Re: On terminology
Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
> Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> writes:
> > It seems to me that the Debian Maintainer role is clearly focussed
> > on granting the minimum needed to be a maintainer within the Debian
> > project, as opposed to a maintainer not within the Debian project.
> > So I don't see your case for wanting to change that term.
>
> To me a Debian Maintainer is not really within the Debian project, or
> at least no more within the Debian project than our many other non-DD
> contributors are, such as people with guest accounts on Alioth. They
> have no voting rights, no access to debian-private, etc. A necessary
> condition to me for being part of a membership organization is to have
> some sort of membership role.
I see the Debian Maintainer as having passed a significant threshold for
membership in the Debian project. They have:
* signed a statement that they acknowledge Debian's founding documents
and important policies
* demonstrated bona fides for their identity via the GnuPG web of trust
* worked with a Debian Developer (a voting member of the project) to the
extent that person advocates their membership
That makes them significantly more than a package maintainer, to my
view. It makes them a non-voting member of the project.
> > What's the point of becoming a Debian Maintainer if not to maintain
> > one or more packages in Debian?
>
> So that they can upload a Debian package. They may have no intention
> to become the maintainer.
That seems strange (why not just get a sponsor to do the upload?), but
I'll take your word for it that such people exist.
--
\ “There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. |
`\ Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, |
_o__) ever.” —Viggo Mortensen |
Ben Finney
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