Re: Why 0 new developer? (Re: NM Report for Week Ending 15 Mar 2009)
Hi Steve
Steve Langasek wrote:
> Where is this soft reject? The mails I find with your name in the
> debian-newmaint list archive are
> <http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2005/10/msg00060.html>, which is an
> AM report recommending that you be accepted as a DD; then
Indeed, the first AM did recommend that I be accepted, that was a happy
day. But short lived, when front desk took a look they found that one
of my packages had a couple of bugs. I jumped right on it and worked
with upstream, fixed the issues and then released.
But ... front desk had canceled my T&S. Just like that. The T&S was a
ton of work and they just discarded it with the click of a mouse. I was
back in NM land (hell) once again.
Having seen one of Christoph Berg's talks I contacted him and asked for
help. He had slightly more time to spend with my application but the
problems were essentially the same. But he didn't really have time to
work with me either.
Then came his soft rejection:
> Hi Stephen,
>
> I'm sorry I'm bringing up that topic once more, but as there's no
> progress in your NM process, it doesn't help to keep the file on
> nm.debian.org open indefinitely. This is a soft rejection, you can
> reapply at any time you wish.
>
> Good luck with your Debian packages,
> Christoph
That was signed email sent on Nov 9, 2008, I can forward it to the list
if you like.
I replied on Nov 10:
> Wow!!!
>
> Christoph, something is wrong here, I am waiting for *you*, not the
> other way around. You will recall that I passed all tests but when my
> application went to front desk they revoked my T&S because one of my
> packages had become slightly stale because of upstream availability. I
> bugged the heck out of him and brought everything up to date. Since the
> release we have a couple of new bugs but they are fixed and also waiting
> for upstream (Ill ping him again). With that exception, everything is
> in good shape.
>
> I have been doing what seems to be the right thing, waiting patiently
> for T&S to be reinstated and the NM to complete. What else would you
> have me do?
>
> Did I miss an email from you perhaps? I checked my records and cant
> find one.
I received no reply.
>> Frankly the whole NM application was a complete waste of time. While I
>> am sure some DDs want new members, the collective doesn't.
>
> I think that's quite a leap, given the public record.
Steve, the public record would appear to be incomplete.
Please understand that the biggest problem during the later years was
one of gradually declining moral.
I am a pretty patient person but at each setback I became more and
resigned to the belief that the project really does not want new members.
Maybe I have been terribly unlucky but as a guy whose career has been
100% based on debian (now Ubuntu) for over a decade it hurts that I
haven't been able "give back" in a more meaningful manner.
Steve
PS I loved your interview on the ubuntu release process.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-GXOHhCu2U
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