[RFC] Making NM 'by recommendation'

[Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com>]

I have recently seen an increase in applicants who are unprepared or
don't even respond to my initial or follow-up messages.  I have the
strong suspicion that this is related to the fact that it's really
easy to sign up for NM -- simply enter your name and e-mail address,
and there you go!  You no longer have to think how serious you are
about it and what you want to do for Debian.

My proposal is this: You can no longer apply to become a Debian
developer yourself, but instead you need an existing Debian developer
to recommend you.  Nothing in the NM system changes except of the
application itself.  The developer who recommends another person as a
NM is not responsible for him or has to go through the NM process with
him (the latter will still be done by an AM) -- so this recommendation
is no report to the DAM, but simply the entry ticket to the NM
process.

How do you find someone to recommend you?  Easy, if you meet a
developer for key signing you can ask him to recommend you, or if you
are active on the Debian mailing lists or help out with boot-floppies
or a Debian port, I'm sure someone is willing to recommond you.  Or,
of course, a sponsor can do it.

This change would guarantee or at least increase the chance that
applicants

  - have a signed GPG key

  - have a sponsor

  - have had contact with Debian before

  - have seriously thought about joining Debian

What do you think of this?  I would like to implement this sooner than
later, so please share your comments.

Finally, here are some statistics; these are the number of people who
apply for NM each month.  Of course I don't know how much increase is
due to the dropping waiting time for NM and the easy-to-use web
interface, but...

     28 2000-03
     22 2000-04
     43 2000-05
     36 2000-06
     41 2000-07
     47 2000-08
     49 2000-09
     63 2000-10
     86 2000-11
     64 2000-12
     46 2001-01 (this month is not over yet)

-- 
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com