Re: Seeking new members for the DFSG team (Re: Bits from the DPL)
On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 09:08:49PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
>...
> Several individuals shared with me that they either don't agree with the
> current procedures/philosophy indoctrinated, they feel intimidated to
> reach out and fear retaliation and in form of delayed or more strict NEW
> processing, and any combination of the above.
>...
While I was not one of these individuals, I do share some of these and
have also expressed it at various times during the years.
I might be interested in joining the team and have some ideas for
improvements, but some topics are unclear to me:
> The lack of dialogue and responses from the current members
> significantly contributes to those concerns above.
>
> However and at the same time, all of the new members are committed to
> Debian and are very interested in working with you to carry on the
> impressive legacy that is "ftpteam". They do value the work you did, and
> want to learn and build upon it.
The most fundamental question is whether you want new members to join
the existing team and implement the existing policies, or whether you
want to replace the delegation with a new one that starts by developing
new policies.
This is the first decision you have to make.
> Let's work together by having a conversation about what is important for
> Debian as a whole and where we want to improve. The first thing that is
> currently discussed is the available bandwidth for processing new.
Since accept/reject is a life/death question for the work of every
maintainer in Debian, processing new is not something that can be
learned through trial and error.
Licence review is something that requires a lot of knowledge and
experience, in an area that is more suitable for lawyers than
software developers.
If you want new members to join the existing team and implement the
existing policies, then there has to be some time of mentoring and
review before a new member can make the first own decision.
And delegation shouldn't happen before a new member has reached
that skill level.
If you want to replace the delegation with a new one, then the new
delegation has to agree on policies and practices before processing
the first package.
> Kind regards
> Andreas.
>...
cu
Adrian
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