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Re: Question to candidates: Addressing Bandwidth Challenges in Debian




On 26/03/24 00:26, Nilesh Patra wrote:
It is no secret that most (probably all?) teams (delegated and otherwise
packaging/developer teams) in Debian struggle with limited
developer time and almost everything in Debian needs help.
In quite a few teams that I've seen and also been a part of, there
are only 3-4 people sharing a bulk of workload, sometimes
it is even worse and there are 1-person teams too -- teammetrics stats
can shed some light on it[1].
I completely agree with you. We definitely have shortage of volunteers for different teams.
This imbalance can lead to exhaustion, burnouts, et. al. and having
a low bus factor also poses an issue for stale packages/development
in the corresponding teams when the people doing a lot of work
there become busy with RL and can't dedicate much time.

Do you have any plans to address this or any strategies so the workload
could be somewhat better managed making this sustainable?
(I know outreach to get new people onboard is one option but I'm looking
for more opinions/points here.)

To be honest, I do not have any solid plan or strategy to deal with this issue. The lack of volunteers to take up tasks is not just an issue with Debian, but is common in other free software groups or any volunteer based groups. 

As a DPL, one thing I plan to do is review the delegated teams and talk to them to know if they are understaffed and/or overloaded and address the issue appropriately. Also, I would be interested to hear from Debianites if they have some interesting suggestions.

Another thing I have in mind is to interact and learn from other free software/volunteer groups how they are coping up with this bandwidth issue.


[1]: https://wiki.debian.org/Teammetrics/API

PS: While this question is for DPL candidates, anyone is free to chime in.

Best,
Nilesh

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