Re: [Cooker] Creation of a community ( was : the end is inevitable)

[Stefan van der Eijk]

I propose ( as a draft ) "someone having write access to some part of the distribution", this will include website developers, documentation writers, and packagers.

I don't agree, necessarily. A leading distro has to have tight
standards. It's hard to get people to closely follow these standards. I know this from working with volunteers on the club. So write access
must be given out gingerly. That's not to say there should be a limited
number of people with access, but limited quality. That said, there
must be a quick and easy way for new developers to have their work
appraised, committed, and acknowledged.

But demand high quality for what they deliver. Otherwise, send it back.

Just giving someone write access isn't going to work, it's how you check the delievrables (in a smart & automated way) that's going to keep quality up to par.

How do we decide who become developer, what will be their responsabilities, their ressources ?

I dunno.  How does debian do it?

I beleive a maintainer per package. See:

http://www.debian.org/devel/join/

http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint

I also like their "package adoption" system: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

Maybe some sort of wiki system.  That could organize people and tasks,
and let new people sign up, and see what needs to be done.

Just like the debian system. I wrote to the cooker list last week describing a web based package submission system, see: http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/cooker/2003-01/msg02998.php

When you say we should divide people by task, what do you mean ?

I mean now, people are divided into categories like: contribs, club,
installation, documentation, printing, Mandrake employee, paying club
member, club VIP memeber, etc. etc.  That bugs me.

Somehow everyone who's contributing tangible work to the distro should
feel like part of the same team.  It should be easy to join the team, to
find out what needs to be done, to tell others that you are working on
that specific task, and to have your work added to the distro as soon as
it's done.

With the proper QA in place.

How can we do that?

Q: when can we do that? And who will make it happen... There are a lot of bright people on the list that can help to make it happen. How do we first define an architecture for this. Produce a document first?


Stefan


PS: Some friends have always argued that the debian way is the only sustainable way to go. If mdk is going to do it just like debian, why not fold and move the idea's and effort into making debian a better distro instead of duplicating the effort?

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