Re: Reforming the NM process
On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 05:05:07PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> I want more people working for Debian, I want more free software
> available, but I don't want that at any cost. I'm ready to make changes
> (even some important change) but by experience I know that this work only
> if you gradually work in that direction.
> So discussing disruptive changes like you mentionned always seems like a
> very bad idea to me.
I'm sorry they seem disruptive. As I said, I don't have the "inside
view" on this. Although my suggestions don't seem to me all that much
more radical than, say, those in Marc's original posting or in aj's
blog. It's just hard to come up with a way of saying things like this
in a way that nobody takes it to really mean "Debian does not work, we
should do it from the top, and all our work has been for nothing".
There are also many ways to achieve changes like this gradually. One
would be to set up a new distribution, somewhat like "experimental",
which is open for uploads from anybody. When we see what kind of stuff
ends up uploaded there, we can think about good criteria for automatic
package transitioning into unstable, or best policies for manual
transitioning.
> You're discussing things which are too far away from the day to day
> reality... this doesn't help us much go forward.
Maybe not and I'm sorry for that. However, in my experience, it doesn't
help much better to fight over the minutiae of gradual changes. More
flames are poured over small things than big ones.
> 1/ we need to have a process of teaching
> 2/ teaching on -mentors works quite good
> 3/ sponsors are difficult to find
> 4/ but improving the process of sponsorship doesn't improve much
> Don't you see how that looks incoherent?
Well, you're talking about one way of improving the process of
sponsorship that I don't assess as very effective. Note, however, that
of course I'm not _against_ improving the current tools for sponsors.
So my reasoning goes something like: "teaching seems to work quite well,
but sponsors are difficult to find. So do we really need to have
sponsors? Better think about a way to avoid the need for sponsors."
Panu
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