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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006



On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 05:24:26PM +0900, JC Helary wrote:
> >Disadvantage, because the change will not be so evident from the
> >outside (more of a publicity issue, but that is what a part of the
> >problem is, so we need to change the image that DD=package maintainer)

> No because, as you'll see in my edits to cobako's proposal, the aim  
> is to have people think in terms of "membership" and not in terms of  
> "developership". Which will obviously make it easier for long term  
> non-maintainer contributors to understand that they are also welcome.  
> All this is really a perception problem.

I think the name "member" is worse than "developer" *because* it places the
emphasis on membership (belonging) instead of on developership (doing the
work).  We have no shortage of folks already who "belong" without
contributing much to the project, I don't think this is the model we want to
emphasize.  (We also have plenty of people who contribute heavily to the
project without being recognized as members; but I think that "member" is a
lesser title that doesn't do justice to their contributions -- I want to see
these people recognized as *developers*, not just as members.)

And maybe I'm too heavily steeped in Debian culture to take an objective
view, but I don't see any reason why translators, documentation writers,
artists, et al. should look at the term "developer" and conclude it's not
for them.  Developing an operating system is what we *all* do; not just
packagers or maintainers, but also documentation writers, bug submitters,
buildd maintainers, QA folks, translators, and everyone else.  The term
isn't "software developer" or "programmer", it's simply "developer", which I
think encapsulates the concept of what Debian is, and I wouldn't like to
lose that.  I'd rather see us do a better job of communicating this
principle to prospective developers instead.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/

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