Re: Proposal: have NM and DM sign a package maintainer pledge
Hi Raphaël,
Making stable releases is the major acheivement of our project, but I think
that the pledge you propose will backfire and not increase quality.
First of all, I feel that it uses a confrontational posture that will
demotivate contributors. Reading and signing such a text is not a nice way to
start a long term relationship.
Technically, I see a big problem in your proposal in the sense that its wording
seems to favor immediate action rather than ground work. There are plenty of
ways to “fix RC bugs” that are just hiding problems to users and Upstreams, for
instance disabling regression tests when they fail (hello, Ubuntu).
Lastly, your proposal is not well adapted to team work. As a DD, I am commited
to work on the release, especially at the end of cycles, but I would like to be
able to welcome DMs in our team who focus on new upstream releases (in
particular when they are Upstream themselves).
I support the opinion already expressed by others, that it would be better to
clarify the developers reference or other general texts if necessary, rather
than to add a new formal agreement to sign.
This said, I understand the motivation behind your proposal, and would like to
suggest to post a little bit more ‘motivational’ emails on
debian-devel-announce. I think that one per month would still be very
respectful of people's mailboxes, and would help a lot to remind every
developer where Debian is going.
Have a nice day,
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
Reply to: