insist.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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