Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
Hello Manuel,
I would like you not to be so hurt, calm down and listen to people.
By rule of thumb nobody in the boat is evil, but there are many
misunderstandings which with *pacience and time* will get solved.
2010/7/2 Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo@gmail.com>:
> Another thing, I'm going out for the weekend plus monday, so don't expect
> replies from me in about 3 days at least (unless I happen to have time later
> today).
Starting a flame/ranting email and go away it is not a good way of
behaviour in the community, don't you think so?
> cases (no SONAMES for libraries, defining RPATH, using in-source third party
> software instead of the existing package in Debian, lacking man pages for
> some binaries which I created and sent to them...), technical difficulties
I might be missing something here, are you defining RPATH? I believe
it is not good practice in (native built) Debian packaging.
* http://wiki.debian.org/RpathIssue
> This started about 1 month ago.
I waited for 5 years before becoming DD (two of them in the NM queue),
not so long ago.
> Since I wanted to be DD, I needed the signature of a "Debian Member" (as
> some web pages say, I won't spend time seeking it now), so I wrote to
> newmaint@ asking for a clarification whether DMs were considered "Debian
> Members" or not for this purpose. Christoph Berg replied telling me, among
> other things, that "Debian Members" were only "Debian Developers" but also
> that I was confused about applying to DM or DD. I explained him that I was
> not, I wanted to apply for Debian Developer for the reasons stated above,
> and because the webpages describing the process (which I'll cite later)
> state clearly that it's not mandatory to be a DM before applying for DD
> (though "highly recommended", but I was already --unofficially-- co-
> maintainer of OpenSceneGraph anyway). He didn't tell me about "unoficcial
> policies (more on this later)" by then, a few weeks ago.
Did I tell you I waited for 2 years on NM process, well, things are
evolving in Debian, not always everything it is written on mailing
lists, blogs, planets and so on (impossible to track them all). There
also meetings[1] to help things out and speed up the NM process, but
certainly not for people like you but for people that already has a
very good understanding of Debian, which, you'll have to excuse me,
are lacking. As Debian itself it is not only maintaining software
packages. If you have a look to my profile I am one of the persons in
Debian with few packages and that is intented to be that way, but that
does not mean I am inactive in Debian. There are also some duties all
Debian Developers should follow to stay in the boat, those are not
very heavy to accomplish, but we have been doing fine with them for
many years (well, not all the time).
[1] https://penta.debconf.org/dc9_schedule/events/508.en.html
> (There are more official Debian Developers in that city but they didn't
> reply to the calls, and they do not maintain packages at least in some
> cases, so probably they should resign from Debian, by the way.)
As Debian Developers are not forced to reply to your emails and this
snippet is already in discussion on another thread you do not want to
discuss. But it shows the lack of Debian understanding you have. We do
not accuse people for "not doing..." as this is a volunteer task and
we are suposed to have fun with it.
> I replied with the same answers that I said in the "Precedents" above
> (though I was still preparing some packages for Aqsis and K3D, some of the
> new Aqsis packages were submitted already one or two days before the
> questionnaire came in, so it was a prove that I meant to do what I was
> saying).
>
> One of the questions was (*):
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Are you a 'Debian Maintainer' as described on
>> http://wiki.debian.org/Maintainers or do you plan to become a DM?
>
> a) No
> b) Not specially, my main intention is to become Debian Developer. DM
> doesn't allow to do what I'm doing with Aqsis and K3D when the official
> maintainer doesn't cooperate, that's one of the main reasons why I want
> to become DD instead of just DM (so I don't have to bother any sponsor,
> etc).
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> (*) http://wiki.debian.org/Maintainers says: "Debian Maintainers:
> official status of people, who are not (yet) Debian Developers, but that are
> allowed to upload packages, that have a DM field set. See Debian Maintainer"
You are allowed to upload your packages by setting some flag on the
debian/control file being DM. I am failing to see why that does not
work for you. Also being DM you would get more experienced and
certainly gain more knowledge on Debian OS.
> I replied telling that I didn't just NMU a couple of packages well attended,
> I was in effect intending to ***become the maintainer from now on*** of
> *quite complex* packages (all of them much bigger in size and dependencies,
> and unfortunately legal problems etc, than the vast majority of packages in
> Debian), and they were *completely unattended for years* (so I had to start
> from scratch, it was more like creating new packages than just NMUing a well
> maintained package not updated for two or three minor revisions); and most
> importantly that I was co-maintaining OpenSceneGraph for half a year etc,
> what I already explained above.
Again, I still fail to see why DM does not work for you. (A DD sets a
flag for you and you are able to upload your packages into the
archive).
> "4) I'm a bit fed up with your unofficial policies. Why is not documented
> properly if it's a policy that you're enforcing (the same thing that
> happened with the "photo ID" thing instead of GPG signature in the front
> page of NM when I asked about that)?
Apologies, but you are bitten by new changes in the system, which are
not too bad for the rest, but here we have a clear case of bit of
misunderstanding.
> [2] http://packages.qa.debian.org/a/aqsis.html (idem)
Has your latest upload had any packaging issue?
http://lintian.debian.org/maintainer/ender@debian.org.html#aqsis
Maybe you could also try to work out
http://release.debian.org/migration/testing.pl?package=openscenegraph
instead keeping adding more useless text to our inboxes (which does
nothing good to you), could you perhaps work on the above issues?
And just remember if by having you in the boat it means a dozen well
known developers will leave... you just can imagine the answer.
Please, start being useful, helpful and friendly to Debian community
in a calm/silent manner even this misunderstanding incident. That
might get things in place.
Truely I am not trying to discuss anything here, but show your
concerns are *only* yours and there rest just cares on something else.
And I do really apologize for all this misunderstanding from the
Debian Developer point of view.
Just keep being helpful and stop the rants :-)
Friendly speaking,
--
Héctor Orón
"Our Sun unleashes tremendous flares expelling hot gas into the Solar
System, which one day will disconnect us."
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