5 ms·

This is a good, levelheaded response. But it makes it seem as if the process of becoming a sponsored maintainer was straightforward. It's not. A number of mon

by kilian 16y ago

This is a good, levelheaded response. But it makes it seem as if the process of becoming a sponsored maintainer was straightforward. It's not. A number of months ago, I tried getting trimage (a gui image optimizer, http://trimage.org http://trimage.org) into debian. Since I already had a working Ubuntu PPA, I figured it wouldn't be too hard. Packaging instructions for debian are available at various official websites, but contradictionary and they all seem to presume you have packaged for Debian before. Jargon like RFP (request for packaging) and ITP (intent to package) is thrown around frequently without explanation. Luckily, there is debian-mentors, meant to help upstream developers with becoming a sponsored maintainer. Most of the debian-mentors site links to outdated packaging instructions, using which will mean you will be ridiculed on the way-too-hostile mailinglist. Trying to do 'the right thing' is almost impossible, as most of the feedback will depend on the personal opinion of the person responding. I suspect this is because they, too, don't know which packaging instructions to use or point to. Trying to get my application into debian has been nothing but a massive, timesinking frustration, and I wish that wasn't the case.

zedshaw 16y ago
I've also brought up a counter question that people seem to not be able to answer: How do you get a bad Debian Developer fired? It seems once they get in they're in for life. Yet, some of the worst DDs who crap on programmers seem to somehow get in charge of projects they actually hate. If they hate it, and they're breaking the software because of this, then why can't I, the original author, get them fired. At an even simpler level, why can't you report bad DDs and have them reprimanded or taken off the project? That alone would bring out some better responses.
- davidw 16y ago
  > How do you get a bad Debian Developer fired? http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-3 http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-3 "The Project Leader's Delegate(s) may choose not to admit new Developers, or expel existing Developers. If the Developers feel that the Delegates are abusing their authority they can of course override the decision by way of General Resolution - see §4.1(3), §4.2." Although my guess is that they're not going to kick anyone out because of your ranting.
- todayiamme 16y ago
  Why do you need to get them fired? Just remove the community from an open source community and things will start happening FAST. Since, most people reading this thread are truly influential can't you guys talk with canonical and fork Debian under the Ubuntu project? You could model a community around how HN runs and vote things organically into existence while keeping a high level of quality. Instead of a rant match between a bunch of egos. If you think about it the HN model is perfect for such stuff. If and only if you attract the right audience, but your work already reaches them! Have you ever considered doing that? Or is there something wrong in my suggestion?
  - cmsj 16y ago
    Have you seen how many packages there are in Debian/Ubuntu and how many Debian Developers there are? Forking Ubuntu entirely away from Debian would be a massive task and would need a huge injection of skilled people. (Also internet voting for things leads to a system that encourages gaming the votes, see digg ;)
    - todayiamme 16y ago
      What I meant was inviting the best of those Debian devs to start afresh with the same code and create something even better under a new system. You could always make voting tiered and restricted like stack overflow to avoid this... Moreover, if you attract just the right kind of people then the community will start moderating itself and keep the fluff at bay. Surely, we need to try something like this out.
      - cmsj 16y ago
        what are you trying to achieve with the voting? and what is the incentive for volunteers to put hours into packaging work if they're being motivated by votes rather than their personal interests?
        todayiamme 16y ago
        A real democratic community where muscle flexing doesn't work and people can't exclude PHP from a package because it is "impure". If their big idea gets accepted they can collaborate with others to make it. Wouldn't that be a better way to do things?
JoachimSchipper 16y ago
A "good" response? It was very polite and informative, and I do appreciate that - but "you can package it yourself" is still ridiculous. Imagine upstream authors needing to get packaging rights from Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, Gentoo and FreeBSD just to give most (most!) users a nice way to install a non-broken version of their software.
- blasdel 16y ago
  To be fair, both Gentoo Portage and FreeBSD Ports pride themselves on shipping the upstream's software verbatim wherever possible (though on Gentoo the upstream ./configure options are exposed to users, occasionally causing grief).
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    Yes, I know. What are you trying to say?
    - blasdel 16y ago
      That they shouldn't be lumped in with the binary distros driven by release cycles and package freezes — they're the least likely to need an intervention from upstream.
      - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
        Yes, certainly. My point was "if everyone did as Debian does, publishing software would become an enormous chore". I didn't mean to slight Gentoo/FreeBSD - or, for that matter, Red Hat or the others.

by kilian 16y ago

zedshaw 16y ago

I've also brought up a counter question that people seem to not be able to answer: How do you get a bad Debian Developer fired? It seems once they get in they're in for life. Yet, some of the worst DDs who crap on programmers seem to somehow get in charge of projects they actually hate. If they hate it, and they're breaking the software because of this, then why can't I, the original author, get them fired. At an even simpler level, why can't you report bad DDs and have them reprimanded or taken off the project? That alone would bring out some better responses.

davidw 16y ago
> How do you get a bad Debian Developer fired? http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-3 http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-3 "The Project Leader's Delegate(s) may choose not to admit new Developers, or expel existing Developers. If the Developers feel that the Delegates are abusing their authority they can of course override the decision by way of General Resolution - see §4.1(3), §4.2." Although my guess is that they're not going to kick anyone out because of your ranting.
todayiamme 16y ago
Why do you need to get them fired? Just remove the community from an open source community and things will start happening FAST. Since, most people reading this thread are truly influential can't you guys talk with canonical and fork Debian under the Ubuntu project? You could model a community around how HN runs and vote things organically into existence while keeping a high level of quality. Instead of a rant match between a bunch of egos. If you think about it the HN model is perfect for such stuff. If and only if you attract the right audience, but your work already reaches them! Have you ever considered doing that? Or is there something wrong in my suggestion?
- cmsj 16y ago
  Have you seen how many packages there are in Debian/Ubuntu and how many Debian Developers there are? Forking Ubuntu entirely away from Debian would be a massive task and would need a huge injection of skilled people. (Also internet voting for things leads to a system that encourages gaming the votes, see digg ;)
  - todayiamme 16y ago
    What I meant was inviting the best of those Debian devs to start afresh with the same code and create something even better under a new system. You could always make voting tiered and restricted like stack overflow to avoid this... Moreover, if you attract just the right kind of people then the community will start moderating itself and keep the fluff at bay. Surely, we need to try something like this out.
    - cmsj 16y ago
      what are you trying to achieve with the voting? and what is the incentive for volunteers to put hours into packaging work if they're being motivated by votes rather than their personal interests?
      - todayiamme 16y ago
        A real democratic community where muscle flexing doesn't work and people can't exclude PHP from a package because it is "impure". If their big idea gets accepted they can collaborate with others to make it. Wouldn't that be a better way to do things?

JoachimSchipper 16y ago

A "good" response? It was very polite and informative, and I do appreciate that - but "you can package it yourself" is still ridiculous. Imagine upstream authors needing to get packaging rights from Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, Gentoo and FreeBSD just to give most (most!) users a nice way to install a non-broken version of their software.

blasdel 16y ago
To be fair, both Gentoo Portage and FreeBSD Ports pride themselves on shipping the upstream's software verbatim wherever possible (though on Gentoo the upstream ./configure options are exposed to users, occasionally causing grief).
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  Yes, I know. What are you trying to say?
  - blasdel 16y ago
    That they shouldn't be lumped in with the binary distros driven by release cycles and package freezes — they're the least likely to need an intervention from upstream.
    - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
      Yes, certainly. My point was "if everyone did as Debian does, publishing software would become an enormous chore". I didn't mean to slight Gentoo/FreeBSD - or, for that matter, Red Hat or the others.