Re: task & skills
[Cc to debian-qa because this mail explains why I'll quit Debian QA]
On Sat, 2 Dec 2000, Gergely Risko wrote:
>...
> > We are talking about prospective maintainers, right?
> >
> > These are people who care enough about Debian to actually bother to
> > apply to be a maintainer so they can help make the distribution
> > better for themselves (and hopefully in addition others).
> >
> > And you are supporting the point of view that rejecting them will
> > increase our numbers? Sorry I don't follow the logic.
>
> I said only, that I will teach my applicants to be the best maintainer,
> in this way the approve time will be longer, but the bug fixing time woll
> be less, because we will got fewer bugs with better new maintainers.
> In this way our numbvers will be increased.
> But I decided now, that I won't accept more applicants, because they
> think that I'm the most strict AM, and I do it because I'm evil, or I don't
> want to approve them. Other AMs approving most of the applicants in one day!
> I won't declare me as an evil AM, I will go back to adopting, and
> debianize new packages, and leave the work of the new applicants to you.
> But an ask to James, please only approve applicants, who got them
> tasks and skills test really done, now when I adopted one or two
> packages, I saw a lot of bugs (eg build-depends) in the pacakges which
> are in thje archive. I don't want to see more, please!
I have the same problem. I had a discusion with Martin Michlmayr and James
Troup about the "Tasks and Skills" in IRC some days ago because I'm also
of the opinion that someone who wants to maintain Debian packages needs to
show that he can produce quality package. I have a bad conscience when I
do either use the high standards I want to use for my applicants and they
see that others with lower skills are already accepted by other AMs or
when I do suggest that they should become members of Debian before I do
really think they are ready. When I see that a package with missing build
dependencies (except debhelper) that has in debian/copyright a "Copyright:
not yet known" and 2 other bugs is enough to become a Debian maintainer
(http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint-discuss-0011/msg00103.html) I
can't see any quality standards that are needed.
After the discussion where James and Martin totally disagreed with me I
decided I'll stop being an AM after I'll have processed my two applicants.
> > Please demonstrate a correlation between new maintainer-ness and
> > buggy packages. If there is one I could probably accept that
> > more checking of the tasks and skills would need to be done.
>
> ok, I can't demostrate it, because the developers are also upload
> buggy packages, and this slows down the way of good packages to archive.
> I only say that my 38 applicant will be thought to be a good
> maintainer, and after that I won't accept new applicants.
>...
I will quit Debian QA because there will be many more bugs with several
hundred new maintainers if noone looks if they can produce quality
packages and I don't want to spend my spare time I have for Debian on this
extra work.
Another problem if you don't look at the quality of the packages and how a
new maintainer handles bugs: You can't control someone who has a Debian
account. He can ignore bugs and he can ignore NMUs (remember the
discussion about kaffe starting in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0008/msg02567.html ...). That makes
the QA work much more frustrating.
> Gergely Risko
cu,
Adrian
--
A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a
"Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
-- Mahatma Ghandi
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