Re: How to be a great Debian Developer
For the record, their are a lot of developers who agree absolutely with
the sentiments you express here, and suggest you try to become an official
DD rather than accepting the inconvenience of working always through a
sponsor.
Britton Kerin
__
GNU GPL: "The Source will be with you... always."
On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Thomas Viehmann wrote:
> Hi Chad.
>
> I did not answer to your first post for various reasons.
> While I thank you for your answers, I strongly disagree
> with some of your views to the point that I wondered why
> it was my package that prompted you to write about "pet-packages".
>
> Just as your advice was not only to me, please take these comments as
> something that I'd like to say not only about your comments, but also
> as an observation of the general way of discussion.
>
> Taking your answer literally, the conclusion is that you think that debian
> has enough package maintainers and the others should bother about the crums
> that fall from the table that existing DDs are not interested in.
> As for the discussion "package something only you are interested in", I
> believe to have explicitly demonstrated why my package is worth including.
> In fact, take a look at Bug #174481, which prompted me to package libchipcard
> and also take on libopenhbci (the latter of which now James Treacy packaged
> due to a wishlist bug but obviously doesn't use it himself).
> In short, libchipcard does provide a value to debian, as it adds a unique
> functionality, and, I believe, is needed top make the gnucash-hbci package
> worthwhile as most banks offering HBCI tend to offer it via chipcard-based
> methods. (Which I cannot blame you for not knowing, though.)
> I've thought about packaging quite a few things before, but now I think I've
> found something truely worthwhile.
>
> Also, I'd like to address the call for "writing manpages for other packages"
> and caring about wnpp packages:
> Why would you expect anyone to write the manpages the package maintainer
> doesn't bother about? True, there are those maintainers that don't have the
> time because they're doing very much for the project, but for the most part,
> I cannot help but think that they just don't care. I did write two manpages
> for my own package because that is the lintian warning that's still left, but
> you should well know that a volunteer project needs to distribute the dull
> jobs amongst those that are working for the main cause.
> Being told "do something but just don't have packages" is just like asking the
> local LUG (or whatever) whether you can help out at an expo booth and getting
> "well, as long as you just don't come to the booth during the show but just
> the vacuuming afterwards" as an answer.
> With wnpp matters are even worse, because for the most part, they are just
> "ugly, pointless packages noone in the world would care about". (There are
> notable exceptions every once in a while, but mostly this is the exact reason
> they're abandoned in the first place.)
>
> In addition, "helping out maintainers" is something that strongly depends on
> the willingness of maintainers to accept help. In my experience, the quality
> of the packages is strongly correlated (maybe even causal, not coincidental)
> to the willingness of maintainers to accept help and user comments and their
> friendlyness to answer questions. Let's face it, the main cause of problems in
> debian are the problems of and with the present developers and do not relate
> very well to future developers.
>
> Again. I've not answered directly because I personally don't have any issue
> with this, if I don't find a sponsor and I just keep using my packages myself,
> it's just the same work for me. If you like to give out funny advice, please
> do so, people are doing everywhere on the net. But don't expect anyone to join
> debian just to do the odd jobs and wanting to be "a slave to Debian". And
> don't think that telling people "the contribution you want to offer is not
> needed, please do the stuff we don't like" is a successful way of getting
> anywhere.
>
> Again, please don't take offence, I don't mind your answer in itself, I just
> want to point out some issues with the impression that potential volunteers
> get when considering to apply for debian membership.
>
> Cheers
>
> Thomas
>
>
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