On 16/03/26 13:23, Andreas Tille wrote:
Hi,thank you for running for DPL. I appreciate the time and effort it takes to step forward for this role, and I found your focus on diversity and encouraging new contributors particularly interesting. I'd like to start with a question related to that topic. Occasionally contributors submit bug reports that already contain a patch intended to fix or improve something. Sometimes such reports remain unanswered for many years, or the attached patch is rejected with only a brief explanation. While maintainers clearly have the final say over their packages and limited time, situations like this can be discouraging for contributors who have already invested effort into preparing a patch. In one recent case I looked at, a bug with an attached patch from 2014 only received its first response more than a decade later. How do you think Debian should balance maintainer autonomy with a welcoming culture for contributors?
I agree that there should be a balance between the maintainer autonomy and welcoming new contributors, not just with respect to this specific patch submission issue. I myself have come across cases where while we say we welcome new contributions, many of our actions give negative message to the newbies. I do not have a solution right now, but this is in fact one of the points I would like to bring it up for discussions during my tenure.
Do you see a role for project leadership in encouraging practices such as acknowledging patches, giving constructive explanations, or setting expectations about how contributions should be handled? I would be interested in your thoughts on how Debian can remain open to contributions while respecting the realities of volunteer maintenance.
I believe that the solution should not come from the leadership, but from the community - leadership can facilitate the discussions.
Having said that , where the packages are maintained by an active team, I have personally found things working smoothly with existing and new contributors.
Kind regards
Andreas.
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