> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 28. Dezember 2023 um 20:02 Uhr
> Von: "Mo Zhou" <lu...@debian.org>
> An: debian-project@lists.debian.org
> Betreff: Re: Community renewal and project obsolescence
>
> On 12/28/23 10:34, Rafael Laboissière wrote:
>
> > * M. Zhou <lu...@debian.org> [2023-12-27 19:00]:
> >
> > Thanks for the code and the figure. Indeed, the trend is confirmed by
> > fitting a linear model count ~ year to the new members list. The
> > coefficient is -1.39 member/year, which is significantly different
> > from zero (F[1,22] = 11.8, p < 0.01). Even when we take out the data
> > from year 2001, that could be interpreted as an outlier, the trend is
> > still siginificant, with a drop of 0.98 member/year (F[1,21] = 8.48, p
> > < 0.01).
>
> I thought about to use some models for population statistics, so we can
> get the data about DD birth rate and DD retire/leave rate, as well as a
> prediction. But since the descendants of DDs are not naturally new DDs,
> the typical population models are not likely going to work well. The
> birth of DD is more likely mutation, sort of.
>
> Anyway, we do not need sophisticated math models to draw the conclusion
> that Debian is an aging community. And yet, we don't seem to have a good
> way to reshape the curve using Debian's funds. -- this is one of the key
> problems behind the data.
What hypothese do we have on what influences the number of active individuals?
Positive factors
* Location of DebConf (with many or not so many devs affording to attend)
* Popular platforms like the Raspberry Pi working with Debian derivative
* Debian packaging teams on salsa
* self-education
* Impression the DD status makes on outsiders/your next employer
* Pleasant interactions on mailing lists with current or past team members
* Team building with other DDs on projects of interest
Negative factors
* Advent of homebrew+conda
* Containers
* Increasing workloads as one ages and does not give packages up
* Work-life-balance
* Migrating to upstream
* Delay between what upstream releases and what is available in our distro
* Unpleasant interactions on mailing lists with current or past team members
Do you have a better list?
I keep thinking about what the last significant change in Debian may have been
- to mind came salsa.debian.org. Do I miss anything?
And I think the change I would like to see the most is a variant of brew/salsa
for Debian, preferably in some mostly automated way, so we have some way to
install the very latest with Debian all the time.
Best,
Steffen
