On Tue, Apr 29, 2003 at 10:39:50PM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2003 at 03:19:54PM -0500, Nathan E Norman wrote:
> > 1) The DPL should appoint a committee (yuck) which sets up "rewards"
> > or "bounties" for important projects that need to be completed
> > yesterday. A little green never hurts.
>
> You can do this. Need something *now*? Bribe a developer. Generally
> you won't be violating any laws, unless being a Debian developer is
> part of thier official charter duties for a government or security
> agency. Expect the bribe required to be a function of the difficulty
> of the bug and roughly a function of how long the bug has been open
> (old bugs tend to be hard bugs). If the devels won't oblige, hire a
> consultant and submit the resulting patch. If you want to put your
> money where your mouth is, go right ahead, I won't stop you.
Sure, individuals and groups can "bribe" developers (and that's a good
thing). However, I'm envisionaing something more like "uh, libc has
been AFU for over two months now, $500 to the first developer with a
working NMU" (think back a few weeks :-) debian already has
bug-squashing parties; this would just be incentive above and beyond
that.
Of course, the "no-NMU" mentality would have to change as I also
discussed.
Now that I am employed again, I'm going to try to figure out how I can
help debian from a $$ POV.
> http://debian.org/consultants/
Er, this applies to people who want to get paid to support debian.
I'm all for that, but it's not what I'm talking about here.
> > 2) Debian should be more active in soliciting donations from people
> > who use debian. Redhat users seem to think nothing of paying $30 for
> > a set of CDs; I bet many debian users could pitch in $5. Corporations
> > running debian could probably afford more, or even earmark monies
> > towards specific projects (debian-desktop, etc.)
>
> Debian already does. Though it wouldn't surprise me if your
> assistance in collecting on deadbeat advertisers who haven't paid to
> advertise on the list is greaty appreciated. (Read the rules, if you
> want to advertise, you can arrange in advance for a minimum $1,000, or
> you can just post and be billed $1,999).
Again, I'm not saying debian isn't soliciting donations. However, they
could be even more active! Someone should wander around to various
corporations asking for $$; then debian could list all their names in
the motd just like reiserfsck :-)
> > 1) subscribe to d-devel, and get educated on what the issues are.
>
> Or at least debian-devel-announce, which carries the big stories.
The DWN also has fairly decent summaries of what is (and isn't) going
on.
If you're interested in development though, or want a deeper
understanding of why debian is the way it is, d-devel is invaluable
(flamewars and all).
> > 2) help out. Test and file bugs. Work on the installer or write code
> > if you are so inclined. Write documentation (both software and
> > processes such as installation need documentation).
>
> Subscribe to debian-boot and test debian-installer. Speaking of
> which, before I ask on debian-boot, does anybody know what net module
> you need for vmware? I don't think it's included on the
> debian-installer test isos.
Good advice, though sometimes debian-boot seems fairly noisy.
Last time I used vmware, the net module was 'pcnet32". Has that
changed?
Good comments. I hope others are motivated to test stuff like the new
installer as well, as that's very helpful and important.
--
Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:nnorman@incanus.net
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
-- William Pitt
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