Re: Advocacy for Jari Aalto
Hi,
On Wed, 22 May 2013, tony mancill wrote:
> have an email folder with 80-odd sponsor requests for QA/MIA and
> maintainer-ACK'd NMUs to complete getting rid of dpatch. But I would
I remember having seen some NMU which were not properly maintainer-acked
at least (I don't have the reference but I remember someone complaining on
-devel).
> argue that, (a) these things are useful to the distribution (namely,
> regularity and consistency in packaging practices as opposed to allowing
> cruft to accumulate), and (b) I don't see other contributors spending so
> much of their time on these questions of consistency.
I certainly agree that they are useful, they are also easy and do not
prove much technical ability. On the contrary, in some of the case where
some subtleties were involved, he made some mistakes (as I showed).
That said mistakes do happen when one is learning. And some tolerance to
mistakes is certainly required.
> > He started a mass bug filing without any coordination [2].
>
> This seems to happen from time to time anyway, often perpetrated by DDs
> with good intentions.
Certainly, it's just the accumulation of many (small) things that lead me
to be cautious about the opportunity to grant him DD status.
> > The amount of packages that he maintains alone, i.e. outside of any team
> > is also worrying (in terms of willingess and ability to work with others).
> > Quite a few packages are lagging behind new upstreams versions (I count 8
> > on his DDPO page) but that's to be expected when one maintains so many
> > packages.
>
> Err... I don't buy either of these arguments at all. He's certainly
> been willing to work diligently and patiently with sponsors, with
> developers (posting patches and debdiffs for NMUs), and recently he has
> been helping others with their packaging (see the recent additions of
> firehol and sanewall to the archive).
In fact, the amount of packages maintained outside of a team is pretty
much a red light for me given that we have had this problem with multiple
persons in the past.
That said when one is alone in maintaining packages, it's a good idea to
not overcommit and I have doubts on the fact that he didn't overcommit...
> And if lagging behind upstream is a problem, about 3/4ths of the Debian
> Java Team should be ejected.
I agree that lagging behind upstream is a poor critic. :)
> If you doubt his contribution because he's trying to do too much or is
> spread too thin, then I think many Debian contributors are guilty of
> that.
That doesn't meant that we should encourage people to continue that trend.
We do care about the quality of our packages and we do care about having
people whe can fix RC bugs in a timely fashion.
> I'm not going to contradict your assessment; that's what this discussion
> is for. But I will say that there many DDs of varying skill-levels, and
> that social fit and willingness to contribute (even when it means doing
> repetitive, thankless tasks like getting rid of dpatch or enabling
> hardening rules) are also valuable to the community.
Certainly, they are valuable.
> that he will run amok with unsupervised upload rights. However, given
> the concerns expressed, would those who have stated their objections be
> more comfortable if Jari was granted DM status? To me, this seems the
> next logical step if his advocacy is disputed.
Yes, as I said I believe that he can maintain simple packages. I wasn't
aware that he wasn't DM yet. Given the number of packages he's
maintaining, it's pretty hard to understand that his sponsors didn't ask
him to apply for this already. :)
I fear that his willingness to clean up packages might lead to some
inappropriate NMUs. That's why I'd rather not give him full unsupervised
upload rights, at least not right now.
> I don't really agree that he's in the right place because he has spend a
> non-trivial amount of time requesting sponsorship (and then sponsors
> spend their time sponsoring). This is time he (and they) could spend
> contributing more directly.
For his own packages, certainly, as I said I thought that he already was a
DM.
For other packages, they are supposed to have a maintainer that can apply
patches that he submits.
> DM status wouldn't alleviate that entirely, but would give him the
> opportunity to maintain his own packages and participate in team
> maintenance with other DDs, who can moderate and adjust his DM ACL as
> they deem fit.
Indeed.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer
Get the Debian Administrator's Handbook:
→ http://debian-handbook.info/get/
Reply to: