Hi Colin! You wrote:
> > What the people writing about this matter seem to be after is > > - what is expected of a maintainer? > > - how does the debian project fit together? > > - what can I do? > > - what must I know to be able to do this? > > - where do I go to ask if I must know something? > > One very important characteristic of a hacker is self-motivation. You > have to find those problems you want to solve, and solve them. Since > hackers are almost invariably volunteers, you can't be forced into doing > something that you're not interested in. If you haven't found your > place yet, that's fine; it will come. While of course what you are saying here is formally correct, this shouldn't mean that a project consisting of hackers (such as Debian), shouldn't have a clear internal structure, a clear idea of what things people can work on, or clear ideas of what the problems in the project are. I think this is one of the biggest problems of Debian: Debian has grown a lot in the past 3 years, but the internal structure didn't grow with it: while the number of packages has tripled or quadrupled, the amount of coordinations and QA work as stayed roughly constant. While in the past the current structure (with only a few official functions: DPL, DAM, Release manager, Technical committee) was probably sufficient to manage the project, IMO it is not for a project of the current size. > So, I don't think you're going to get anyone to answer the above > questions for you; the answers differ for each person. Of course, but this doesn't mean we shouldn't provide the infrastructure for people to make it easy to answers these question for themselfes. > > I think the real "debian problem" is not about maintainers MIA, orphaned > > packages or slow release cycles. The real problem is about lack of > > smooth introduction of new participants, and a complicated, undocumented > > internal structure. It is about unclear goals - what is the target > > audience or audiences of debian? > The target audience is everyone who uses a computer. OK, but that is not very clear a goal. What do we want with all those people? Do we want them all to use Debian? If so, what should be done to accomplish this goals? -- Kind regards, +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Bas Zoetekouw | Si l'on sait exactement ce | |--------------------------------| que l'on va faire, a quoi | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | bon le faire? | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Pablo Picasso | +---------------------------------------------------------------+
