How to be a great Debian Developer (was Re: Question about seeking (finding) a sponsor)
Hi, Thomas. I'm not directing this to you only. I'm giving general
advice to all readers here who are thinking of joining Debian.
On Sun, Jan 26, 2003 at 10:54:14PM +0100, Thomas Viehmann wrote:
> - - Getting my GPG-Key signed,
> - - Finding a sponsor,
> - - Applying as new maintainer, and
All of these are unrelated. You didn't find anything on the topic
because order doesn't really matter.
> - - Filing an ITP.
This is something you should do if and when you're pretty sure that you
don't want your work to be just exercise. There's nothing wrong with
packaging something just for the experience, note; you don't have to be
a package maintainer to be a developer.
What Debian really needs is people who are more concerned with quality of
the existing packages. One of those kinds of people is worth 100 new
maintainers of single obscure "pet-packages." I'm not exagerating.
If you (or any other potential Developer) want to make a name for your-
self in Debian, then help the existing developers:
- Find a package that is falling behind in its bug reports and ask the
developer if he/she wants some help. Everyone falls behind eventually.
Introduce yourself as someone who wants to help and ask her/him if a bug
is fixed and offer a fix if the maintainer hasn't yet already worked on
it.
- Find a package that uses the "undocumented" pseudo-man-page and write
a real page.
- Help with the work on the next generation of boot-floppies. Right
now, his is the MOST SIGNIFICANT way anyone can help Debian. This is
what is holding up from us releasing Sarge _right_now_.
When you go through the "New-Maintainer" process, point your application
manager to your work you do for your technical requirements. Your AM
will be relieved (s)he's not rubber-stamping yet another single-pet-
package maintainer.
Sure, all of these may not seem as "sexy" as uploading a package you
create, but it sure helps Debian more.
- chad
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