Re: DPL candidate questions

[Sruthi Chandran]

On 17/03/26 15:01, Matthias Geiger wrote:

Hi Sruthi,

I have a few questions I want to ask.
First:
- What is you stance on so-called "AI" contributions to the project?

Personally, it saddens and angers me; as this a) not ethical, b) legally unsound and c) directly helps the offenders hammering Debian infrastructure. I fear a GR is the only way to resolve this; however I'd like your opinion on it.

I believe, while AI has its own merits (and demerits), AI contributions to Debian is not something I am very keen on.

Second:
- What steps are you planning to take towards more diversity in Debian?

As it stands, Debian could definitely use more input from non-programmers, and become more diverse. New contributors who are not familiar with our workflow might find some overlooked issue that e.g. could use better documentation.

Diversity is something I want to focus on during my DPL tenure. I have detailed my plans and thoughts on that in my platform (which would be published soon). In short, some things I would do - I would be revisiting the diversity budget and find out why it is not working the way it should be, if possible have a delegated team focusing on diversity and encourage more local activities. Regarding non-programmers, I am completely with you. I myself was a librarian, who eventually became a Debian Developer. In all the talks I do about contributing to Debian, I talk about the importance of non-technical contributions. I have plans to restructure the Outreach team, encouraging non-technical contributions could be considered through them.

Third:
- Maintainer burnout



What are your plans to alleviate this?

We have a few maintainers that maintain quite a lot; possibly too much. In most cases it's officially team-maintained but they are defacto uploading a lot of those team packages.

Maintainer burnout is real and saddening. Team-maintaining is the first step, but as you said some maintainers end up shouldering the whole team responsibilities. I believe that the only solution is welcoming new contributors and delegating more of the work. I am not sure I can do anything directly as a DPL with respect to this other than trying to create a culture of welcoming new people and delegating things.

best,

werdahias

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