On Thu, Aug 05, 2004 at 12:42:42AM +0200, Almut Behrens wrote: > It's just that all this talk here about the hassles of becoming a DD > has made me wonder about some fundamental principles of recruiting > people to do voluntary work. Curious wording. Debian, as an organization, does not recruit people. Like everything else in Debian, recruiting is something that happens at an individual, interpersonal level. > Personally, I'm still in the phase of not even knowing myself whether > I in fact would want to become a DD -- independently of whether my > skills, knowledge and general aptitude would be considered sufficient. > The essential questions for me are: What will I be able to do then, > that I can't do now? Upload packages; participate in discussions about farcical resolutions as a voting member (oh, and vote for DPL, too); get access to machines representing most Debian architectures for testing purposes. > Why is it made difficult to contribute at all? If you had an open question about what you would be able to do as a DD that you can't already do, how do you figure that contributing is *difficult*? > Is it really all about trustworthyness? Trustworthiness, and competence; the latter being a subset of the former in reality, since trusting you includes trusting you to know when you don't know what you're doing. > So, what is it that's so attractive for people to want to become a DD? I'm sure the motivation varies quite a bit from developer to developer. It almost sounds like you're wanting people here to sell you on becoming a DD, which I can't figure out. I would expect anyone who's interested in contributing to Debian in any capacity to be able to understand why someone might be interested in contributing as a developer; and if you're not already interested in contributing to Debian, then I don't understand why you're on this list -- whose purpose, as I understood it, was to help women get involved in Debian. Debian is not exactly out in the streets running a membership drive. The whole reason people complain so much about the NM process is that there's a terrible backlog on the administrative side of things; so if you're not interested in becoming a DD, I don't think anyone's going to be bothered by that. AIUI, this list is here to provide a more hospitable learning environment for women who already have intrinsic motivation to get involved. If you don't already have that motivation, I don't think there's much anyone here can do to give it to you. Now, you did say that you're willing to give back to the community. Great! We welcome all contributions (except hot air, which we have plenty of already). There's no obligation to become a DD at all. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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