Re: Maintainer qualification
On 1 Feb 2001, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >>"Marcus" == Marcus Brinkmann <Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> writes:
>
> Marcus> On Thu, Feb 01, 2001 at 03:35:53PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >>
> >> Have we accepted that mediocrity is really our lot? What
> >> happened to the quest for excellence? I joined an effort to create
> >> the *BEST* distribution of linux, not merely a feel good, prolific
> >> one.
>
> Marcus> How about accepting mediocrity to start with and striving for
> Marcus> excellence while learning, over time.
>
> No, Marcus. Mediocrity is not synonymous with inexperience --
> I know a number of excellent people who would readily admit that
> they do not know a field.
>
> Marcus> You don't really need to know much to package a small game
> Marcus> correctly. Wouldn't it be silly to burn highly skilled
> Marcus> peoples time on easy tasks, or throw away a useful
> Marcus> contribution regardless of where it comes?
>
> I do not think so. Perhaps in an ideal world, where every one
> knew their own limitations, and recognized boundaries, etc, and there
> was miscommunication, or egos, etc. But in reality, hiring
> incompetent people is a mistake.
>
> Hiring excellent inexperienced people is not the same thing.
Well, as anyone who has done much hiring will tell you, sorting out the
excellent/motivated but inexperienced from the chronicly
incompetent/uncaring in advance is pretty hard. Making things tough on
new recruits in order to try to weed out bad ones is IMO not worth the
risk of missing out on the good ones.
Based on use of my upstream software, it seems to me that debian is still
a pretty small minority distro even among fairy savvy types. There is a
ton of useful software that isn't packaged, and the the best maintainers
already have 20, 30, 50+ packages each, its not the time to get too
elitist about who can work for debian. We have this great well defined
system for packaging with excellent tools like debhelper, it seems to me
insane not to take advantage of these assets.
Britton
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