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Re: Debian Membership



On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 08:22:56PM +0100, Jan Hauke Rahm wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 05:36:45PM +0000, Martin Meredith wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I'm not sure but wouldn't that add a lot of bureaucracy? I find it even
> hard to measure the contribution of a translator (amount of subversion
> commits against long diffs sent in per mail), even worse it is with
> artwork or similar, but sponsorship? Would every sponsor then be a DM or
> just those spending more than $money for it?
> For me that sounds like many new rules with very different opinions
> about what justifies a DM status.

Sponsors etc I mean people who make a significant contribution to the project 
via sponsorship. Say for example, someone who donates a machine, bandwidth etc. Not 
someone who dumps a couple of $ across via paypal now and then.
 
> > 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.
> 
> I agree fully. There are e.g. translators who work for Debian for many
> years now and contribute a lot IMHO. But OTOH I think there are just a
> few who *only* do translation work without having the technical skills
> for going through NM. That's why I thought Debian could have something
> like an exception in NM what you would call "hand wave".
> That would definitely not work with every artworker, sponsor etc.,
> though.

Again, I'm more on about a seperate "Debian Member" status.

> > 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.
> 
> Although I like your idea I'm not convinced that this is the right
> approach. You have good points; respecting more contributors can IMHO
> absolutely be a goal for Debian. But the way you describe would lead to
> many different states a contributer could be in which *I think* leads to
> more confusion instead of a clear membership system (which should be a
> goal for Debian as well).
> Two Maintainers could still be "simple" maintainers (meaning not being
> DDs with full upload rights) but one of them has voting rights while the
> other one doesn't because one of them applied to become a Member. Both
> of them had advocates to become a Debian Maintainer -- why would those
> advocates refuse to support their becoming a Member with voting rights?
> And the other way round: why would people not become a Member of Debian
> without even knowing general points of the project?
> ...I should probably stop writing, it confuses me even now... do you
> support a "New Membership process" for DFSG, DMUP and such stuff
> parallel to NM for technical stuff?

Again, with someone who is a Debian Maintainer, I'd assume their Membership to 
be implied from this. If you got accepted as a Maintainer/Developer, then you'd 
have membership to the project.

I'm basically suggesting that, along with the current process(es) we also have a 
process where someone can become a member without any upload rights. I'm also 
suggesting that current Maintainers/DDs should have this membership implied from 
the DM/DD status (which DDs already do)

> I think I don't see where this is going but even that makes me think
> that it's already too complicated/sophisticated... isn't it?
> 
> Hauke


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