I think this should be clearly discussed. Original link at: http://www.advogato.org/article/716.html
<QUOTE> Debian and Democracy Posted 7 Oct 2003 by exa (Master) Two unrelated words. From experience. Now, what is the problem with debian? It's because debian claims to be democratic, but it isn't. It claims to be open, but it isn't open. It has a "secret" mailing list. And some guys who are in charge never change, like James Troup who is basically a village idiot. Now, in an open organization there are no dictators, but in debian there is. James Troup gets to decide who can get an account all by himself. Project leader changes, but he doesn't change. He is the administrator of everything. He is Mr. Debian. I'll make a summary for you guys who wonder what debian really is. 1. I volunteered to make some packages for debian. 2. I applied for an account 3. I got into a few flamewars in debian-devel 4. I had so many packages that it became too time consuming to deal with them without an account. 5. I waited for the account, it wasn't opened. (Because I must have pissed off Mr. Debian or one of his buddies) 6. I waited for many months, and wrote several times that I needed to account to do some meaningful work 7. Meanwhile James Troup, the idiot elmo of debian, told me "you need to get 5 sponsors blah blah" I found 4, but they scared out every 5th one! I was at a later time told that it was a way of rejecting my application by one of the other idiots. 8. It was 2 years of wait. 9. Then, some of them tell me "well if you maintain your packages we'll consider the account". But I didn't back off from my position. I said I needed an account first. 9. Today these idiots write to me, we reject your application because you didn't maintain your packages and got into some flamewars. Well, for those who don't know debian lists have always been full of flamewars and I did apologize to people whom I had arguments with except a moron called Branden Robinson. I also heavily criticized James Troup because I thought he wasn't performing his duties. Anyway, it's obvious that he had a problem with me, and now I have a problem with him because his action confirms what I had suspected of him. So, why am I writing this? To cause these fools to write rebuttals full of poor rhetoric which are so typical of them? No. It's because I think the really enthusiastic members of debian project should find ways to make their project more open and more democratic. I don't want to contribute to the project any longer, if I had wanted I would have maintained my packages for the last 1.5 years despite that moron called elmo. I was frustrated by the issues I've summarized, so I decided to wait and see when this idiot would reject my application. Then, I could voice my opinion. Well, here it goes. </QUOTE> P.S.: I'm in NM process for more than 1,5 years. I've requested for sponsor for packages, but got no answer. The last action was a phone call that (because of my not-so-good english) was a little pointless, and then I've got no answer again. I personally sent and email to DAM asking if I should ask again for sponsor or if should I wait to become a developer and I got no answer.