** On Jan 14, Anthony Towns scribbled: > On Sun, Jan 14, 2001 at 11:47:21PM +1100, Daniel Stone wrote: > > > On 20010114T010257-0600, Scott Dier wrote: > > > > What about odd programs with breakage on non-x86 platforms? > > > Those are special cases, and warrant access to our non-x86 machines. > > What about those with sid (me) who want access to potato and woody machines > > to test with weird breakages? (me) [snip] > Actually, in this case you can: potato and woody are publically available > on the archive, all you need to do is get a couple of spare computers and > install them both with potato and update one to woody. Voila! If you don't > have two computers, you can go to a little effort and setup a chroot. What if he/anybody else can't afford even a bigger HDD, not to mention a computer? Don't forget that not everyone has $$$ to spend - but, OTOH, they have brains and skills that can be used. And besides, a SOFTWARE PROJECT is about giving its pariticpants access to software/hardware they can work on, isn't it? Especially a multi-arch/multi-OS distribution like Debian. > > Why in hell are you people so immediately suspicious of NMs? > > Who's suspicious? If you weren't too busy trying to take offence, > you'd notice that the only problem here is the people involved don't > have enough time. And this is a _very_ big and serious problem. [snip] > Anyway. If you want to help the project, there are a million and one > things you can do, without an account, without your key in the keyring, > without fame and recognition, without anything. You can supply patches, Without rights, for example. > you can do testing, you can write programs, you can help out with users, > you can write documentation, you can do translations, you can join your [snip] > up local radio stations and get them to do a show on that Linux thing, > and you can make lists of things other people can do. As much as I agree with you as far as the meritoric side of what you wrote goes, I can see only one downfall - such a person which does all of the above, or some of it is, to put it in a nice words, a mule. S/he does the job, but has no rights as a part of community. Is that fair? > The one thing that's *least* useful, though, is trying to tell > volunteers that, dammit, they're just not doing a good enough job, > and they'll have to work harder if they want any respect at all. It isn't about respect. It is about the job being done. > I mean, is it really difficult to see how approving someone who'll > maintain a couple of packages that'll get dropped into optional or extra > isn't really a high priority? Is it difficult to see how someone might How can you tell that beforehand? How can you tell where the packages and what packages will get in hands of one persons? How can you know what task s/he will take upon once in the project? How can you judge the person's suitability/skills/expertize without even knowing him? I think that being part of the project is also about proving all of the above. After all, a person can be excluded from a project (or resign on her own if the task is too hard) after wards? Prejudice (that's how I understand your statement above - I'm not saying _you_ are prejudiced, I just read the words written) is a good way of conducting a public project... [snip] > Is it also difficult to see how maybe publically whining and bitching > about it when one DAM explicitly says to stop all the whining and > bitching mightn't really convince anyone that all the people waiting in > the new maintainer queue will actually be helpful productive members of > the project once approved? Give us/me the chance to prove it - is it that hard to understand? or, as I wrote elsewhere, go and take a look and my packages that already exist, at my code and judge from it whether I will be a worthy member of the project. > *sigh* indeed > I guess I have to assume it probably is that difficult. Just as understanding that waiting for months is a bit discouraging? marek -- Visit: http://caudium.net - the Caudium WebServer /* A completely unrelated fortune */ "What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty teenager asked her mother. "Encouragement, dear," she replied.
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