Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Don Armstrong]

On Tue, 11 Apr 2006, Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
> 
> > I don't think there's any way to make that easier until we have
> > more people who fit into those positions wanting to become DDs.
> 
> It's a bit more complex than that. You, for example, were active on
> -legal and in a few other non-technical ways but went through the
> package maintains NM route because you had technical abilities and
> because it seemed more straight forward and you didn't have to fight
> for your right to become a DD via non-traditional criteria. You see
> this happening a lot.

To some extent... but the main reason why I went through the process
was because I wanted to participate in the development of Debian, both
in packaging, and in the FOSS/community/legal aspects. It just
happened that testing for the packaging was the most obvious way to go
through the process, because it was the main thing that I was going to
be doing (and really, the only thing that required me being a
developer.[1])
 
> > The first few applicants going through the process in a new role
> > will always take a bit longer, but they'll be helping develop the
> > process too, so I'd hope that they'd be reasonably accepting of
> > that.
> 
> It is clear that our current NM process is prohibitive long for many
> potential contributors (we've had good contributors give or not
> bother). How many more of our potential pool do we lose by
> stretching it out a bit longer and asking people to argue for the
> importance of their contributions from a position of no power within
> the project?

I don't really have an answer to that. I'm concerned about it,[2] but
there's only 24 hours in most days, and it's far more rewarding for me
(and I suppose other AMs) to spend the time on people who are willing
to put in the time, and are interested in working with the process and
improving it.

I think Marc has really hit the critical slowdowns of the current
process on the head, but they basically devolve back to the standard
problems that we've been fighting with forever; we're all volunteers,
and we're all very busy.

1) Not enough AMs
2) NMs who aren't ready/not obviously involved/busy
3) DAMs who are very busy
4) FD who are likewise busy
5) AMs who are busy


Don Armstrong

1: Well, there is a question of whether or not I can actually
represent the project without being a Developer, but I'd submit that
I'm no more capable of representing the project as a DD than I was as
a random person. ;-)

2: Just like most of the people who are involved in the NM process or
participating in this thread are...
-- 
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[...] You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
 -- Robert Heinlein _Revolt in 2010_ p54

http://www.donarmstrong.com  http://rzlab.ucr.edu


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[MJ Ray]

Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Remember, you're the idiot who started the polemic "... bullshit.
> > If they would really care ..." lunacy that I was mimicking. That
> > is unacceptable behaviour and I ask you to correct it.
> 
> I really don't think that *you* are in a position to ask other people to
> correct their behaviour.

Firstly, I dispute the implied criticism. Secondly, if you
do think I'm rude, then *me* of all people claiming your
message is too rude should make you check it!

Do you think that calling the views of others a farmyard
by-product and denying their stated interest in debian is
good style? What purpose does it serve? From
http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -
"Do not use foul language [...] Try not to flame;"

> > [...]
> >> Naturally, those docs are mainly speaking about the NM process as
> >> applicant doing packaging work. The reason for this is quite simple -
> >> more than 95% of the people expressing their wish to join do
> >> packaging work.
> > Where do you get that 95% statistic from?
> 
> That one's easy. I'm FD and know how many translators have spoken about
> becoming a developer in relevant places - either by actually applying,
> mailing the FD or speaking about it on the respective mailing lists. The

Do you compile and publish this sort of interesting statistic
anywhere? (Could anyone else? Where is Front Desk mail archived?)

> number is quite small (about 4 people, depending what you count as
> "interest in an account"), while we had more than 134 people who applied
> in the last year in total, with *no* translator or documentation NMs
> under them.

How many translators are active in the project?
Does that absence of translator DD applicants suggest a problem?

> > If so, that alone should ring the alarm bells, as packaging alone
> > doesn't seem like 95% of the work that we're struggling to get done.
> 
> I don't know, but I know that a lot of work done for website
> maintainance, translation management and documentation is done by people
> who are also package maintainers. People doing non-packaging exclusively
> are quite unusual.

I suspect they're unusual within NM, not unusual in general.

Regards,
-- 
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Benj. Mako Hill]

> > AMs, the DAM and other people in the project are more hesitant to
> > grant developership to people with non-standard forms of
> > contributions. Sometimes, it's simply harder to test for these
> > because there aren't templates or even qualified AMs!
> 
> Sure; it's basically a case of no one having yet figured out exactly
> how to do it.

Great. That's somewhere to start. :)

> I don't think there's any way to make that easier until we have more
> people who fit into those positions wanting to become DDs.

It's a bit more complex than that. You, for example, were active on
-legal and in a few other non-technical ways but went through the
package maintains NM route because you had technical abilities and
because it seemed more straight forward and you didn't have to fight
for your right to become a DD via non-traditional criteria. You see
this happening a lot.

> The first few applicants going through the process in a new role
> will always take a bit longer, but they'll be helping develop the
> process too, so I'd hope that they'd be reasonably accepting of
> that.

It is clear that our current NM process is prohibitive long for many
potential contributors (we've had good contributors give or not
bother). How many more of our potential pool do we lose by stretching
it out a bit longer and asking people to argue for the importance of
their contributions from a position of no power within the project?

Regards,
Mako

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 07:27:52PM +0900, JC Helary wrote:
> >Which makes "Maintainer" unsuitble for translation maintainers how,
> >exactly?
> 
> Because translators mostly don't "maintain" translations but plainly  
> "contribute" translations.

Err, no. It is generally preferred that those who translated the
previous version of a given document will do the next version, too,
unless they specifically decide otherwise. In that respect, try running
"man podebconf-report-po".

> Ie. Translators mainly _translate_.

You are so mistaken. And yes, I do know what I'm talking about -- I
happen to be involved with the translation to Dutch.

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Sat, Apr 08, 2006 at 12:52:36AM +0300, Eddy Petrişor wrote:
> On 4/7/06, Micah Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > I'm sorry. If we can't trust these people not to abuse upload
> > >  privileges, then I certainly do not want to see them get  a say in
> > >  deciding how we conduct the project's business.
> >
> > By your argument, then the USA should give all its citizens access to
> > our nuclear arsenal, launch codes, etc. because we trust them to have
> > a say in deciding how the government is run.
> 
> Hmm, I see, you see yourself as government.

No. In a democratic government, everyone who is part of the electorate
gets to decide how the government is run, and the government is to
report to the electorate. That isn't actually the same thing.

> That would explain the dictatorial thinking as every governship tends
> to enslave the governed people.

Err, no.

> You should think of yourself as a representative of the users instead
> of their master.

No; in every democratic government, the electorate is the government's
"boss".

[...]
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 07:33:48PM +0900, JC Helary wrote:
> 
> On 2006/04/07, at 1:39, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> >>But requiring people who are not software developers to understand
> >>they suddenly have become developers because Debian is special is a
> >>little far fetched.
> >
> >I don't see why.
> 
> Because the term does not apply to non coders in a normal software
> context.

No, but it does apply to non coders in a Debian context, and that's what
Debian is about.

> And the NMP implies that too whatever provisions have been made in  
> trying to adapt the text to the present project.

Sorry, I can't parse that.

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 07:31:12PM +0900, JC Helary wrote:
> >>Did it ever occur to you that one can be an active Debian contributor
> >>and not use Debian at all ?
> >
> >No. And even if it did, I fail to see how that is relevant here. You
> >cannot be an active Debian contributor without knowing about its
> >culture, which is what Marc was talking about.
> 
> What is Debian more than a sum of packages that for some require  
> translations, when seen from a FOSS translator ?

You know, you were *very* close to insulting me here, until I noticed
that you were speaking hypothetically. You might want to make that more
clear next time ;-)

I'm sure some people think that way, and I have nothing against that.

However, if such people want voting rights, that means they want to be
part of our community. If they want to be part of our community, I don't
think it's too much to ask for them to understand our community, and
thus, our culture.

People who're looking at Debian as "a bunch of packages in need of
translation, but otherwise not very interesting" are not likely to be
interested in voting rights. They are, thus, completely outside of the
scope of this discussion.

> Why do you think there is a need to "understand" whatever Debian  
> "culture" there is to technically contribute to the project ?

There is none. There is, however, a need to understand the Debian
culture if you want voting rights.

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Translators and vote rights (was: Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006)

[Felipe Augusto van de Wiel (faw)]

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Hi, sorry to arrive late to the party, but I would like to give a
non-DD translator point of view on this thread.


On 04/05/2006 08:02 AM, Frans Pop wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 April 2006 11:44, JC Helary wrote:
>>There is a huge confusion between being a developer and having
>>technical rights, and being a developer and having political rights.
> 
> I seriously do wonder why translators, if they really want to get the 
> developer status, don't get together and just apply for NM. That would 
> force the project to develop a strategy to deal with it (if there really 
> is something that needs to be dealt with).

One important thing that I would like to add to this thread,
it the fact that are lots and lots of "hit and run" translators and
there are lots of translators that do not want vote rights. (I, as
a translator, do not want people that do not understand how Debian
works to vote to the next DPL).

It has been stated lots and lots of times in this thread
that translators can apply to NM and get these rights which is
great and I agree as the proper way to go. I really agree with Frans
and others on this thread about this.


> But no, what really happens is that every year or so, there is some mild 
> flamewar - coincidentally (?) always around the time of a DPL election - 
> about how "things should be better" and "why are we not allowed to vote".
> And then things are magically silent again for about 10 months.
> 
> In the end my conclusion is that most translators are quite happy with 
> their current status. They know their work is appreciated and in general 
> they get the support and access rights they need through the huge efforts 
> of the i18n coordinators.
> The same goes for documentation writers (although there is a distinct lack 
> of those) and website maintainers (same; hi Jutta).

Exactly! Lots of translators are happy translating and being
recognized by their efforts. I know translators that do not want the
responsability to vote and they don't want to have upload access, they
just want to translate and have fun doing that.

As a translator, I really think that translators can become
DD through NM proccess (if we need changes in NM let's do it, if we
need changes in the website or docs to state it clear let's do it),
but creating another class (area, name, relation or whatever people
is calling it) is insane, because we will need to duplicate some of
our procedures instead of just improving the ones we have and are
perfectly suitable to the job/task.

As the time I'm writing this, looks like that we are getting
to an agreement that people involved with translation, documentation,
website and other non-package areas could become DD throught NM and
we don't need to create another class/name/type/relation, which is
MHO.


> How do I dare say this? Simple: I _did_ enter Debian as a translator / 
> documentation writer only last year. My NM process was one of the 
> shortest in recent history (6 months), partly because the T&S part was 
> reduced, partly because I had a lot of support, but mostly through 
> showing commitment and jumping in where help was needed.
> 
> In short: if you want to be a Developer, stop pussyfooting around, find an 
> Advocate, talk things over with him/her and apply! Write a mail to the 
> Front Desk to make it clear that you do want to enter the project as a 
> translator or documentation writer.
> The main thing is to show commitment to the project. What helps a lot is 
> being willing to work (and having done work!) on other areas than "just" 
> translating your own language.
> 
> Be prepared to go into discussion with your Account Manager if you feel 
> (s)he is setting too technical tasks. But also be prepared to answer 
> quite a few questions about what "suites" are, how packages move from one 
> to the other, how the BTS works, etc. After all, you are entering Debian, 
> so you should know at least the basics of its infrastructure and how to 
> use it (or at least, how not to abuse it).
> 
> Debian is a distribution consisting of packages, so naturally its 
> organizational focus is on people who create those packages. But if you 
> want to get in on another basis, you can get in.
> If you don't think it's worth the effort, then just be happy with the 
> contribution you already do make and know that it is very much 
> appreciated.
> If you don't want to learn the basic technical infrastructure of the 
> project, than maybe it is better that you are not a "Developer" but 
> instead let the i18n coordinators take the responsibility for that.

Seconded.

Kind regards,

- --
Felipe Augusto van de Wiel (faw)
"Debian. Freedom to code. Code to freedom!"
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Kevin Mark]

On Sat, Apr 08, 2006 at 01:02:48PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit Kevin Mark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 09:39:15PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote:
 
> I don't see why it shouldn't be sufficient for the "has already done
> good work for Debian" part of the existing process. Whether it
> demonstrates overall commitment would need to be judged by the AM. For
> example, translating the 4 strings in some obscure and close-lipped
> tool would probably not in itself be evidence of great commitment, but
> taking care of the translation of packages with hundreds of strings
> would.
Hi Henning,
I just remembered something from our 'humanity-towards-others' upstream;
they have language translation packs. If this were adopted, then
translators could 'maintain a packages' and have their names on it and
other signs of commitment.
Cheers,
Kev
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Don Armstrong]

On Sat, 08 Apr 2006, Benj. Mako Hill wrote:

> 
> > As a final note, the templates are just that, templates. An AM is
> > relatively free to tailor the process to the job that the applicant is
> > actually performing. This is a bit more time consuming for the AM, but
> > it's ideal for applicants who are involved in non-traditional roles in
> > Debian.
> 
> AMs, the DAM and other people in the project are more hesitant to
> grant developership to people with non-standard forms of
> contributions. Sometimes, it's simply harder to test for these
> because there aren't templates or even qualified AMs!

Sure; it's basically a case of no one having yet figured out exactly
how to do it. I don't think there's any way to make that easier until
we have more people who fit into those positions wanting to become
DDs. Presumably some of the more senior AMs will have a better idea of
how to make sure that these people are qualified to fulfill the
position that they want to fulfill.

The first few applicants going through the process in a new role will
always take a bit longer, but they'll be helping develop the process
too, so I'd hope that they'd be reasonably accepting of that.

> Don: You were extremely active in Debian-Legal before becoming a
> developer. Were you tested or evaluated on those contributions? If
> not, why not?

Not to any great extent, no. I was doing package maintenance then (and
still am) so that's what I was tested on primarily. [I was asked to
assist with a few DFSG/FOSS understanding issues, but I didn't think
of that as part of the NM process.] Of course, since that was part of
my contribution to Debian at that point in time, my AM and later the
DAM (heh) would have looked at what I was doing there too.


Don Armstrong

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt]

MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [...]
>> you're free to submit patches. Until then, I'd prefer if you would not
>> reply in a purely polemic way, as your contribution to actually solve
>> the problem isn't identifiable.
> Remember, you're the idiot who started the polemic "... bullshit.
> If they would really care ..." lunacy that I was mimicking. That
> is unacceptable behaviour and I ask you to correct it.

I really don't think that *you* are in a position to ask other people to
correct their behaviour.

> [...]
>> Naturally, those docs are mainly speaking about the NM process as
>> applicant doing packaging work. The reason for this is quite simple -
>> more than 95% of the people expressing their wish to join do
>> packaging work.
> Where do you get that 95% statistic from?

That one's easy. I'm FD and know how many translators have spoken about
becoming a developer in relevant places - either by actually applying,
mailing the FD or speaking about it on the respective mailing lists. The
number is quite small (about 4 people, depending what you count as
"interest in an account"), while we had more than 134 people who applied
in the last year in total, with *no* translator or documentation NMs
under them.

> If so, that alone should ring the alarm bells, as packaging alone
> doesn't seem like 95% of the work that we're struggling to get done.

I don't know, but I know that a lot of work done for website
maintainance, translation management and documentation is done by people
who are also package maintainers. People doing non-packaging exclusively
are quite unusual.

Marc
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Benj. Mako Hill]

> * Benj. Mako Hill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006:04:06 15:35 -0400]: 
> > 
> > > Scripsit "Benj. Mako Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > 
> > > > I think that the fact that the upload keyring is the same as the
> > > > voting keyring is bad. Contributors are told they can't vote until
> > > > they learn C compiler flags.
> > > 
> > > Who tells contributors that nonsense?
> > 
> > Have you read the NM process templates lately? They are what almost
> > every contributor looking for enfranchisement sees.
> 
> Do you mean this question? (Actually about ld, but it's the closest one I 
> found
> that seemed appropriately irrelevant.)
> 
> I3. What is the -Bsymbolic ld flag, exactly what does it do, and how
> that differs from library symbol versioning? What problems do
> -Bsymbolic linking solve? Why is libc6 not compiled with -Bsymbolic?

Yes. But it was just an example. I could not correctly answer that
question.

Regards,
Mako

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Benj. Mako Hill]

> As a final note, the templates are just that, templates. An AM is
> relatively free to tailor the process to the job that the applicant is
> actually performing. This is a bit more time consuming for the AM, but
> it's ideal for applicants who are involved in non-traditional roles in
> Debian.

AMs, the DAM and other people in the project are more hesitant to grant
developership to people with non-standard forms of contributions.
Sometimes, it's simply harder to test for these because there aren't
templates or even qualified AMs!  Documentation is relatively common.
i18n is a little trickier. I asked around about developership for
Debian's lawyer and was told by everyone that it seemed problematic.

Don: You were extremely active in Debian-Legal before becoming a developer.
Were you tested or evaluated on those contributions? If not, why not?

Regards,
Mako

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Benj. Mako Hill]

> > I'd like to see those who have made long-term, sustained, and
> > significant contributions to Debian enfranchised. That could mean
> > broadening the category of developer through changes to NM or it
> > could also mean another enfranchised category of contributor. That's
> > what I read as the argument at the core of this thread -- but
> > perhaps I was just projecting.
> 
> I think we need to make them full, undifferentiated, members
>  of the project. Which means going through a process where we know
>  they adhere to our foundation documents, and spend time with a
>  trusted developer (AM) so we have a better idea of who they are, and
>  can have a modicum of trust in that they do not sabotage the
>  project.

I agree completely. My only criticism has been with limiting or putting
up roadblocks to full undifferentiated membership for people making
certain type of contributions. I'm not suggesting a lower bar for P&P,
trust, identity, etc.

Regards,
Mako

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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Benj. Mako Hill]

> > (1) We as a project (and an NM project) are hesitant to give these
> > people developership since it means they can upload to the
> > project which introduces a set of potential risks and problems
> > (one more account to compromise, etc).
> 
> I'm sorry. If we can't trust these people not to abuse upload
>  privileges, then I certainly do not want to see them get  a say in
>  deciding how we conduct the project's business.
> 
> Eiether we trust them, in which case we should induct them in
>  as full members, or we don't, and in that case they do not get to
>  vote. 

I agree completely.

I said, "one more account to compromise" to highlight the fact that an
elevated risk is not necessary connected to a lack of trustworthiness in
the person. Why have 2,000 possible upload keys when only 1,000 people
intend to ever use theirs -- even if we can trust the people who we have
accepted to not abuse their privilege?

Regards,
Mako

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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Henning Makholm]

Scripsit Kevin Mark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 09:39:15PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote:

>> A translator whose general modus operandi is leave his translation
>> unmaintained once it is written should not become a voting member of
>> Debian anyway - not any more than a packager who leaves his package
>> unmaintained once it is uploaded.

> so if a translator will commit to 'maintaing' a particular package
> translation, would that be a demonstration of the same commitment to the
> 'project' like software package maintaing and could then lead to him/her
> being a DD?

I don't see why it shouldn't be sufficient for the "has already done
good work for Debian" part of the existing process. Whether it
demonstrates overall commitment would need to be judged by the AM. For
example, translating the 4 strings in some obscure and close-lipped
tool would probably not in itself be evidence of great commitment, but
taking care of the translation of packages with hundreds of strings
would.

There is no direct parallel to this question for packagers, because
having a package survive the NEW queue already only happens if the
package is not completely trivial. On the other hand, a package with 4
translateable strings might well welcome translations, even though
each translation itself is trivial.

-- 
Henning Makholm   "We will discuss your youth another time."


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[MJ Ray]

Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [...]
> you're free to submit patches. Until then, I'd prefer if you would not
> reply in a purely polemic way, as your contribution to actually solve
> the problem isn't identifiable.

Remember, you're the idiot who started the polemic "... bullshit.
If they would really care ..." lunacy that I was mimicking. That
is unacceptable behaviour and I ask you to correct it.

[...]
> Naturally, those docs are mainly speaking about the NM process as
> applicant doing packaging work. The reason for this is quite simple -
> more than 95% of the people expressing their wish to join do
> packaging work.

Where do you get that 95% statistic from? If so, that alone
should ring the alarm bells, as packaging alone doesn't seem
like 95% of the work that we're struggling to get done.

-- 
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Laux nur mia opinio: vidu http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Bv sekvu http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Kevin Mark]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 09:39:15PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit JC Helary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> >> Which makes "Maintainer" unsuitble for translation maintainers how,
> >> exactly?
> 
> > Because translators mostly don't "maintain" translations but plainly
> > "contribute" translations.
> 
> A translator whose general modus operandi is leave his translation
> unmaintained once it is written should not become a voting member of
> Debian anyway - not any more than a packager who leaves his package
> unmaintained once it is uploaded.
Hi Henning,
so if a translator will commit to 'maintaing' a particular package
translation, would that be a demonstration of the same commitment to the
'project' like software package maintaing and could then lead to him/her
being a DD? 

Maybe make the translations be in a seperate package so that
they can have names associated to them and lead to the translator being
'responsble' to our users and maintain a real packages? (of course
this would never happen for many reasons-size,splitting things up,etc.)

moon-buggy-msg-es_ES,
moon-bubby-msg-fr_FR,...

cheers,
Kev
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Eddy Petrişor]

On 4/8/06, Micah Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> By your argument, then the USA should give all its citizens access to
> >> our nuclear arsenal, launch codes, etc. because we trust them to have
> >> a say in deciding how the government is run.
> >
> > Hmm, I see, you see yourself as government. That would explain the
> > dictatorial thinking as every governship tends to enslave the governed
> > people.
>
> This is a very surprising misunderstanding of what I wrote. I do not see
> myself as government, I do not see Debian as government.

>From you message I understood you looked at uploading rights as the
path to absolute war or dominion over foreigners or domestic
population (you compared WMD with upload rights)...

> Additionally, I
> do not see where you are seeing dictatorial thinking in what I wrote, in

 then you let to be understood that people should not have a word in 
the way the govern does its job ("we trust them to have a say in
deciding how the government is run"). For me that looks like a
dictatorship definition, if you don't allow the people say anything.
Sadly, this is how Debian is conducting votes currently (they do not
represent the users, but themselves), so from this point of view this
looks like you are in favor of keeping  non mainatiners outside. It is
true that you didn't said something like that explicitly, but that's
how it resulted from the explained reasoning.

> fact, I am starting to wonder how you can see so clearly what I am
> thinking, perhaps your surveillance equipment has given you information
> about my thoughts that I have not yet thought, but I will?

Yes, of course, but unfortunately, now I will have to kill you :)

> What is particularly suprising is that you are attacking me viciously,
> when I believe that we have the same views on this subject, however you

That was not al all clear from your message... in fact the opposite was, otoh.

> have extrapolated meanings far beyond what I said through a process of
> misunderstanding what I actually wrote, to think I am actually against you.

Taking this mail into account, yes. I'm sorry for doing that. Maybe I
should cool down and not get too angry when I feel people are stubborn
and refuse progress (because I might be having a wrong idea)

> > You should think of yourself as a representative of the users instead
> > of their master.
>
> My message disagrees with the original poster's, which means that I
> think that more people should get a say in how we conduct the project's
> business, not less.

Yes, you wanted to say that people getting in should not be granted
upload rights, although voting rights are ok, while Manoj was stating
that if we trust people that much that we allow them to vote, upload
rights can be given with the confidence they will not abuse it.

In other words, you regard upload rights higher than vote (at first
sight, but in fact you are stating that upload rights should be given
on a need basis), while he is doing the inverse, stating that vote is
more important that upload.


So, AFAICT, you were not contradicting him, but stating another thing,
while it looked to me that you don't agree.


> > I wonder where did this go "Our priorities are our users and free
> > software". Probably, you forgot, but you are talking about Debian's
> > users here in general and constant contributors here.
> >
> >>> Eiether we trust them, in which case we should induct them in
> >>>  as full members, or we don't, and in that case they do not get to
> >>>  vote.
> >> There are many people in my organization that I trust completely, who
> >> do not have root on our boxes. They dont have root because of a number
> >> of very obvious reasons that have nothing to do with trust in other
> >> areas.
> >
> > Your point being? Please talk about Debian, not some organization of
> > yours. The way you conduct your buisness does not affect Debian, or at
> > least it shouldn't.
>
> Please dont tell me what I can and cannot talk about, I thought you were
> against dictatorial repression? If you want to talk about dictatorial,
> repression, then we can talk business, but I am not talking about

I was pointing out that external examples might not be the best idea.
I could give you an example of a bad organisation, but thta might not
be relevant in the debian context because other rules apply.

> My point is that someone who does work for debian does not need to have
> the ability to upload in order to be part of debian in some sort of
> 'officially' enfranchised manner. I think it is completely sane to have
> official debian people who do not have upload access.

Yes, that might be true, but a NU (new uploader) process should not
appear in the path to get those rights when needed. I suspect that
from a pragmatic POV, giving upload rights imediately is better, but I
might be wrong.

> > Somehow, your argument is twisted. Nobody said that in order to trust
> > someone, we should let him upload and see what will that

Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Kevin Mark]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 06:48:27AM -0400, Benjamin Seidenberg wrote:
> Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 12:35:54AM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
> >   
> >> On Thursday 06 April 2006 23:55, Erinn Clark wrote:
> >> 
> >>> Do you mean this question? (Actually about ld, but it's the closest one
> >>> I found that seemed appropriately irrelevant.)
> >>>
> >>> I3. What is the -Bsymbolic ld flag, exactly what does it do, and
> >>> how that differs from library symbol versioning? What problems do
> >>> -Bsymbolic linking solve? Why is libc6 not compiled with -Bsymbolic?
> >>>   
> >> I would guess this is a question from the T&S part of the process, the 
> >> part that is supposed to be tailored to the applicant. At least, I'm very 
> >> happy to say, I have never seen this question during my NM process 
> >> (which, as you probably know, was the translator/documentation writer 
> >> track).
> >> 
> >
> > I have seen the question, and answered it. If you were to ask it again
> > to me, I wouldn't know the answer. I'd probably either do the same
> > research again, or look in my NM archives -- I think the latter is
> > probably fastest.
> >
> > I've never maintained a C library, though I did agree to help a little
> > bit on some C++ library recently. I don't expect I'll go looking up what
> > -Bsymbolic means even now.
> >
> > Is this question useless? I don't know. Apparantly, it didn't help me in
> > any way. And this is the type of question that can get obsolete too.
> > What is much more useful to test, but can't *that* easily be done with a
> > fixed questionaire, is ensuring people can apply common sense, and can
> > research things they need. From a DD, I expect that given a challenge, a
> > technical packaging issue previously totally unkown, one can some way or
> > the other resolve it. That is what you're doing as DD anyway, you get
> > the weirdest issues in bugs, as user questions, etc, and you need to
> > find a way to resolve that. Policy doesn't mention your special case, so
> > you're on your own.
> >
> > I'd very much like for more emphasis being placed on such problem
> > resolution capabilities, next to also interaction/communication
> > capabilities (with bugreporters, fellow DDs, upstreams, etc etc).
> >
> > --Jeroen
> >
> >   
> I'm in the NM process. I'm done with part 1 of T&S and still have to do
> part 2, which includes that question. I don't know the answer to it. To
> find the answer, I'll have to do research. I'll probably read a lot
> about libraries while finding the answer, since it's a topic I don't
> know much about. I don't think the question is designed so much as to
> test whether I know about library compile options as my ability to do
> research and to process, understand and utilize the information I find.
> I think that Debian and the NM process don't care about how well you
> know compile time options from memory, but that you have the skill to
> learn new skills and pieces of information as you need them. That's a
> general skill, and can only be tested by more specific questions.
> 
> Just my $0.02,
> Benjamin Seidenberg
> 
> PS: If anyone wants to share the answer, reply by private mail. ;-)
Hi Ben,
I just finished reading a pdf created for Debconf 5[0], and it says what
both you and Jeroen say: it is there as a test to see how you handle an
unknown problem and if you can use resources like google, people, man
page, etc. to find an answer and that it doesnt have any direct
usefullness to most developers especially if they work in scripting
languages. I would be interested to see a parallel test for translators,
artist, legal consultants,etc. Maybe translate a man page from Modern
English to Shakespearian English or Cevante's Spanish? x-)
Cheers,
Kev

[0] The Debian New Maintainer Process: History and Aims
Hanna Wallach, Moray Allan, Dafydd Harries [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] June 15, 2005 [google to find the url]
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Micah Anderson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1



Eddy Petrişor wrote:
> On 4/7/06, Micah Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> I'm sorry. If we can't trust these people not to abuse upload
>>>  privileges, then I certainly do not want to see them get  a say in
>>>  deciding how we conduct the project's business.
>> By your argument, then the USA should give all its citizens access to
>> our nuclear arsenal, launch codes, etc. because we trust them to have
>> a say in deciding how the government is run.
> 
> Hmm, I see, you see yourself as government. That would explain the
> dictatorial thinking as every governship tends to enslave the governed
> people.

This is a very surprising misunderstanding of what I wrote. I do not see
myself as government, I do not see Debian as government. Additionally, I
do not see where you are seeing dictatorial thinking in what I wrote, in
fact, I am starting to wonder how you can see so clearly what I am
thinking, perhaps your surveillance equipment has given you information
about my thoughts that I have not yet thought, but I will?

What is particularly suprising is that you are attacking me viciously,
when I believe that we have the same views on this subject, however you
have extrapolated meanings far beyond what I said through a process of
misunderstanding what I actually wrote, to think I am actually against you.

> You should think of yourself as a representative of the users instead
> of their master.

My message disagrees with the original poster's, which means that I
think that more people should get a say in how we conduct the project's
business, not less.

> I wonder where did this go "Our priorities are our users and free
> software". Probably, you forgot, but you are talking about Debian's
> users here in general and constant contributors here.
> 
>>> Eiether we trust them, in which case we should induct them in
>>>  as full members, or we don't, and in that case they do not get to
>>>  vote.
>> There are many people in my organization that I trust completely, who
>> do not have root on our boxes. They dont have root because of a number
>> of very obvious reasons that have nothing to do with trust in other
>> areas.
> 
> Your point being? Please talk about Debian, not some organization of
> yours. The way you conduct your buisness does not affect Debian, or at
> least it shouldn't.

Please dont tell me what I can and cannot talk about, I thought you were
against dictatorial repression? If you want to talk about dictatorial,
repression, then we can talk business, but I am not talking about
business. I do not consider Debian to be a business, nor the
organizations I work with. I think its completely reasonable to speak of
other organizations in order to compare them with Debian. We dont live
in a vacuum.

My point is that someone who does work for debian does not need to have
the ability to upload in order to be part of debian in some sort of
'officially' enfranchised manner. I think it is completely sane to have
official debian people who do not have upload access.

>> Your rigid definition of trust = upload don't make sense to me. Yes,
>> you have to be trusted to be able to upload, but you dont have to have
>> upload abilities to be able to be trusted.
> 
> Somehow, your argument is twisted. Nobody said that in order to trust
> someone, we should let him upload and see what will that person do,
> but quite the oposite was said - once you trust, upload should be
> fine, without abuses.

The point is that people do not need upload access to be officially part
of Debian. There is no reason for people to have upload access, unless
they are doing uploads. Tell me a reason someone should have upload
access if they are not doing uploads, and I will consider changing my mind.

The reason people give, time and again, for why we shouldn't bring
anyone else into Debian even if they have a long history of doing good
work for the organization that has nothing to do with uploading, is that
it would be a bad idea to give those people upload access. So, we dont
give them upload access, but we allow them into the organization. If at
some point they need upload access, they will have an easier chance of
obtaining it I would think.

Micah
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Eddy Petrişor]

On 4/7/06, Micah Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I'm sorry. If we can't trust these people not to abuse upload
> >  privileges, then I certainly do not want to see them get  a say in
> >  deciding how we conduct the project's business.
>
> By your argument, then the USA should give all its citizens access to
> our nuclear arsenal, launch codes, etc. because we trust them to have
> a say in deciding how the government is run.

Hmm, I see, you see yourself as government. That would explain the
dictatorial thinking as every governship tends to enslave the governed
people.
You should think of yourself as a representative of the users instead
of their master.

I wonder where did this go "Our priorities are our users and free
software". Probably, you forgot, but you are talking about Debian's
users here in general and constant contributors here.

> > Eiether we trust them, in which case we should induct them in
> >  as full members, or we don't, and in that case they do not get to
> >  vote.
>
> There are many people in my organization that I trust completely, who
> do not have root on our boxes. They dont have root because of a number
> of very obvious reasons that have nothing to do with trust in other
> areas.

Your point being? Please talk about Debian, not some organization of
yours. The way you conduct your buisness does not affect Debian, or at
least it shouldn't.

> Your rigid definition of trust = upload don't make sense to me. Yes,
> you have to be trusted to be able to upload, but you dont have to have
> upload abilities to be able to be trusted.

Somehow, your argument is twisted. Nobody said that in order to trust
someone, we should let him upload and see what will that person do,
but quite the oposite was said - once you trust, upload should be
fine, without abuses.

--
Regards,
EddyP
=
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" A.Einstein

Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 7 Apr 2006, Micah Anderson outgrape:

> On 2006-04-06, Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On 6 Apr 2006, Benj. Mako Hill told this:
>>
>>> 
 And maybe I'm too heavily steeped in Debian culture to take an
 objective view, but I don't see any reason why translators,
 documentation writers, artists, et al. should look at the term
 "developer" and conclude it's not for them.
>>>
>>> First, none of these groups usually think of the work that they do
>>> as development. That's just not he way the word is used. But
>>> that'a semantic argument. The larger reason that this is a problem
>>> is because:
>>>
>>> (1) We as a project (and an NM project) are hesitant to give these
>>> people developership since it means they can upload to the
>>> project which introduces a set of potential risks and problems
>>> (one more account to compromise, etc).
>>
>> I'm sorry. If we can't trust these people not to abuse upload
>> privileges, then I certainly do not want to see them get  a say in
>> deciding how we conduct the project's business.
>
> By your argument, then the USA should give all its citizens access
> to our nuclear arsenal, launch codes, etc. because we trust them to
> have a say in deciding how the government is run.

Full members do not get rights to, say, restricted machines,
 or the archive, or the keyring, so you are actually supporting my
 views. Either that, or you have no idea how the internals of Debian
 work.


> Your rigid definition of trust = upload don't make sense to me. Yes,
> you have to be trusted to be able to upload, but you dont have to
> have upload abilities to be able to be trusted.

No. I merely consider voting rights to require more trust than
 merely uploading a random package to Sid that can be NMU'd or removed
 el rapidemento.

Casting the deciding vote that chages a foundation document,
 man, that is worth something.

I would not be fundamentally opposed to restricting voting
 rights to a subset of people who can upload. But you need to be at
 least as trusted as people who can upload in order to vote -- and
 having your key in the keyring and entry in db.d.o is a nice way to
 implement that.

manoj
-- 
We're all looking for a woman who can sit in a mini-skirt and talk
philosophy, executing both with confidence and style.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 7 Apr 2006, JC Helary spake thusly:

>>> Did it ever occur to you that one can be an active Debian
>>> contributor and not use Debian at all ?
>>
>> No. And even if it did, I fail to see how that is relevant
>> here. You cannot be an active Debian contributor without knowing
>> about its culture, which is what Marc was talking about.
>
> What is Debian more than a sum of packages that for some require
> translations, when seen from a FOSS translator ?

Which is fine. If that is all Debisn is to them, they shall
 not miss voting rights -- I mean, they already control the
 translations, the important bit, neh?

> Why do you think there is a need to "understand" whatever Debian
> "culture" there is to technically contribute to the project ?

Nothing. But we are not talking technical contributions, we
 are talking about deciding where the project is heading, or over
 riding the decisions of delegates, or changing the social contract --
 all oof these were on the table this early in this year alone.

> This point is very relevant because putting subjective conditions
> (understanding a "culture") to allow full membership has nothing to
> do with objectively valuating a contribution.

We can value contributions until we are blue in the face. RMS,
 Linus -- and a cast of thousands.  But mere contributiosn do not
 accrue people voting rights.

manoj

-- 
The best may slip, and the most cautious fall; He's more than mortal
that ne'er err'd at all.  -- Pomfret
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Christoph Berg]

Re: Manoj Srivastava 2006-04-06 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > 
> >> And maybe I'm too heavily steeped in Debian culture to take an
> >> objective view, but I don't see any reason why translators,
> >> documentation writers, artists, et al. should look at the term
> >> "developer" and conclude it's not for them.

The term "Developer" has been used for many years in Debian, and
efforts to change it are doomed to fail. No current (package-
maintaining) developer will want to give that title away. What we can
do, is to extend this title to all kinds of Debian (contributing)
members, be it artists, lawyers, whatever. I'm very much in favor of
doing this.

> > First, none of these groups usually think of the work that they do
> > as development. That's just not he way the word is used. But that'a
> > semantic argument. The larger reason that this is a problem is
> > because:
> >
> > (1) We as a project (and an NM project) are hesitant to give these
> > people developership since it means they can upload to the
> > project which introduces a set of potential risks and problems
> > (one more account to compromise, etc).

I agree that this is a problem. We have to make up our mind of who we
want to accept as member ("Developer"). I'm willing to discuss that at
Debconf, so if anyone else is interested in doing this, please tell
me.

> I'm sorry. If we can't trust these people not to abuse upload
>  privileges, then I certainly do not want to see them get  a say in
>  deciding how we conduct the project's business.
> 
> Eiether we trust them, in which case we should induct them in
>  as full members, or we don't, and in that case they do not get to
>  vote. 

My fullest ack here. Half-memberships of all kinds doesn't help, and
just insults people. Either we accept someone as a member and trust
them to use their abilities to the best (i.e. they won't NMU glibc if
they are an artist, and won't redesign the Debian logo if they are a
kernel hacker), or we shouldn't accept them as member.

This doesn't mean that every developer would have access to every
corner of the project (like currently, not every DD is a member of the
'debadmin' unix group), but that there are no un-crossable borders
(I'm a "package DD", yet I could ask for access to the webwml group to
start translating webpages).

Christoph
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Henning Makholm]

Scripsit JC Helary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>> Which makes "Maintainer" unsuitble for translation maintainers how,
>> exactly?

> Because translators mostly don't "maintain" translations but plainly
> "contribute" translations.

A translator whose general modus operandi is leave his translation
unmaintained once it is written should not become a voting member of
Debian anyway - not any more than a packager who leaves his package
unmaintained once it is uploaded.

-- 
Henning Makholm"Manden med det store pindsvin er
  kommet vel ombord i den grønne dobbeltdækker."

Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt]

MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> That's total bullshit. If they would really care about joining, they
>> could simply start to read the documentation, which explicitly shows
>> them how to understand the term maintainer and/or developer.
> That's total bullshit. Do you read all documentation which seems
> irrelevant to the task you're trying to do?

No, but if I have problem, I read the documentation that applies to my
case. I think if you're unsure if the NM process is right for you,
reading the documentation for the NM process is a good idea. And, if
you're still unsure, you can ask the relevant people.

If *you* think that this documentation is irrelevant for the NM process,
you're free to submit patches. Until then, I'd prefer if you would not
reply in a purely polemic way, as your contribution to actually solve
the problem isn't identifiable.

> If you really cared about the project, you could simply start to talk
> to prospective developers and try to understand why they're not
> joining.

I did, but I'm not sending status reports about private
conversations. Anyway, I know what (some) people doing documentation
and/or translation work have perceived as problem - in my rewrite of the
NM docs, I tried to bear in mind what had been criticized before, as the
old version didn't speak about tasks beside package maintainance
before. This has changed.
Naturally, those docs are mainly speaking about the NM process as
applicant doing packaging work. The reason for this is quite simple -
more than 95% of the people expressing their wish to join do
packaging work.

> Not really a helpful reply style, is this?

Yep, you haven't been helpful at all.

Marc
-- 
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Its the InterNIC's fault.


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Micah Anderson]

On 2006-04-06, Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 6 Apr 2006, Benj. Mako Hill told this:
>
>> 
>>> And maybe I'm too heavily steeped in Debian culture to take an
>>> objective view, but I don't see any reason why translators,
>>> documentation writers, artists, et al. should look at the term
>>> "developer" and conclude it's not for them.
>>
>> First, none of these groups usually think of the work that they do
>> as development. That's just not he way the word is used. But that'a
>> semantic argument. The larger reason that this is a problem is
>> because:
>>
>> (1) We as a project (and an NM project) are hesitant to give these
>> people developership since it means they can upload to the
>> project which introduces a set of potential risks and problems
>> (one more account to compromise, etc).
>
> I'm sorry. If we can't trust these people not to abuse upload
>  privileges, then I certainly do not want to see them get  a say in
>  deciding how we conduct the project's business.

By your argument, then the USA should give all its citizens access to
our nuclear arsenal, launch codes, etc. because we trust them to have
a say in deciding how the government is run.

> Eiether we trust them, in which case we should induct them in
>  as full members, or we don't, and in that case they do not get to
>  vote. 

There are many people in my organization that I trust completely, who
do not have root on our boxes. They dont have root because of a number
of very obvious reasons that have nothing to do with trust in other
areas. 

Your rigid definition of trust = upload don't make sense to me. Yes,
you have to be trusted to be able to upload, but you dont have to have
upload abilities to be able to be trusted.

Micah


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

On 2006/04/07, at 1:39, Wouter Verhelst wrote:

But requiring people who are not software developers to understand
they suddenly have become developers because Debian is special is a
little far fetched.


I don't see why.


Because the term does not apply to non coders in a normal software  
context.
And the NMP implies that too whatever provisions have been made in  
trying to adapt the text to the present project.


Jean-Christophe Helary


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

Did it ever occur to you that one can be an active Debian contributor
and not use Debian at all ?


No. And even if it did, I fail to see how that is relevant here. You
cannot be an active Debian contributor without knowing about its
culture, which is what Marc was talking about.


What is Debian more than a sum of packages that for some require  
translations, when seen from a FOSS translator ?


Why do you think there is a need to "understand" whatever Debian  
"culture" there is to technically contribute to the project ?


This point is very relevant because putting subjective conditions  
(understanding a "culture") to allow full membership has nothing to  
do with objectively valuating a contribution.


Which is what this thread is about.

Jean-Christophe Helary


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

Which makes "Maintainer" unsuitble for translation maintainers how,
exactly?


Because translators mostly don't "maintain" translations but plainly  
"contribute" translations.


Ie. Translators mainly _translate_.

What do you call translation maintenance anyway ?


What are the contributors doing if not helping to maintain
the package, in your opinion?


I do not talk about "contributors", but several different kinds of
"maintainers".


Which is obviously not what this thread is about.

Jean-Christophe Helary


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Benjamin Seidenberg]

Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 12:35:54AM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
>   
>> On Thursday 06 April 2006 23:55, Erinn Clark wrote:
>> 
>>> Do you mean this question? (Actually about ld, but it's the closest one
>>> I found that seemed appropriately irrelevant.)
>>>
>>> I3. What is the -Bsymbolic ld flag, exactly what does it do, and
>>> how that differs from library symbol versioning? What problems do
>>> -Bsymbolic linking solve? Why is libc6 not compiled with -Bsymbolic?
>>>   
>> I would guess this is a question from the T&S part of the process, the 
>> part that is supposed to be tailored to the applicant. At least, I'm very 
>> happy to say, I have never seen this question during my NM process 
>> (which, as you probably know, was the translator/documentation writer 
>> track).
>> 
>
> I have seen the question, and answered it. If you were to ask it again
> to me, I wouldn't know the answer. I'd probably either do the same
> research again, or look in my NM archives -- I think the latter is
> probably fastest.
>
> I've never maintained a C library, though I did agree to help a little
> bit on some C++ library recently. I don't expect I'll go looking up what
> -Bsymbolic means even now.
>
> Is this question useless? I don't know. Apparantly, it didn't help me in
> any way. And this is the type of question that can get obsolete too.
> What is much more useful to test, but can't *that* easily be done with a
> fixed questionaire, is ensuring people can apply common sense, and can
> research things they need. From a DD, I expect that given a challenge, a
> technical packaging issue previously totally unkown, one can some way or
> the other resolve it. That is what you're doing as DD anyway, you get
> the weirdest issues in bugs, as user questions, etc, and you need to
> find a way to resolve that. Policy doesn't mention your special case, so
> you're on your own.
>
> I'd very much like for more emphasis being placed on such problem
> resolution capabilities, next to also interaction/communication
> capabilities (with bugreporters, fellow DDs, upstreams, etc etc).
>
> --Jeroen
>
>   
I'm in the NM process. I'm done with part 1 of T&S and still have to do
part 2, which includes that question. I don't know the answer to it. To
find the answer, I'll have to do research. I'll probably read a lot
about libraries while finding the answer, since it's a topic I don't
know much about. I don't think the question is designed so much as to
test whether I know about library compile options as my ability to do
research and to process, understand and utilize the information I find.
I think that Debian and the NM process don't care about how well you
know compile time options from memory, but that you have the skill to
learn new skills and pieces of information as you need them. That's a
general skill, and can only be tested by more specific questions.

Just my $0.02,
Benjamin Seidenberg

PS: If anyone wants to share the answer, reply by private mail. ;-)





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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Jacobo Tarrio]

El viernes,  7 de abril de 2006 a las 19:27:52 +0900, JC Helary escribía:

> Because translators mostly don't "maintain" translations but plainly  
> "contribute" translations.
> Ie. Translators mainly _translate_.
> What do you call translation maintenance anyway ?

 Well, after a translation is made, there may be errors in it. Or the
program is updated so there are new/modified/deleted strings, so the
translation must be updated.

-- 
   Jacobo Tarrío | http://jacobo.tarrio.org/


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[MJ Ray]

Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> That's total bullshit. If they would really care about joining, they
> could simply start to read the documentation, which explicitly shows
> them how to understand the term maintainer and/or developer.

That's total bullshit. Do you read all documentation which seems
irrelevant to the task you're trying to do? If you really cared
about the project, you could simply start to talk to prospective
developers and try to understand why they're not joining.

Not really a helpful reply style, is this?

Hoping,
-- 
MJR/slef
Laux nur mia opinio: vidu http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Bv sekvu http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Henning Makholm]

Scripsit Jeroen van Wolffelaar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>> > I3. What is the -Bsymbolic ld flag, exactly what does it do, and
>> > how that differs from library symbol versioning? What problems do
>> > -Bsymbolic linking solve? Why is libc6 not compiled with -Bsymbolic?

> I've never maintained a C library, though I did agree to help a little
> bit on some C++ library recently. I don't expect I'll go looking up what
> -Bsymbolic means even now.

> Is this question useless? I don't know. Apparantly, it didn't help me in
> any way.

I'm not so sure. Remembering that this is the exact spelling of the
option that frobnitzes the thingamajib is pretty useless, I agree.
(For the record, I remember that the hardest part of this question was
thinking up a way in which -Bsymbolic could conceivably be said to be
_similar_ to symbol versioning ...)

But simply through the process of once having been able to answer
these question you get some latent background knowledge of how symbols
are handled in ELF shared libaries and how the abstraction works, and
I think that background knowledge is valuable. Symbol-name mistakes
can cause pretty tricky interaction bugs, and it's not too farfetched
that maintainers of packages that _use_ libraries will sometimes need
some basic knowledge about which kind of things the dynamic linker
does.

I'm not saying that this is _necessarily_ something EVERY
package-maintaining developer has to know (especially given how much
of Debian actually happens in scripting languages anyway these days),
but it is not as completely specialized as you appear to imply.

-- 
Henning Makholm   "Oh, hvilken kok detilig!"


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Don Armstrong]

On Thu, 06 Apr 2006, Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
> 
> > Scripsit "Benj. Mako Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > I think that the fact that the upload keyring is the same as the
> > > voting keyring is bad. Contributors are told they can't vote
> > > until they learn C compiler flags.
> > 
> > Who tells contributors that nonsense?
> 
> Have you read the NM process templates lately? They are what almost
> every contributor looking for enfranchisement sees.

That's primarily because the common case is a contributor who is
involved in package maintenance; for them at least a cursory
understanding of how the various flags affect programs that link
against library is important.

The T&S template for NM who are doing documentation[1] actually
doesn't even ask about compiler flags. Presumably NMs who are involved
in other bits of Debian will be asked questions that are more tailored
to the area of Debian in which they are contributing. [I personally
haven't yet served as an AM to someone who isn't doing the traditional
package maintainer route yet though... and since I'm not heavily
involved in those areas myself,[2] it's unlikely that I'd be
comfortable serving as an AM for contributors to those areas.]

As a final note, the templates are just that, templates. An AM is
relatively free to tailor the process to the job that the applicant is
actually performing. This is a bit more time consuming for the AM, but
it's ideal for applicants who are involved in non-traditional roles in
Debian.


Don Armstrong


1: This is nm_ts.doc.txt in the nm-templates repository for those
following along at home

2: Well, beyond being involved in the licensing aspect of things,
anyway.
-- 
Three little words. (In decending order of importance.)
I
love
you
 -- hugh macleod http://www.gapingvoid.com/graphics/batch35.php

http://www.donarmstrong.com  http://rzlab.ucr.edu


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Henning Makholm]

Scripsit "Benj. Mako Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
>> Scripsit "Benj. Mako Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>> > I think that the fact that the upload keyring is the same as the
>> > voting keyring is bad. Contributors are told they can't vote until
>> > they learn C compiler flags.

>> Who tells contributors that nonsense?

> Have you read the NM process templates lately?

Are you referrring to the template set that is explicitly meant for
applicants that want to do package maintenance (in contrast to, say,
documentation)?

In particular I don't see anything about compiler flags in the ts.doc
template.

In general, a prospective applicant needs to do some rather thorough
searching before he finds the template at all - they are publicly
viewable, but not simply through clearly marked links from the NM
corner webpage.  Long before the would-be applicant stumbles across
the templates, he will have seen
 which clearly indicates
that the T&S step depends on what kind of contributions the applicant
wants to make to Debian.

-- 
Henning Makholm  "Jeg kunne ikke undgå at bemærke at han gik på hænder."

Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 6 Apr 2006, Eddy Petrişor said:

> On 4/6/06, Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Did it ever occur to you that one can be an active Debian
>>> contributor and not use Debian at all ?
>>
>> No. And even if it did, I fail to see how that is relevant
>> here. You cannot be an active Debian contributor without knowing
>> about its culture, which is what Marc was talking about.
>
> Tell that to Clytie.

Be that as it may, one should not get to make decisions
 critical to the project without knowing the projects culture,
 methodologies, philosophy, and the basics of its internal structures.

I also can't put much trust in a person to not harm Debian
 (delibrately or inadvertently), if there level of involvement and
 commitment to the project isn't demonstrable.

Lacking that, I would humbly thank the person for their
 contribution, acknowledge it, and leave enfranchisement off the
 table.

manoj
-- 
Sometimes, too long is too long. Joe Crowe
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Jeroen van Wolffelaar]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 12:35:54AM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
> On Thursday 06 April 2006 23:55, Erinn Clark wrote:
> > Do you mean this question? (Actually about ld, but it's the closest one
> > I found that seemed appropriately irrelevant.)
> >
> > I3. What is the -Bsymbolic ld flag, exactly what does it do, and
> > how that differs from library symbol versioning? What problems do
> > -Bsymbolic linking solve? Why is libc6 not compiled with -Bsymbolic?
> 
> I would guess this is a question from the T&S part of the process, the 
> part that is supposed to be tailored to the applicant. At least, I'm very 
> happy to say, I have never seen this question during my NM process 
> (which, as you probably know, was the translator/documentation writer 
> track).

I have seen the question, and answered it. If you were to ask it again
to me, I wouldn't know the answer. I'd probably either do the same
research again, or look in my NM archives -- I think the latter is
probably fastest.

I've never maintained a C library, though I did agree to help a little
bit on some C++ library recently. I don't expect I'll go looking up what
-Bsymbolic means even now.

Is this question useless? I don't know. Apparantly, it didn't help me in
any way. And this is the type of question that can get obsolete too.
What is much more useful to test, but can't *that* easily be done with a
fixed questionaire, is ensuring people can apply common sense, and can
research things they need. From a DD, I expect that given a challenge, a
technical packaging issue previously totally unkown, one can some way or
the other resolve it. That is what you're doing as DD anyway, you get
the weirdest issues in bugs, as user questions, etc, and you need to
find a way to resolve that. Policy doesn't mention your special case, so
you're on your own.

I'd very much like for more emphasis being placed on such problem
resolution capabilities, next to also interaction/communication
capabilities (with bugreporters, fellow DDs, upstreams, etc etc).

--Jeroen

-- 
Jeroen van Wolffelaar
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357)
http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Frans Pop]

On Thursday 06 April 2006 23:55, Erinn Clark wrote:
> Do you mean this question? (Actually about ld, but it's the closest one
> I found that seemed appropriately irrelevant.)
>
> I3. What is the -Bsymbolic ld flag, exactly what does it do, and
> how that differs from library symbol versioning? What problems do
> -Bsymbolic linking solve? Why is libc6 not compiled with -Bsymbolic?

I would guess this is a question from the T&S part of the process, the 
part that is supposed to be tailored to the applicant. At least, I'm very 
happy to say, I have never seen this question during my NM process 
(which, as you probably know, was the translator/documentation writer 
track).

So this only proves the point: translators _can_ become DD without having 
to know this kind of technical detail. Of course, they are also expected 
to stay far away from packaging libraries [1] after they have completed 
their NM process...

Cheers,
FJP

[1] A principle I've been violating to some extend with my recent series 
of patches for library udeb dependency handling. But well, exceptions 
make the rule :-)


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Joey Hess]

Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> Unfortunately, I think most if that is from before we drove
>  her away from Debian into the arms of Ubuntu.

Clytie is on record as IIRC, using OSX and contributing to as many
translations of free software projects as she can, whether she
personally uses them or not. She's also listed as the Vietnamese
translator for d-i, which is currently 98% up-to-date.

-- 
see shy jo


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 17:56:06 +0100 MJ Ray wrote:

> Jonas Smedegaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 16:35:38 +0100 MJ Ray wrote:
> > > Of your last 20 recorded uses of the word "Maintainer" on
> > > debian lists before this thread that I found, you use it once
> > > in another meaning (webmaster) and that was uncapitalised.
> > 
> > Which makes "Maintainer" unsuitble for translation maintainers how,
> > exactly?
> 
> If 95% of the time, people (including you, as described) use 
> Maintainer to mean package maintainer, then people will not
> read Maintainer and think "...or translator or tech writer..."
> in this context. Many people (including me) would not even
> think of using Maintainer to refer to a translator.

I deal with packaging 95% of the time, so yes, most probably I use the
term mostly in packaging contexts. And when used in Debian Policy to
describe packaging rules, it makes sense to equal "maintainer" with
"package maintainer". But in a general Debian context I would be rude
to assume _package_ maintainance, ignoring other important maintainance
tasks within our project.


> > > What are the contributors doing if not helping to maintain
> > > the package, in your opinion?
> > 
> > I do not talk about "contributors", but several different kinds of
> > "maintainers".
> 
> You did write about contributors.

I wrote about those contributors committed to Debian by _maintaining_ a
part of Debian, be it packages, languages, law texts or other parts.

The most exact general term I know of for that group of contributors
is, well, maintainers.

Another general term, developers, is fine too. But IMHO not better. And
I see not reason to avoid the term "maintainers" to mean _all_
maintainers - even if some of them has other more suitable terms when
described by themselves - as is the case with those maintaining
translations as discussed below.


> > What eg. Translation Maintainers are doing besides helping maintain
> > some package is maintaining _consistency_ across packages, and
> > across pseudo-packages like our website.
> 
> Isn't it easier and more common to call them translators, not
> Translation Maintainers?

It is, yes.

And it is easier and more common to call package maintainers
maintainers.

But that doesn't make "maintainers" mean only package maintainers.


 - Jonas

-- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 - Enden er nær: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Eddy Petrişor]

On 4/6/06, Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Nobody's saying that you are going to stop being a developer. You can
> > be proud of what you do being a developer. You've earned that status.
> >
> > But requiring people who are not software developers to understand
> > they suddenly have become developers because Debian is special is a
> > little far fetched.
>
> I don't see why.

Because we should not redefine common used language in order not to
offend present DDs, but we should make it clear that DD does not have
to be == packager/coder.

Because the people aproaching Debian should not go away because they
realise we are redefinig words. Heck, we _shouldn't_ redefine them. Is
a really broad acception that developer==code developer==programmer.

--
Regards,
EddyP
=
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" A.Einstein

Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Eddy Petrişor]

On 4/6/06, Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Did it ever occur to you that one can be an active Debian contributor
> > and not use Debian at all ?
>
> No. And even if it did, I fail to see how that is relevant here. You
> cannot be an active Debian contributor without knowing about its
> culture, which is what Marc was talking about.

Tell that to Clytie.

--
Regards,
EddyP
=
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" A.Einstein

Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Erinn Clark]

* Benj. Mako Hill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006:04:06 15:35 -0400]: 
> 
> > Scripsit "Benj. Mako Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > 
> > > I think that the fact that the upload keyring is the same as the
> > > voting keyring is bad. Contributors are told they can't vote until
> > > they learn C compiler flags.
> > 
> > Who tells contributors that nonsense?
> 
> Have you read the NM process templates lately? They are what almost
> every contributor looking for enfranchisement sees.

Do you mean this question? (Actually about ld, but it's the closest one I found
that seemed appropriately irrelevant.)

I3. What is the -Bsymbolic ld flag, exactly what does it do, and how
that differs from library symbol versioning? What problems do
-Bsymbolic linking solve? Why is libc6 not compiled with -Bsymbolic?


-- 
off the chain like a rebellious guanine nucleotide


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 6 Apr 2006, Lars Wirzenius uttered the following:

> to, 2006-04-06 kello 15:05 -0500, Manoj Srivastava kirjoitti:
>> On 6 Apr 2006, JC Helary said:
>>> Obviously this thread started with somebody who is a very active
>>> contributor for whom it was unclear.
>>
>> Active contributor to Ubuntu, I think. She should get Ubuntu
>> voting rights.
>
> Actually, the Debian BTS is splattered all over (in a good way) with
> Vietnamese translations from Clytie, so she's contributed quite a
> lot to Debian, too.


Unfortunately, I think most if that is from before we drove
 her away from Debian into the arms of Ubuntu.

manoj
-- 
A shy teenage boy finally worked up the nerve to give a gift to
Madonna, a young puppy.  It hitched its waggin' to a star.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Lars Wirzenius]

to, 2006-04-06 kello 15:05 -0500, Manoj Srivastava kirjoitti:
> On 6 Apr 2006, JC Helary said:
> > Obviously this thread started with somebody who is a very active
> > contributor for whom it was unclear.
> 
> Active contributor to Ubuntu, I think. She should get Ubuntu
>  voting rights.

Actually, the Debian BTS is splattered all over (in a good way) with
Vietnamese translations from Clytie, so she's contributed quite a lot to
Debian, too.

(Not commenting on other aspects of the issue at hand.)

-- 
Fundamental truth #5: Always ask the simple troubleshooting questions
first.


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 6 Apr 2006, Benj. Mako Hill told this:

> 
>> And maybe I'm too heavily steeped in Debian culture to take an
>> objective view, but I don't see any reason why translators,
>> documentation writers, artists, et al. should look at the term
>> "developer" and conclude it's not for them.
>
> First, none of these groups usually think of the work that they do
> as development. That's just not he way the word is used. But that'a
> semantic argument. The larger reason that this is a problem is
> because:
>
> (1) We as a project (and an NM project) are hesitant to give these
> people developership since it means they can upload to the
> project which introduces a set of potential risks and problems
> (one more account to compromise, etc).

I'm sorry. If we can't trust these people not to abuse upload
 privileges, then I certainly do not want to see them get  a say in
 deciding how we conduct the project's business.

Eiether we trust them, in which case we should induct them in
 as full members, or we don't, and in that case they do not get to
 vote. 

manoj
-- 
Any given program will expand to fill available memory.
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 6 Apr 2006, JC Helary said:

>
> On 2006/04/06, at 22:50, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote:
>
>> And anyway, it's not like people who should consider to join have
>> nothing to do with Debian and don't know the particularities of its
>> culture - even if this is unclear to people who are new to Debian,
>> it should be no problem for an active contributor.
>
> Did it ever occur to you that one can be an active Debian
> contributor and not use Debian at all ?

Contribution itself does not merit the right to decide how
 the project conducts business. Involvement in, and commitment to, and
 taking responsibility for some area of the project, well, that is
 what get you voting rights.

> Obviously this thread started with somebody who is a very active
> contributor for whom it was unclear.

Active contributor to Ubuntu, I think. She should get Ubuntu
 voting rights.

manoj
-- 
I just ate a whole package of Sweet Tarts and a can of Coke. I think I
saw God. Hathrume Duk
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 6 Apr 2006, JC Helary uttered the following:

>
> On 2006/04/06, at 23:18, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis) wrote:
>
>> Also even if -from an outsiders perspective- the jargon used is
>> quirky and strange. I have to wonder: if one is not even willing to
>> look at the jargon used by the project from the projects point of
>> view. Then why on earth would one be applying to NM-process in the
>> first place? And how on earth would one expect to pass the
>> philosyphy and procedures part of the process?
>
> Which is the reason why this whole thread started.
>
> Why is it that active contributors would have to go through all this
> to have a right to vote in the Project Leader's election ?

To build up a sense of trust, and give the project some
 assurance that they adhere to the core principles of the project. It
 also gives a sense that there is a commitment to the project itself,
 not some upstream-or-downstream entity.

> This is what is questioned by people who contribute.

Lots of people contribute to the OS that Debian produces.  Not
 all of those contributions reflect commitment to the project itself,
 or responsibility for an area of Debian, and continued contribution. 

> If you dismiss such claims by saying "they just have to wait for 200
> days after having contributed for so long in the dark" it is not
> going to work.

With enfranchisement comes responsibility, and with
 responsibility comes the requirement of assurances that the person
 can handle the responsibility.

manoj
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Benj. Mako Hill]

> Scripsit "Benj. Mako Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> > I think that the fact that the upload keyring is the same as the
> > voting keyring is bad. Contributors are told they can't vote until
> > they learn C compiler flags.
> 
> Who tells contributors that nonsense?

Have you read the NM process templates lately? They are what almost
every contributor looking for enfranchisement sees.

Regards,
Mako


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Benj. Mako Hill]

> And maybe I'm too heavily steeped in Debian culture to take an
> objective view, but I don't see any reason why translators,
> documentation writers, artists, et al. should look at the term
> "developer" and conclude it's not for them.

First, none of these groups usually think of the work that they do as
development. That's just not he way the word is used. But that'a
semantic argument. The larger reason that this is a problem is
because:

 (1) We as a project (and an NM project) are hesitant to give these
 people developership since it means they can upload to the
 project which introduces a set of potential risks and problems
 (one more account to compromise, etc).

 (2) Our NM process is highly optimized and documented for testing
 technical knowledge and package maintenance. Documentation is
 maybe an exception. A pure advocacy NM would run into trouble.

If we can address those two issues, I think my issues with the
terminology will go away.

> Developing an operating system is what we *all* do; not just
> packagers or maintainers, but also documentation writers, bug
> submitters, buildd maintainers, QA folks, translators, and everyone
> else.  The term isn't "software developer" or "programmer", it's
> simply "developer", which I think encapsulates the concept of what
> Debian is, and I wouldn't like to lose that.

> I'd rather see us do a better job of communicating this principle to
> prospective developers instead.

Fair enough.

Regards,
Mako

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Benj. Mako Hill]

> On 4 Apr 2006, Benj. Mako Hill spake thusly:
> 
> > 
> >> The problem is more one of 'how do we identify those people that
> >> aren't a Developer, but that do contribute regularly'.
> >
> > There are a number of ways of doing this although, like NM, it's
> > ultimately a human process that is carried out in the context of
> > guidelines. Ubuntu has separate categories for member and maintainer
> > (only the latter can upload although they are equal in all other
> > respects) and their process involves testimonial, demonstrated work
> > over a long period of time, and review by an elected
> > board. Something similar could work in Debian.
> >
> Ubuntu also gives limited rights to its so called members. Can
>  members throw out the benevolent dictator for life? fire all the
>  members on the committees? overrule the peoject leader? Or any
>  delegate? Propose and with enough numbers, change the very articles
>  of incorporation or other foundation documents?

Ubuntu members get to vote on the members of the community council,
most similar to the Debian project leader. All members get equal votes
in this regard.

Clearly, the role of Mark Shuttleworth is an undemocratic one in
Ubuntu and it's my least favorite things about the project
governance. I would not suggest Debian adopt such a model and I have
publicly expressed uneasiness with it.

> I'd be happy to follow the ubuntu model -- gice every
>  /. reader "full rights", but whittle down their powers so all
>  they can really do is say they are members, and vote on some
>  inconsequential things.

But that's not what happens in Ubuntu. The total rights of Ubuntu
members may be less than the non-technical rights of Debian
developers' but the maintainers in Ubuntu have *zero* extra power over
the non-technical ones when it comes to non-technical issues or
project leadership.

I'm saying that non-technical contributions to Debian should be
recognized with enfranchisement equal to technical contributors when
it comes to non-technical issues.

> > The system could still require a key signed by another Debian
> > developer. The identity part of NM is not the most difficult part
> > for many and is easily overcome even by non-developers.
> 
> Err, all that means is that we have a weak trust in the
>  identity of the people, but does nothing to address commitment,
>  responsibility, and trust in that person, or any idea if they
>  adhere to the foundation principles of the project.

I've said in other posts that I want to recognized significant and
sustained contributions. Those contributions should be at the same
level for technical and non-technical contributors but we should be
able to recognize contributions of both types.

> The solution is not to dilute the franchise, the solution is
>  rather to induct all trustworthy significant contributors commited to
>  the project as full members.
> 
> It has never been about work -- else upstream authors doing
>  all the heavy lifting should be the ones voting. It is about
>  commitment, responsibility, and trust.

That's precisely what I was suggesting. Perhaps we're not in
disagreement at all.

Regards,
Mako


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt]

JC Helary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On 2006/04/06, at 22:50, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote:
>> And anyway, it's not like people who should consider to join have
>> nothing to do with Debian and don't know the particularities of its
>> culture - even if this is unclear to people who are new to Debian, it
>> should be no problem for an active contributor.
> Did it ever occur to you that one can be an active Debian contributor  
> and not use Debian at all ?

Yes. Still, people who have no idea how Debian works are not wanted as
DD.

Marc
-- 
BOFH #337:
the butane lighter causes the pincushioning


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[MJ Ray]

Jonas Smedegaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 16:35:38 +0100 MJ Ray wrote:
> > Of your last 20 recorded uses of the word "Maintainer" on
> > debian lists before this thread that I found, you use it once
> > in another meaning (webmaster) and that was uncapitalised.
> 
> Which makes "Maintainer" unsuitble for translation maintainers how,
> exactly?

If 95% of the time, people (including you, as described) use 
Maintainer to mean package maintainer, then people will not
read Maintainer and think "...or translator or tech writer..."
in this context. Many people (including me) would not even
think of using Maintainer to refer to a translator.

Yes, you can argue that people are buggy, but what else is 
this language for, if not to communicate well with people?

> > What are the contributors doing if not helping to maintain
> > the package, in your opinion?
> 
> I do not talk about "contributors", but several different kinds of
> "maintainers".

You did write about contributors.

> What eg. Translation Maintainers are doing besides helping maintain
> some package is maintaining _consistency_ across packages, and across
> pseudo-packages like our website.

Isn't it easier and more common to call them translators, not
Translation Maintainers?

> > In the debian context, I think Maintainer is commonly
> > understood as a package maintainer. We have a less confusing
> > word for a developer ("Developer"), so why not use it?
> 
> They are both fine words. Why _avoid_ one of them for some uses,
> only due to them being less common?

That's not the reason. Nice strawman, though.

We should avoid it because it apparently communicates the
wrong thing to many people in this context. There seem to be
willing developers who support debian's aims that we could
attract more easily if we address this bug.

Clear?
-- 
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 10:29:54PM +0900, JC Helary wrote:
> 
> On 2006/04/06, at 22:21, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> 
> >If people don't understand that you don't have to write code to be a
> >developer, then they should be told. If they are told, and they
> >misunderstand, then that is a bug which should be fixed. But don't go
> >around claiming that I'm suddenly not a "developer" anymore -- I
> >happen to be quite proud of that.
> 
> Nobody's saying that you are going to stop being a developer. You can  
> be proud of what you do being a developer. You've earned that status.
> 
> But requiring people who are not software developers to understand  
> they suddenly have become developers because Debian is special is a  
> little far fetched.

I don't see why.

-- 
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 11:33:05PM +0900, JC Helary wrote:
> 
> On 2006/04/06, at 22:50, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote:
> 
> >And anyway, it's not like people who should consider to join have
> >nothing to do with Debian and don't know the particularities of its
> >culture - even if this is unclear to people who are new to Debian, it
> >should be no problem for an active contributor.
> 
> Did it ever occur to you that one can be an active Debian contributor  
> and not use Debian at all ?

No. And even if it did, I fail to see how that is relevant here. You
cannot be an active Debian contributor without knowing about its
culture, which is what Marc was talking about.

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

On 2006/04/06, at 23:18, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis) wrote:

Also even if -from an outsiders perspective- the jargon used is  
quirky and

strange. I have to wonder:
if one is not even willing to look at the jargon used by the  
project from

the projects point of view. Then why on earth would one be applying to
NM-process in the first place? And how on earth would one expect to  
pass

the philosyphy and procedures part of the process?


Which is the reason why this whole thread started.

Why is it that active contributors would have to go through all this  
to have a right to vote in the Project Leader's election ?


This is what is questioned by people who contribute.

If you dismiss such claims by saying "they just have to wait for 200  
days after having contributed for so long in the dark" it is not  
going to work.


Jean-Christophe Helary


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

On 2006/04/06, at 22:50, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote:


And anyway, it's not like people who should consider to join have
nothing to do with Debian and don't know the particularities of its
culture - even if this is unclear to people who are new to Debian, it
should be no problem for an active contributor.


Did it ever occur to you that one can be an active Debian contributor  
and not use Debian at all ?


Obviously this thread started with somebody who is a very active  
contributor for whom it was unclear.


Jean-Christophe Helary


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 16:35:38 +0100 MJ Ray wrote:

> Jonas Smedegaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 14:18:13 +0100 MJ Ray wrote:
> > > [...] It seems better to name it after the
> > > target of the process, what they become - a Developer.
> > 
> > The Maintainer mentioned in a package control field is a Package
> > Maintainer.
> > 
> > I fail to see why details about maintaining _packages_ should make
> > us avoid the same term for other maintainance tasks.
> 
> Of your last 20 recorded uses of the word "Maintainer" on
> debian lists before this thread that I found, you use it once
> in another meaning (webmaster) and that was uncapitalised.

Which makes "Maintainer" unsuitble for translation maintainers how,
exactly?


> What are the contributors doing if not helping to maintain
> the package, in your opinion?

I do not talk about "contributors", but several different kinds of
"maintainers".

What eg. Translation Maintainers are doing besides helping maintain
some package is maintaining _consistency_ across packages, and across
pseudo-packages like our website.


> In the debian context, I think Maintainer is commonly
> understood as a package maintainer. We have a less confusing
> word for a developer ("Developer"), so why not use it?

They are both fine words. Why _avoid_ one of them for some uses,
only due to them being less common?


> Hope that helps you see,

Sorry, it didn't. Possibly you are not to blame for that.


 - Jonas

-- 
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* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[MJ Ray]

Jonas Smedegaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 14:18:13 +0100 MJ Ray wrote:
> > [...] It seems better to name it after the
> > target of the process, what they become - a Developer.
> 
> The Maintainer mentioned in a package control field is a Package
> Maintainer.
> 
> I fail to see why details about maintaining _packages_ should make
> us avoid the same term for other maintainance tasks.

Of your last 20 recorded uses of the word "Maintainer" on
debian lists before this thread that I found, you use it once
in another meaning (webmaster) and that was uncapitalised.
I think I recall you using "maintainers and contributors" to
refer to all the maintainers of a package group before, too.
What are the contributors doing if not helping to maintain
the package, in your opinion?

In the debian context, I think Maintainer is commonly
understood as a package maintainer. We have a less confusing
word for a developer ("Developer"), so why not use it?

Hope that helps you see,
-- 
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On Thu, 6 Apr 2006 22:29:54 +0900 JC Helary wrote:

> The bug is in the relation between "from new maintainer->to  
> developer" and the corollary "other contributors don't _need_ to  
> become developers".
> 
> However true that technically is, it clearly does not contribute to  
> the well-being of non-maintainer contributors in the Project.

No, the bug is in realizing that a "New Maintainer" does not imply
_package_ maintainance - it is just the most common maintainance task,
and, it seems, the simplest to judge during the NM process.

Contribution is (sometimes) a single action, while maintainance implies
steady commitment.

Lots of people contribute to Debian. I find it sane to draw the line
between those just doing that and those committed to continuously
maintain package/translation/legal/whatever contributions (their own and
those of others).


 - Jonas

-- 
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Andreas Barth]

* JC Helary ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [060406 16:14]:
> However true that technically is, it clearly does not contribute to  
> the well-being of non-maintainer contributors in the Project.

I agree to that statement - but that shouldn't make us replace the nice
term Debian Developer with a not-so-nice term. And, actually, it is not
a real show stopper. So, if someone has a good term, I'm all for using
that term - but until that, DD just works well (and of course, we should
keep the term DD anyways for the package maintainers, it's just a nice
term).


Cheers,
Andi
-- 
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)]

On Thursday 06 April 2006 15:29, JC Helary wrote:
> Nobody's saying that you are going to stop being a developer. You can
> be proud of what you do being a developer. You've earned that status.
>
> But requiring people who are not software developers to understand
> they suddenly have become developers because Debian is special is a
> little far fetched.

> The bug is in the relation between "from new maintainer->to
> developer" and the corollary "other contributors don't _need_ to
> become developers".

I really don't think that the current terminology is gonna be a problem IF 
the NM-page make it clear that the process is open to non-package 
maintainers. 

Now obviously the current current NM-corner doesn't do a good enough job of 
that, which is a reason to work on rewording it so the page does make clear 
that the process _is_ open to non-package-maintainers (something that's 
being worked on elsewhere in this thread)

I think it should be apperant at this point that changing the terminology 
from 'New Maintainer' and 'Debian Developer' to something else is 
controversial enough that we're not likely to generate a consensus on it 
any time soon. So could we please focus on the changes we can get consensus 
on?

Also even if -from an outsiders perspective- the jargon used is quirky and 
strange. I have to wonder:
if one is not even willing to look at the jargon used by the project from 
the projects point of view. Then why on earth would one be applying to 
NM-process in the first place? And how on earth would one expect to pass 
the philosyphy and procedures part of the process?
-- 
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1. Encrypted mail preferred (GPG KeyID: 0x86624ABB)
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

On 2006/04/06, at 22:21, Wouter Verhelst wrote:


If people don't understand that you don't have to write code to be a
developer, then they should be told. If they are told, and they
misunderstand, then that is a bug which should be fixed. But don't go
around claiming that I'm suddenly not a "developer" anymore -- I  
happen

to be quite proud of that.


Nobody's saying that you are going to stop being a developer. You can  
be proud of what you do being a developer. You've earned that status.


But requiring people who are not software developers to understand  
they suddenly have become developers because Debian is special is a  
little far fetched.


The bug is in the relation between "from new maintainer->to  
developer" and the corollary "other contributors don't _need_ to  
become developers".


However true that technically is, it clearly does not contribute to  
the well-being of non-maintainer contributors in the Project.


Jean-Christophe Helary


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 14:18:13 +0100 MJ Ray wrote:

> Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > How about calling it New Developer if that's what it should be?
> > 
> > Why does it need to be changed? People maintain websites,
> > translations, documentation, packages - I don't see a reason to
> > change the current name.
> 
> It seems to cause confusion with the Maintainer (with a capital
> like in NM) control field defined in -policy. If the process
> applies to people other than those newly appearing in the
> Maintainer field, rename. It seems better to name it after the
> target of the process, what they become - a Developer.

The Maintainer mentioned in a package control field is a Package
Maintainer.

I fail to see why details about maintaining _packages_ should make
us avoid the same term for other maintainance tasks.


 - Jonas

-- 
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* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt]

JC Helary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>   (We also have plenty of people who contribute heavily to the
>> project without being recognized as members; but I think that
>> "member" is a lesser title that doesn't do justice to their
>> contributions -- I  want to see these people recognized as
>> *developers*, not just as members.) 
> Right now, if I am not wrong, the whole of the localization process  
> is simply not recognized whatever you call it. And I have no doubt a  
> big bunch of the people who contribute sincerely to the project would  
> never consider starting to NM process because of the emphasis on  
> "maintainer" and "developer".

That's total bullshit. If they would really care about joining, they
could simply start to read the documentation, which explicitly shows
them how to understand the term maintainer and/or developer.

And anyway, it's not like people who should consider to join have
nothing to do with Debian and don't know the particularities of its
culture - even if this is unclear to people who are new to Debian, it
should be no problem for an active contributor.

Marc
-- 
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262: Funktionale Programmierung
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 07:19:22AM -0400, Kevin Mark wrote:
> Hi Steve,
> you and others use the word 'contributing', 'contribute',
> 'contributions'. So why not 'Debian Contributor'.

Ghaah.

Because I'm a developer, who develops an operating system, not just
someone who merely 'contributes' to it. Thanks.

What's with all the fuss about "It should be called something better!"?
The name "Debian Developer" is perfectly fine as it is, and there is
_nothing_ wrong with it.

If people don't understand that you don't have to write code to be a
developer, then they should be told. If they are told, and they
misunderstand, then that is a bug which should be fixed. But don't go
around claiming that I'm suddenly not a "developer" anymore -- I happen
to be quite proud of that.

Yes, that's an emotional reaction. No, that's not a bug.

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[MJ Ray]

Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > How about calling it New Developer if that's what it should be?
> 
> Why does it need to be changed? People maintain websites, translations,
> documentation, packages - I don't see a reason to change the current
> name.

It seems to cause confusion with the Maintainer (with a capital
like in NM) control field defined in -policy. If the process
applies to people other than those newly appearing in the
Maintainer field, rename. It seems better to name it after the
target of the process, what they become - a Developer.

[about needing special agreement for non-packaging work]
> After speaking about writing documentation as way to show your
> skills. The problem with other things is that an AM/the FD/the DAM often
> can't verify the quality of these contributions, so we need to work out
> how to control that. Think of translators, for example - I'd never say
> I'm able to say if a translation to french is good, but I know that I
> can ask Christian Perrier about that. Stuff like that should be
> coordinated, so that no work needs to be done twice.

As I understand it, most translations should already be
reviewed on the appropriate -l10n list. So, the AM should only
need second-language (2L) understanding of the target language
in order to verify the process, not the 1L skill to review the
translation themselves.

-- 
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt]

MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> "cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> The 'Maintainer' in NM is a misnomer, I understand it is possible to go 
>> through NM as a translator or documentation writer.
> I also had replies from Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt and Eddy Petrişor
> saying similar things. The first two paragraphs of the NM Corner
> seem to stress that only maintainers need be developers, then
> there's an explanation that developers can upload anything so
> we need to verify technical skills, before the intro finishes
> by suggesting sponsorship.

Before speaking about sponsorship (which some people wanting to maintain
packages as developer still don't know), this sentence clarifies the
issue:

| To ease the process, it is important to already be familiar with Debian,
| so we require that prospective developers have already contributed
| - in the form of translations, documentation, sending patches or
| package maintenance.  

> Looking in more detail, Step 4: Tasks and Skills does say that
> other contributions are possible, but suggests that these are
> special cases needing extra agreement from FrontDesk and DAM.

After speaking about writing documentation as way to show your
skills. The problem with other things is that an AM/the FD/the DAM often
can't verify the quality of these contributions, so we need to work out
how to control that. Think of translators, for example - I'd never say
I'm able to say if a translation to french is good, but I know that I
can ask Christian Perrier about that. Stuff like that should be
coordinated, so that no work needs to be done twice.

>> So maybe what we need to do is to rename NM to NC (new contributor) with 
>> subpages detailing the differnet T&S for the different classes of 
>> contributors.
> How about calling it New Developer if that's what it should be?

Why does it need to be changed? People maintain websites, translations,
documentation, packages - I don't see a reason to change the current
name.

Marc
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Kevin Mark]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 02:30:46AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 05:24:26PM +0900, JC Helary wrote:
> > >Disadvantage, because the change will not be so evident from the
> > >outside (more of a publicity issue, but that is what a part of the
> > >problem is, so we need to change the image that DD=package maintainer)
> 
> > No because, as you'll see in my edits to cobako's proposal, the aim  
> > is to have people think in terms of "membership" and not in terms of  
> > "developership". Which will obviously make it easier for long term  
> > non-maintainer contributors to understand that they are also welcome.  
> > All this is really a perception problem.
> 
> I think the name "member" is worse than "developer" *because* it places the
> emphasis on membership (belonging) instead of on developership (doing the
> work).  We have no shortage of folks already who "belong" without
> contributing much to the project, I don't think this is the model we want to
  
> emphasize.  (We also have plenty of people who contribute heavily to the
 ^^
> project without being recognized as members; but I think that "member" is a
> lesser title that doesn't do justice to their contributions -- I want to see
^
> these people recognized as *developers*, not just as members.)
> 
> And maybe I'm too heavily steeped in Debian culture to take an objective
> view, but I don't see any reason why translators, documentation writers,
> artists, et al. should look at the term "developer" and conclude it's not
> for them.  Developing an operating system is what we *all* do; not just
> packagers or maintainers, but also documentation writers, bug submitter,
> buildd maintainers, QA folks, translators, and everyone else.  The term
> isn't "software developer" or "programmer", it's simply "developer", which I
> think encapsulates the concept of what Debian is, and I wouldn't like to
> lose that.  I'd rather see us do a better job of communicating this
> principle to prospective developers instead.
Hi Steve,
you and others use the word 'contributing', 'contribute',
'contributions'. So why not 'Debian Contributor'. The legal staff
contribute to Debian, the Artists contribute to Debian, the (non-DD)
package maintainers contribute to Debian, etc. It just seems like an
ingrained word 'Debian developer' and 'DD'. I think 'Debian legal
contributor','Debian translation contributor', 'Debian art contributor',
etc. seem to not have the 'member' association and empathizes
contribution.
Cheers,
Kev
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

No because, as you'll see in my edits to cobako's proposal, the aim
is to have people think in terms of "membership" and not in terms of
"developership". Which will obviously make it easier for long term
non-maintainer contributors to understand that they are also welcome.
All this is really a perception problem.


I think the name "member" is worse than "developer" *because* it  
places the
emphasis on membership (belonging) instead of on developership  
(doing the

work).


Well, it is already accepted that Debian Project Members are Debian  
Developers (I put the capital letters for emphasis). That is already  
indicated in the NMP and in the constitution.


Although your point about the _meaning_ of "developing" is valid, you  
seem to forget that Debian is a _software_ context where development  
is usually meant as _coding_.


In the same context, translators are called localizers and _not_  
developers.


We have a perception problem here and sticking to a wording that made  
sense when mostly coders where contributing will not solve anything.


Would you really feel "downgraded" if called "DPM" instead of "DD" ?


We have no shortage of folks already who "belong" without
contributing much to the project, I don't think this is the model  
we want to

emphasize.


Well, obviously they don't "belong" very much if they don't produce  
anything. And I have no doubt some of those "folks" think they are  
"developers" but that does not affect the model either ?



  (We also have plenty of people who contribute heavily to the
project without being recognized as members; but I think that  
"member" is a
lesser title that doesn't do justice to their contributions -- I  
want to see

these people recognized as *developers*, not just as members.)


Right now, if I am not wrong, the whole of the localization process  
is simply not recognized whatever you call it. And I have no doubt a  
big bunch of the people who contribute sincerely to the project would  
never consider starting to NM process because of the emphasis on  
"maintainer" and "developer".


We are not discussing what good looking title give to people who are  
long terms contributors, but how to clarify an already existing  
process so that people who never considered applying, because they  
don't call what they do "development", eventually realize that their  
contribution is just as important as the maintainer's one next door.


If that requires selecting more neutral words then such words should  
be considered.


Besides, Debian is a Project, and in any "project" based lingo one  
usually uses the term "member" to indicate active contributors. Hence  
the emphasis on "Debian _Project_ Member" and not simply "member".



lose that.  I'd rather see us do a better job of communicating this
principle to prospective developers instead.


I think that is fair, and I think that is one part of what is at  
stake in the discussions we are having.


The other part is (and that is what started the thread), if the QA  
process requires a strict selection of the "technicians" that are  
involved in the release, why does the voting process require the same  
thing ?


Jean-Christophe Helary


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[MJ Ray]

JC Helary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> No because, as you'll see in my edits to cobako's proposal, the aim =20
> is to have people think in terms of "membership" and not in terms of =20
> "developership". Which will obviously make it easier for long term =20
> non-maintainer contributors to understand that they are also welcome. =20=

I think that'd be a step backwards. Those who get to vote should
be contributing to the development (=being developers) of debian
in some way. "Members" only for voting strike me as deadwood.
If we need to make becoming a developer clearer, then let's do
that, rather than introduce a new class of non-developer member.

I remain of the opinion that developer=maintainer is a bug and
developer=member is a feature. All members should help to develop,
in some way, but not necessarily to package or program.

Hope that helps,
-- 
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Laux nur mia opinio: vidu http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Bv sekvu http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Steve Langasek]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 05:24:26PM +0900, JC Helary wrote:
> >Disadvantage, because the change will not be so evident from the
> >outside (more of a publicity issue, but that is what a part of the
> >problem is, so we need to change the image that DD=package maintainer)

> No because, as you'll see in my edits to cobako's proposal, the aim  
> is to have people think in terms of "membership" and not in terms of  
> "developership". Which will obviously make it easier for long term  
> non-maintainer contributors to understand that they are also welcome.  
> All this is really a perception problem.

I think the name "member" is worse than "developer" *because* it places the
emphasis on membership (belonging) instead of on developership (doing the
work).  We have no shortage of folks already who "belong" without
contributing much to the project, I don't think this is the model we want to
emphasize.  (We also have plenty of people who contribute heavily to the
project without being recognized as members; but I think that "member" is a
lesser title that doesn't do justice to their contributions -- I want to see
these people recognized as *developers*, not just as members.)

And maybe I'm too heavily steeped in Debian culture to take an objective
view, but I don't see any reason why translators, documentation writers,
artists, et al. should look at the term "developer" and conclude it's not
for them.  Developing an operating system is what we *all* do; not just
packagers or maintainers, but also documentation writers, bug submitters,
buildd maintainers, QA folks, translators, and everyone else.  The term
isn't "software developer" or "programmer", it's simply "developer", which I
think encapsulates the concept of what Debian is, and I wouldn't like to
lose that.  I'd rather see us do a better job of communicating this
principle to prospective developers instead.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://www.debian.org/


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

On 2006/04/06, at 17:00, Eddy Petrişor wrote:


On 4/6/06, JC Helary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

How about calling it New Developer if that's what it should be?


New Member ?


That would have the advantage (and disadvantage, at the same time) the
the abbreviation stays the same.


And also the advantage of being consistent with the glossary (where  
Developer=Member) and the constitution (where Developer=Member).


A person who has completed the New Member process obviously becomes a  
Member :) So grammatically it also has the advantage of being clear :)



Disadvantage, because the change will not be so evident from the
outside (more of a publicity issue, but that is what a part of the
problem is, so we need to change the image that DD=package maintainer)


No because, as you'll see in my edits to cobako's proposal, the aim  
is to have people think in terms of "membership" and not in terms of  
"developership". Which will obviously make it easier for long term  
non-maintainer contributors to understand that they are also welcome.  
All this is really a perception problem.


Jean-Christophe Helary

Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Eddy Petrişor]

On 4/6/06, JC Helary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > How about calling it New Developer if that's what it should be?
>
> New Member ?

That would have the advantage (and disadvantage, at the same time) the
the abbreviation stays the same.

Advantage, because of people inertia calling it "NM"
Disadvantage, because the change will not be so evident from the
outside (more of a publicity issue, but that is what a part of the
problem is, so we need to change the image that DD=package maintainer)

--
Regards,
EddyP
=
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" A.Einstein

Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

On 2006/04/06, at 15:27, MJ Ray wrote:


We've thoroughly queered the pitch now, but how many translators
or documenters believed they could go through NM?


I think what matters more than the process itself is what Clytie just  
wrote:


The point is, Frans, since I started this discussion, that we don't  
necessarily want to be DDs.

But I, specifically, want to be able to vote in elections.
Do those two things really need to be the same?
from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team /  
nhóm Việt hóa phần mềm tự do)


I think that is why the hinted "membership" process must be clarified.

Contributors don't _want_ to be developers, but they feel they have a  
right to formally voice their opinion when such times come.


Official membership for decisive and long term contributors must be  
recognized regardless of the nature of the contribution. The fact  
that Debian is a distribution and that packagers are at the "core" of  
things is not relevant since there are plenty of tasks that are  
required to make Debian the succesful distribution it is today.



(There are the other general concerns about NM too, such as
an average of 200 days waiting for DAM at present.)


Definitely. If it is a developer's duty to handle that specific  
process then it is about time developers take their responsibilities  
in that regard. It is hard to swallow that developers have such  
exclusive rights if they don't have more consideration for their  
duties toward the community.


So maybe what we need to do is to rename NM to NC (new  
contributor) with

subpages detailing the differnet T&S for the different classes of
contributors.


How about calling it New Developer if that's what it should be?


New Member ?

Jean-Christophe Helary

Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[MJ Ray]

"cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> The 'Maintainer' in NM is a misnomer, I understand it is possible to go 
> through NM as a translator or documentation writer.

I also had replies from Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt and Eddy Petrişor
saying similar things. The first two paragraphs of the NM Corner
seem to stress that only maintainers need be developers, then
there's an explanation that developers can upload anything so
we need to verify technical skills, before the intro finishes
by suggesting sponsorship.

Looking in more detail, Step 4: Tasks and Skills does say that
other contributions are possible, but suggests that these are
special cases needing extra agreement from FrontDesk and DAM.

I reviewed the last year of "New Maintainers" reports and found
7+2+2+1+1+5+1+4+2+11 = 36 new maintainers, but only one seemed
clearly a translator/writer and there were four that I'm not
sure about (package teams make it hard to tell sometimes).

We've thoroughly queered the pitch now, but how many translators
or documenters believed they could go through NM?

(There are the other general concerns about NM too, such as
an average of 200 days waiting for DAM at present.)

> So maybe what we need to do is to rename NM to NC (new contributor) with 
> subpages detailing the differnet T&S for the different classes of 
> contributors.

How about calling it New Developer if that's what it should be?

Thanks,
-- 
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Laux nur mia opinio: vidu http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Bv sekvu http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Benj. Mako Hill]

> How is "making long-term, sustained, and significant contributions to
> Debian" _not_ "engaging in development"?

If you think that Debian's long-time pro-bono legal counsel is
engaging in development, I think we're just getting bogged down in
semantics. I'm saying we should be able to take significant and
sustained non-technical contributions.

Regards,
Mako

-- 
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://mako.cc/


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 07:27:03AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > [...] and b) there is no clear-cut and
> > objective criteria currently to identify those people who do make
> > regular contributions without being a developer.
> 
> Unless something has changed since I last looked, the NM process
> was hardly clear-cut or objective either.

No, but signing uploads is.

> > Put differently, here are a number of questions you should answer for
> > this to have merit:
> > * What should a non-DD contributor be doing before we consider him/her
> >   eligible to vote?
> 
> Making a worthwhile contribution to the project. Interestingly,
> self-censorship by non-members allows projects such as Indymedia
> to function with much weaker membership qualification than debian.

There's a major difference between a Bad Guy(TM) intruding Indymedia and
doing all kinds of bad things, and a Bad Guy(TM) intruding Debian and
doing all kinds of bad things. At least in my opinion, there is; YMMV.

> > * How should we link their key to their identity, so that we *know* a
> >   given key belongs to some non-DD contributor? For DDs, we know because
> >   we've seen their uploads. For contributors, we don't see their
> >   uploads, so we can only know through key signing, which is a weaker
> >   criterion (unless they sign their contributions with their GPG key).
> 
> We should see submissions by contributors and those could be signed.

How would you suggest to implement that?

> > * Should non-DD contributors be allowed to vote on just about anything?
> >   If not, what types of votes should they be allowed to vote on, and
> >   what types of votes should they not be allowed to vote on? Make this a
> >   clear rule, so that you can apply it to any possible and impossible
> >   thing we might have an idea about voting on.
> 
> - Appoint or recall the Project Leader.
> - Override any decision by the Project Leader or a Delegate.
> - Override any decision by the Technical Committee.

I have no real objection to the above.

> - Issue, supersede and withdraw nontechnical policy documents and
>   statements.

I do have a problem with this one. As part of NM, you formally agree to
uphold the Social Contract and the DFSG. This is what gives us a common
philosophical ground.

Therefore, I don't think we want people to co-decide what our
philosophical position is regarding some practical subject if they
haven't gone through NM. Even if, by the fact that they contribute, it
can logically be deduced that they probably do agree with our
philosophical position.

> I exclude the power to amend the constitution, which they've agreed to
> even less than developers. All of the others affect the work done by
> contributors in some way, so I think there's an argument for giving
> them a voice. Maybe one or more of the above should be subdivided, but
> I'm not sure.

The power to amend the constitution would also affect their work; so I
don't think that should be an argument.

> > * Should non-DD contributors be allowed to propose General Resolutions?
> 
> Only ones that they can vote on.

Yeah, that'd make sense.

> > * Should non-DD contributors be allowed to nominate themselves as DPL?
> 
> No, it should require a number of seconds.

Even then, personally I'm not convinced.

[...]
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 12:45:50AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On 3 Apr 2006, Wouter Verhelst outgrape:
> 
> > I don't have any problems per se with non-DD contributors being
> > allowed to vote on matters of purely technical substance.
> 
> I have a problem with _anyone_ voting on a matter of purely
>  technical substance.

I was referring to Constitution points 4.1.3 and 4.1.4. Most votes that
would fall under those would seem to be technical to me. Of course, that
doesn't mean they _have_ to be technical.

Additionally, with 'technical' I also meant "things that relate to
technicalities in the Project's organization", which is not necessarily
the same thing as "technical stuff relating to computers". Though I
should've been more careful in my choice of words on a forum of highly
technical people ;-)

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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

On 2006/04/05, at 21:53, Frans Pop wrote:


On Wednesday 05 April 2006 14:27, JC Helary wrote:

Besides, the systematic use of "developer" is also confusing and to
clarify things should be replaced my "member" as is also hinted in
the same document.


You cannot change the word "developer" to "member" without changing  
the

Debian Constitution [1] ...

[1] http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution



Well then there is a problem since the glossary in:
http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint#Member

says:


Member, Developer:
A Debian Project member, who has gone through the New Maintainer  
process and had their application accepted.


So obviously, members are developers and developers are members.

Also in the constitution there is clear reference to  
developers=project members in 5.1.2



2. Lend authority to other Developers.

The Project Leader may make statements of support for points of  
view or for other members of the project, when asked or otherwise;


Problem is, the systematic use of "developer" supports an exclusive  
maintainer->developer->voter frame of mind when the use of  
contributor->member->voter would have a totally different impact.


Obviously it is not a procedural modification that is at stake here,  
but a linguistic one (and we are back on topic).


The constitution does not need to be changed since it already  
acknowledge implicitly that project member and developer are  
equivalent terms.


What needs to be modified is the "Debian New Maintainers' Corner", to  
provide an unambiguous wording as to what kind of contribution and  
what kind of process are required by a contributor to apply for  
project membership.


Jean-Christophe Helary


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Frans Pop]

On Wednesday 05 April 2006 14:27, JC Helary wrote:
> Besides, the systematic use of "developer" is also confusing and to
> clarify things should be replaced my "member" as is also hinted in
> the same document.

You cannot change the word "developer" to "member" without changing the 
Debian Constitution [1] ...

[1] http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

On 2006/04/05, at 20:53, Frans Pop wrote:


On Wednesday 05 April 2006 13:14, JC Helary wrote:

I am not sure what point you are trying to make ?


The point I'm trying to make is that it seems like translators are  
waiting
for the mountain to come to them (change procedures, make entry  
easier).

It does not work like that: you have to go to the mountain.


There is no need to change any procedure. Only to clarify the wording of
http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint

So that the text does not unnecessarily discriminate between  
maintaining packages and contributing in other forms.


Such non-discrimination is hinted in the text itself and in the  
application steps. It is only that the document is not worded in a  
way that present the necessary information the right way.


Besides, the systematic use of "developer" is also confusing and to  
clarify things should be replaced my "member" as is also hinted in  
the same document.


I have no doubt that a rewording of the document would clarify a lot  
of (non) issues and help members as well as other contributors to see  
what the structure of the project really is.



What I mean is that as there are currently no pure "translation DDs",
there is no need to differentiate between "rights". It would only
_potentially_ become a problem when there are more than a few people
accepted as DD who do not have formally proven skills in packaging.


Considering the above status, I don't see how having pure translators  
or pure documentation writers could be considered a "problem".


People who need upload rights because their contribution pattern  
requires upload right must have upload rights when deemed responsible  
enough.


People who have no need for upload rights _and_ who never intend to  
do anything related to packaging should not be discrinated against  
and should not be given upload rights since their contribution  
pattern does not require so.


There are provisions for different skill tests and from that should  
follow different access to different tools.


Jean-Christophe Helary


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Frans Pop]

On Wednesday 05 April 2006 13:14, JC Helary wrote:
> I am not sure what point you are trying to make ?

The point I'm trying to make is that it seems like translators are waiting 
for the mountain to come to them (change procedures, make entry easier). 
It does not work like that: you have to go to the mountain.

> About the specific item you mention above (develop a strategy to
> "deal" with translators), I think that is _specifically_ what non
> package maintaining contributors want: to be "dealt" with.

What I mean is that as there are currently no pure "translation DDs", 
there is no need to differentiate between "rights". It would only 
_potentially_ become a problem when there are more than a few people 
accepted as DD who do not have formally proven skills in packaging.

As always, it is much more likely that some kind of "rights" split will be 
made when and if it becomes necessary, than that procedures and 
infrastructure are changed beforehand.

Personally I now make quite heavy use of my upload "rights", not only for 
the installer but also for occasional NMUs for other packages. Of course 
I'm very careful that I double check the changes I make and I'm a long 
way from being confident enough to start a package from scratch.
One part of the DD process is to check if people are responsible, aware of 
their own limitations and willing and able to check documentation or ask 
for help when they reach those limits in their work.

Once you are a DD, your commitment to the project will probably make sure 
you don't abuse the infrastructure and there probably will be no real 
need to differentiate between how people became a DD.
Also, even "real packagers" foul up sometimes...

Conclusion: there is no need to "deal" with anything; translators that 
want to become DD should just apply. If during or after their NM process 
it is discovered that adaptations are needed, it will happen 
automatically (especially if "translation DDs" themselves become involved 
in the NM process as AMs for other translators).


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[JC Helary]

On 2006/04/05, at 20:02, Frans Pop wrote:


On Wednesday 05 April 2006 11:44, JC Helary wrote:

There is a huge confusion between being a developer and having
technical rights, and being a developer and having political rights.


I seriously do wonder why translators, if they really want to get the
developer status, don't get together and just apply for NM. That would
force the project to develop a strategy to deal with it (if there  
really

is something that needs to be dealt with).


I am not sure what point you are trying to make ?

Could you make a short summary ?

About the specific item you mention above (develop a strategy to  
"deal" with translators), I think that is _specifically_ what non  
package maintaining contributors want: to be "dealt" with.


As for the buzz before election times, well, that's what election  
times are for: create buzz. I don't see any problem with that.


Jean-Christophe Helary


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Frans Pop]

On Wednesday 05 April 2006 11:44, JC Helary wrote:
> There is a huge confusion between being a developer and having
> technical rights, and being a developer and having political rights.

I seriously do wonder why translators, if they really want to get the 
developer status, don't get together and just apply for NM. That would 
force the project to develop a strategy to deal with it (if there really 
is something that needs to be dealt with).

But no, what really happens is that every year or so, there is some mild 
flamewar - coincidentally (?) always around the time of a DPL election - 
about how "things should be better" and "why are we not allowed to vote".
And then things are magically silent again for about 10 months.

In the end my conclusion is that most translators are quite happy with 
their current status. They know their work is appreciated and in general 
they get the support and access rights they need through the huge efforts 
of the i18n coordinators.
The same goes for documentation writers (although there is a distinct lack 
of those) and website maintainers (same; hi Jutta).

How do I dare say this? Simple: I _did_ enter Debian as a translator / 
documentation writer only last year. My NM process was one of the 
shortest in recent history (6 months), partly because the T&S part was 
reduced, partly because I had a lot of support, but mostly through 
showing commitment and jumping in where help was needed.

In short: if you want to be a Developer, stop pussyfooting around, find an 
Advocate, talk things over with him/her and apply! Write a mail to the 
Front Desk to make it clear that you do want to enter the project as a 
translator or documentation writer.
The main thing is to show commitment to the project. What helps a lot is 
being willing to work (and having done work!) on other areas than "just" 
translating your own language.

Be prepared to go into discussion with your Account Manager if you feel 
(s)he is setting too technical tasks. But also be prepared to answer 
quite a few questions about what "suites" are, how packages move from one 
to the other, how the BTS works, etc. After all, you are entering Debian, 
so you should know at least the basics of its infrastructure and how to 
use it (or at least, how not to abuse it).

Debian is a distribution consisting of packages, so naturally its 
organizational focus is on people who create those packages. But if you 
want to get in on another basis, you can get in.
If you don't think it's worth the effort, then just be happy with the 
contribution you already do make and know that it is very much 
appreciated.
If you don't want to learn the basic technical infrastructure of the 
project, than maybe it is better that you are not a "Developer" but 
instead let the i18n coordinators take the responsibility for that.


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Kevin Mark]

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On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 09:43:57PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit Kevin Mark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 02:36:58PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote:
> >> Scripsit "Benj. Mako Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> >> > It's argueably the most important right that is reserved for developers
> >> > but it does not necessary stand to reason that it should be reserved
> >> > only for those who engage in development.
> 
> >> > I'd like to see those who have made long-term, sustained, and
> >> > significant contributions to Debian enfranchised.
> 
> >> How is "making long-term, sustained, and significant contributions to
> >> Debian" _not_ "engaging in development"?
> 
> > just to clarify, does 'engaging in development' equate to 'doing
> > software related stuff' or could it include 'helping to improve the
> > Debian organization in other ways'?
> 
> As far as I'm aware, everything in Debian is software-related stuff in
> that it all exists to enable and support the creation of a free
> operating system.
> 
Hi Henning,
I see 'open source' as a means to create software. I see 'free software'
as a means to create software and a community. Part of that community
involves 'technical support' through ML's, IRC channels, writing DOCS,
HOWTO's, WIKI's, Installfests, Conferences, because these contribute
to Debian continuing to exist and grow. This is one reason why I would
like to see Debian at least poll their opinion even if they never become
enfranchised. 

Also, ML's and IRC are the place users go before or instead of emailing
the program author and complaining, so at least in some way we do help
lessen the maintainers load and do support for his/her app. Obviously
some of us do one email worth and some have done years worth. Also, I
know that I and others always encourage users to submit bug report and
install popcon, again this help debian. Imagine if debian had no ML or
IRC, how would the maintainers deal with 100's of supports request?

I was just reading something about creating a FLOSS project (by Mako)
and thinking that Debian plays a unique role is the floss world. While
most projects are created to 'scratch an itch'. Debian takes on the
additional task of i18n and l10n while most upstream dont need to/want
to/have the resources to. This makes translators an important part of
the Debian community and they contributes to the further adoption of
floss worldwide.

'software-related stuff' sounds ambigous. I'd love to see an
enumerated list of what that represents.
cheers,
Kev
- -- 
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Eddy Petrişor]

On 4/5/06, MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> How can someone who is not a package maintainer become a
> developer, if becoming a developer requires being a maintainer?

Not quite, if you contribue to different areas with your effort, you
can bexom a DD, see NM page.

--
Regards,
EddyP
=
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" A.Einstein

Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt]

MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Now, if there are people like that who are not DD's, the
>>  question we must ask, is wjy are they not DD's?  If they are putting
>>  in the work, and have the same commitment as a DD does, even if they
>>  do not package stuff, why is the project not treating them as first
>>  class members?
> "The Debian New Maintainer process is a series of required
> proceedings to become a Debian Developer."
>  -- http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint
>
> How can someone who is not a package maintainer become a
> developer, if becoming a developer requires being a maintainer?

By maintaining documentation, translations or infrastructure.

Marc
-- 
BOFH #213:
Change your language to Finnish.


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[MJ Ray]

Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Now, if there are people like that who are not DD's, the
>  question we must ask, is wjy are they not DD's?  If they are putting
>  in the work, and have the same commitment as a DD does, even if they
>  do not package stuff, why is the project not treating them as first
>  class members?

"The Debian New Maintainer process is a series of required
proceedings to become a Debian Developer."
 -- http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint

How can someone who is not a package maintainer become a
developer, if becoming a developer requires being a maintainer?

Or is the above statement false? It seems to disagree with the
constitution section 3.2.1 "Developers are volunteers who agree
to further the aims of the Project insofar as they participate in
it, and who maintain package(s) for the Project or do other work
^^
which the Project Leader's Delegate(s) consider worthwhile"?
 -- http://www.nl.debian.org/devel/constitution

Are there other delegates beside the NM ones admitting DDs?

Or something else? 

Confusedly,
-- 
MJR/slef
Laux nur mia opinio: vidu http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Bv sekvu http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Clint Adams]

> Please help out the MIA process. It would really be
>  appreciated.

The MIA process does not address the type of people that are the
object of my complaints.


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Henning Makholm]

Scripsit Kevin Mark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 02:36:58PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote:
>> Scripsit "Benj. Mako Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>> > It's argueably the most important right that is reserved for developers
>> > but it does not necessary stand to reason that it should be reserved
>> > only for those who engage in development.

>> > I'd like to see those who have made long-term, sustained, and
>> > significant contributions to Debian enfranchised.

>> How is "making long-term, sustained, and significant contributions to
>> Debian" _not_ "engaging in development"?

> just to clarify, does 'engaging in development' equate to 'doing
> software related stuff' or could it include 'helping to improve the
> Debian organization in other ways'?

As far as I'm aware, everything in Debian is software-related stuff in
that it all exists to enable and support the creation of a free
operating system.

-- 
Henning Makholm"Nu kommer han. Kan du ikke høre knallerten?"

Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Kevin Mark]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 02:36:58PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit "Benj. Mako Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> > It's argueably the most important right that is reserved for developers
> > but it does not necessary stand to reason that it should be reserved
> > only for those who engage in development.
> >
> > I'd like to see those who have made long-term, sustained, and
> > significant contributions to Debian enfranchised.
> 
> How is "making long-term, sustained, and significant contributions to
> Debian" _not_ "engaging in development"?

Hi Henning,
just to clarify, does 'engaging in development' equate to 'doing
software related stuff' or could it include 'helping to improve the
Debian organization in other ways'?
Cheers,
Kev
-- 
|  .''`.  == Debian GNU/Linux == |   my web site:   |
| : :' :  The  Universal | debian.home.pipeline.com |
| `. `'  Operating System| go to counter.li.org and |
|   `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656   |
| my keysever: pgp.mit.edu   | my NPO: cfsg.org |


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 4 Apr 2006, Clint Adams stated:

>> In other words, those who are responsible, decide.
>
> I agree.  So let's divest of their voting privileges those DDs who
> don't contribute enough.  We have several hundred of those.

Please help out the MIA process. It would really be
 appreciated.

manoj
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in his own pockets."
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 4 Apr 2006, Benj. Mako Hill stated:

> 
>> Most developers seem to agree that there are bugs in our process
>> for integrating new members into the project, but that's not the
>> same as saying that non-DDs should be allowed to vote
>
> Clearly not.
>
>> voting rights are one of the few privileges that are reserved only
>> for developers, and arguably the most important.
>
> It's argueably the most important right that is reserved for
> developers but it does not necessary stand to reason that it should
> be reserved only for those who engage in development.

You know, in my new country (I've just joined the enfranchised
 ranks here). Even my new country, far more democratic than Debian
 ewver shall be, does not give franchise based on work people do. If
 it did, trust fund babies would have no vote, and the "illegal
 migrant workers" would. 

When I got my citizenship, it took an pledge of allegiance
 before things were stamped, and I had to go through an NM P&P section
 with a immigration official to see if I knew the philosophy and
 practical details of how the government worked. I also had a back
 ground and identity check done, to enter the web of trust.

Seems like people on -project as asking L1 visa holders [0]
 to get a right to vote, no questions asked

> I'd like to see those who have made long-term, sustained, and
> significant contributions to Debian enfranchised. That could mean
> broadening the category of developer through changes to NM or it
> could also mean another enfranchised category of contributor. That's
> what I read as the argument at the core of this thread -- but
> perhaps I was just projecting.

I think we need to make them full, undifferentiated, members
 of the project. Which means going through a process where we know
 they adhere to our foundation documents, and spend time with a
 trusted developer (AM) so we have a better idea of who they are, and
 can have a modicum of trust in that they do not sabotage the
 project.

Trust. Commitment. Responsibility.

manoj

[0] temporary foreign workers working for a local company in the
country to continue to do the job they did for the same
company in their home country)
-- 
wolf, n.: A man who knows all the ankles.
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 4 Apr 2006, Henning Makholm verbalised:

> Scripsit Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> On 3 Apr 2006, Wouter Verhelst outgrape:
>
>>> I don't have any problems per se with non-DD contributors being
>>> allowed to vote on matters of purely technical substance.
>
>> I have a problem with _anyone_ voting on a matter of purely
>> technical substance.
>
> According to the Constitution, members of the TC do.

I'll try dotting the i's and crossing the t's with this
 analogy: You and I can't vote to decide what is the law, what falls
 afoul of the law, and what does not. 

The supreme court justices do vote.

See the difference?

manoj
-- 
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 4 Apr 2006, Benj. Mako Hill spake thusly:

> 
>> The problem is more one of 'how do we identify those people that
>> aren't a Developer, but that do contribute regularly'.
>
> There are a number of ways of doing this although, like NM, it's
> ultimately a human process that is carried out in the context of
> guidelines. Ubuntu has separate categories for member and maintainer
> (only the latter can upload although they are equal in all other
> respects) and their process involves testimonial, demonstrated work
> over a long period of time, and review by an elected
> board. Something similar could work in Debian.
>
Ubuntu also gives limited rights to its so called members. Can
 members throw out the benevolent dictator for life? fire all the
 members on the committees? overrule the peoject leader? Or any
 delegate? Propose and with enough numbers, change the very articles
 of incorporation or other foundation documents?


I'd be happy to follow the ubuntu model -- gice every
 /. reader "full rights", but whittle down their powers so all
 they can really do is say they are members, and vote on some
 inconsequential things.

This is not what franchise in Debian entitles you to.

>> Since Debian votes are conducted through GPG-signed mails and
>> regular contributors aren't part of the Debian web of trust, this
>> is more than a convenience issue. Note that Debian Developers
>> without an active key in the keyring can't vote, either.
>
> The system could still require a key signed by another Debian
> developer. The identity part of NM is not the most difficult part
> for many and is easily overcome even by non-developers.

Err, all that means is that we have a weak trust in the
 identity of the people, but does nothing to address commitment,
 responsibility, and trust in that person, or any idea if they adhere
 to the foundation principles of the project.

Ultimately, the powers weilded by voting members affect me. I
 am willing to listen to directions from my peers, I am less likely to
 be inclined to take direction from anyone who has submitted a random
 patch to the BTS. I am also unlikely to want to take direction from
 anyone who has not demonstrated a modicum of commitment to the
 project. There is

Now, if there are people like that who are not DD's, the
 question we must ask, is wjy are they not DD's?  If they are putting
 in the work, and have the same commitment as a DD does, even if they
 do not package stuff, why is the project not treating them as first
 class members?

The solution is not to dilute the franchise, the solution is
 rather to induct all trustworthy significant contributors commited to
 the project as full members.

It has never been about work -- else upstream authors doing
 all the heavy lifting should be the ones voting. It is about
 commitment, responsibility, and trust.

manoj
-- 
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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Clint Adams]

> In other words, those who are responsible, decide.

I agree.  So let's divest of their voting privileges those DDs who
don't contribute enough.  We have several hundred of those.


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Re: Third call for votes for the debian project leader election 2006

[Henning Makholm]

Scripsit "Benj. Mako Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> It's argueably the most important right that is reserved for developers
> but it does not necessary stand to reason that it should be reserved
> only for those who engage in development.
>
> I'd like to see those who have made long-term, sustained, and
> significant contributions to Debian enfranchised.

How is "making long-term, sustained, and significant contributions to
Debian" _not_ "engaging in development"?

-- 
Henning Makholm  The burning swoosh shall be our emblem, and
we shall laugh in the face of trademark lawyers.


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