On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 05:15:54PM +0100, Jan Hauke Rahm wrote: > IANADD. > > Hi Martin, > > On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 03:10:38PM +0000, Martin Meredith wrote: > > My suggestion to add to the NM process would be something along similar lines. > > We currently have a NM council, Front Desk, etc etc. I would think that it would > > be nice if we could add in a process where someone could get "hand waved" > > through NM based on a majority vote from an approved set of people (say FD, NM > > team, or something similar) > > Would you consider this addition to the NM process to apply for "other > contributors" as well? I'm thinking about the translators who contribute > a lot but don't go through NM because they don't want to deal with e.g. > library packaging just to get the right of vote in a project that they > extensively contribute to but just in a different way than most of the > others. I'm asking because IIRC this is one of (or THE one) the special > cases where a "membership without upload rights" (or whatever it's > called) came up in the pre-lenny discussions. If they could get "hand > waved" through NM we could abstain from a special group of "members w/o > upload rights but w/ vote rights", couldn't we? In my response, I was purely on about upload rights, but you address a good point. The whole voting rights thing. In ubuntu, Membership is gained by showing contribution to the project. This gains the person voting rights (though I've only ever seen a member vote once, and this was for members of the CC) In debian, Membership implies upload rights, which is another thing that I think that Ubuntu do well. Membership shouldn't be just for those that are DDs. I think that membership (which implies voting rights) should be available to those who provide a sustained contribution to the debian project. Whether it be through Translations, artwork, advocacy, sponsorship, package maintenace, etc etc. In my opinion, there should be a distinct divide between being a Debian Member, and a Debian Developer. I'm pretty sure that there are numerous people out there who contribute to Debian in a significant manner, without actually doing any package maintenance. Along with this divide, I think that being a Debian Developer (hereby shortened to the "defacto" DD) should imply Debian Membership. This meaning that someone can apply to become a Debian Member (DM)) without having to become a DD, but anyone who applies to be a DD should either be automatically granted DM status, or have to apply for that first. I think that for Membership, a suitable board should be setup (or multiple boards, in the case of an overwhelming amount of applicants) that, if a concensus is met between them, would be allowed to grant DM status to a person. Either that, or a prospective member would have to get a certain amount of DMs to advocate their becoming a member, which could then become an automated process. DMs would also have the opportunity to raise an objection to someone becoming a member, at which point, it would then either goto the "board " for a decision, or require the applicant to find more advocates. I don't think however, that this should be the case for becoming a DD. In the case of someone aplying for a DD, I believe that they should either have to go through NM as it stands, or have a "board" of people qualified to distinguish the applicant's ability (say for example, FD + DAM, or similar) "hand wave" the person through. I also think that the current "Debian Maintainer" should stay as it is (though possiby be renamed to something like "Debain Code Contributor" (DCC), or work in a similar manner to the DM process suggested above. -- Regards, Martin "Mez" Meredith
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