Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
Don Armstrong wrote: On Tue, 06 Jul 2010, Frans Pop wrote: Is it actually OK for FD to demand that candidates go through DM before applying for DD, or as part of the NM process? If the FD isn't fairly confident that someone has enough experience in Debian to make occupying an AM's time and taking slotes and time away from more qualified candidates, then yes, they should be strongly suggesting that people aren't ready to become DDs, and thus should spend more time working on Debian, possibly as DMs. The problem I see is the inability of some people to take a hint. An obstinate person will point out that it is not mandatory. Then a long flame war ensues where neither side bothers to take a charitable look at what the other person wrote. Richard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c3423a1.3090...@qnet.com
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
* Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo [2010-07-02 19:01 +0200]: [4] Including not acknowledging NMUs (many of them FTBFS), not replying to most (any?) bug reports, not replying when people asked to update the software or orphan it if he was not interested anymore, not replying to my (private) offering to co-maintain them as I am doing unofficially with OpenSceneGraph that I sent more than 2 months ago, and a previous warning about the intention to NMU the packages... all this while he did attend other packages in the past weeks, so he's not Missing in Action. Sounds like these packages are in fact orphaned, at least it should be ok if you add yourself as uploader with your next upload. Next step is to become DM and then if you want to DD ... Carsten -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100706122457.ga28...@foghorn.stateful.de
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
Hi, First of all, most honest thanks to you Russ, you seem to be the only one concerned really with what I am saying (even reading it). On Sunday 04 July 2010 19:36:02 Russ Allbery wrote: Please try to use a charitable reading of other people's messages when understanding e-mail and, as you said yourself: The first thing that a Front Desk person has to do is to investigate, try to understand what the people is saying (applicants are not [always] familiar with Debian's inner ways of working), and more important, read it twice or ask if you don't understand what the applicant is saying, not mocking them. I think the situation would not have escalated in the way in which it did if you had followed the smae advice, because I don't believe either Cristoph or Joerg meant their messages anywhere near as negatively as you perceived them. I think that if they didn't meant that, they could've reacted in a couple of simple and reasonable ways to my reply to Joerg's message: a) I meant it seriously even if I was joking, your job in Debian so far is not enough to apply for DD just yet. b) Sorry, I had misunderstood you, and [whatever]. The not reasonable reaction for me is (without any other communication in the middle except the generic message to debian-newmain@ ML): 1) Erasing me from the NM database, not even leaving any trace in the NM weekly report. 2) Accusing me of finger-pointing in that message, etc, even if not directly; apart from: 3) Not abiding to the rules that supposedly Debian Community approved, and enforcing unofficial rules instead systematically. I just exposed the case in this mailing list as best as I could in the heat of the moment, because had I been a Debian Member who approved the rules via General Resolution or whatever other means, and cared for people trying to join my project, I wouldn't approve of sub-groups breaking the rules and acting partially (especially in a sub-group as prominent as this one, trying to gather new contributors). That's all the story. If the Debian Community as a whole doesn't care about this or thinks that they actions and reaction are OK, that's fine for me, I just don't want be a Debian Member anymore and everybody happy. c) Re: the MIA stuff: he is not MIA, he does some work to some of his packages, you can see it in the PTS; but didn't do any work on these ones for 3 years, nor replied to offerings of help, bug requests telling to orphan them, etc. And I'm no DD to start inquiring DDs and bothering people with MIA stuff, I think. BTW, He just replied to a bug report after I we updated the K3D package. I appear to have not been sufficiently clear here, so I'll try to be even more direct. Absolutely nothing changes about this procedure whether you are a DD, a DM, or someone with no official relationship with Debian. If the package is unmaintained, someone needs to follow the process described in the Developer's Reference for dealing with this. If the maintainer is not responding to bugs about that package and not maintaining that package, they are MIA with respect to at least that package, even if they're doing other Debian work, and regardless of terminology, that's a problem that needs to be addressed. http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/beyond-pkging.html As I understand the whole section 7.4. Dealing with inactive and/or unreachable maintainers, the MIA stuff discussed is in the general case (not in particular packages). I could have investigated whether he was really MIA, or not etc, but I decided that the NMU was an easier path and that might produce some reaction that the e-mails did not, and apparently it worked. In other words: you're right, I just didn't follow that path. And I think that if it's important for Debian Community to know of such cases and act upon them, they should implement a way for doing it (e.g. like the annual ping for DMs that I mentioned in another mail). I, as an outsider, don't want to investigate and report on people, in general; I'm just concerned with packages being in a good shape (especially the ones that I know of, and if I can help in any way). You do not need to be a DD to address this, and if you're interested in maintaining this package, you *should not* wait to be a DD to address this. You can start working on this now. As I said multiple times I already did, I created 3 versions of that packages already, which were sponsored and uploaded: http://packages.qa.debian.org/a/aqsis.html http://packages.qa.debian.org/k/k3d.html with a few fixes in the works (RPATH lintian warning, licensng problems and others). If the contributions are the same, then it shouldn't make a difference, but they do need to be the same at all levels, not just technical competence. OpenSceneGraph has an incorrect Maintainer and Uploaders field from what you've said, which should be fixed, and the other packages you've done
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
Hello Manuel, I would like you not to be so hurt, calm down and listen to people. By rule of thumb nobody in the boat is evil, but there are many misunderstandings which with *pacience and time* will get solved. 2010/7/2 Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo manuel.montez...@gmail.com: Another thing, I'm going out for the weekend plus monday, so don't expect replies from me in about 3 days at least (unless I happen to have time later today). Starting a flame/ranting email and go away it is not a good way of behaviour in the community, don't you think so? cases (no SONAMES for libraries, defining RPATH, using in-source third party software instead of the existing package in Debian, lacking man pages for some binaries which I created and sent to them...), technical difficulties I might be missing something here, are you defining RPATH? I believe it is not good practice in (native built) Debian packaging. * http://wiki.debian.org/RpathIssue This started about 1 month ago. I waited for 5 years before becoming DD (two of them in the NM queue), not so long ago. Since I wanted to be DD, I needed the signature of a Debian Member (as some web pages say, I won't spend time seeking it now), so I wrote to newmaint@ asking for a clarification whether DMs were considered Debian Members or not for this purpose. Christoph Berg replied telling me, among other things, that Debian Members were only Debian Developers but also that I was confused about applying to DM or DD. I explained him that I was not, I wanted to apply for Debian Developer for the reasons stated above, and because the webpages describing the process (which I'll cite later) state clearly that it's not mandatory to be a DM before applying for DD (though highly recommended, but I was already --unofficially-- co- maintainer of OpenSceneGraph anyway). He didn't tell me about unoficcial policies (more on this later) by then, a few weeks ago. Did I tell you I waited for 2 years on NM process, well, things are evolving in Debian, not always everything it is written on mailing lists, blogs, planets and so on (impossible to track them all). There also meetings[1] to help things out and speed up the NM process, but certainly not for people like you but for people that already has a very good understanding of Debian, which, you'll have to excuse me, are lacking. As Debian itself it is not only maintaining software packages. If you have a look to my profile I am one of the persons in Debian with few packages and that is intented to be that way, but that does not mean I am inactive in Debian. There are also some duties all Debian Developers should follow to stay in the boat, those are not very heavy to accomplish, but we have been doing fine with them for many years (well, not all the time). [1] https://penta.debconf.org/dc9_schedule/events/508.en.html (There are more official Debian Developers in that city but they didn't reply to the calls, and they do not maintain packages at least in some cases, so probably they should resign from Debian, by the way.) As Debian Developers are not forced to reply to your emails and this snippet is already in discussion on another thread you do not want to discuss. But it shows the lack of Debian understanding you have. We do not accuse people for not doing... as this is a volunteer task and we are suposed to have fun with it. I replied with the same answers that I said in the Precedents above (though I was still preparing some packages for Aqsis and K3D, some of the new Aqsis packages were submitted already one or two days before the questionnaire came in, so it was a prove that I meant to do what I was saying). One of the questions was (*): --- Are you a 'Debian Maintainer' as described on http://wiki.debian.org/Maintainers or do you plan to become a DM? a) No b) Not specially, my main intention is to become Debian Developer. DM doesn't allow to do what I'm doing with Aqsis and K3D when the official maintainer doesn't cooperate, that's one of the main reasons why I want to become DD instead of just DM (so I don't have to bother any sponsor, etc). --- (*) http://wiki.debian.org/Maintainers says: Debian Maintainers: official status of people, who are not (yet) Debian Developers, but that are allowed to upload packages, that have a DM field set. See Debian Maintainer You are allowed to upload your packages by setting some flag on the debian/control file being DM. I am failing to see why that does not work for you. Also being DM you would get more experienced and certainly gain more knowledge on Debian OS. I replied telling that I didn't just NMU a couple of packages well attended, I was in effect intending to ***become the maintainer from now on*** of *quite complex* packages (all of them much bigger in size and dependencies, and
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
Hi, On Tue, Jul 06, 2010 at 03:13:34PM +0200, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote: I, as an outsider, don't want to investigate and report on people, in general; I'm just concerned with packages being in a good shape (especially the ones that I know of, and if I can help in any way). well, if you don't want to do it as an outsider you don't have to, but its the right way to go under normal circumstances and anyway if you were a DD. You do not need to be a DD to address this, and if you're interested in maintaining this package, you *should not* wait to be a DD to address this. You can start working on this now. As I said multiple times I already did, I created 3 versions of that packages already, which were sponsored and uploaded: http://packages.qa.debian.org/a/aqsis.html http://packages.qa.debian.org/k/k3d.html with a few fixes in the works (RPATH lintian warning, licensng problems and others). Yes, you did three uploads on two packages for which you are not the maintainer in a time range of one (!) month. In other words: No one can see from this as much commitment as we require from people who want to be a Debian Developer. We can't even tell from this if you'd be active in a month from now. And one could even say that the answer to one of the questions in the Apply for NM checklist is no, depending on how you look at it, because you are not the maintainer of any package in the archive. Don't take that as we'd not appreciate or honour what you've did so far. But you don't have to be a DD for this. It does not require you the right to vote or unsupervised upload access for every package in the archive. You possibly don't need access to our porter systems. I don't want to comment the communication between you and FD/DAM but it seems to me that you have not yet understood some of the basic concepts of how Debian works. Therefore I can understand if you are not passed through to start the process of becoming a DD. If you mean that I was rejected because I required more time from Front Desk, I don't think that's true. Instead of looking to Maintainer or Uploaders field, all I was asking is to just look at a few entries in a changelog, approved by the maintainer of the package himself who is a Debian Developer since very long ago, and who was the person who uploaded the package. And that is already wrong and (for now!) IMHO disqualifying you from beeing a DD. The point is, we want our DDs to take some responsibility for the ideals and goals of the project and to be trustworthy. That is because they have unlimited upload access, are able to access the porter machines and decide on the future of Debian by voting. If you are not even taking responsibility for _one_ package by becoming the maintainer of it and this way stating I feel responsible for this package how do you expect us to see weither you feel responsible for a certain package? Just because of two uploads in one month? If you don't want to follow the common procedures in the project (e.g. for taking over packages) how are we supposed to know that you will, once you are a DD? I wouldn't think that Front Desk job checks are OK just by checking those fields, because they're clearly misleading in many packages. That maybe Well, they must not be misleading on weither the person in question feels responsible at all for what he is applying to do. Thats a _first_ indication of your work in Debian. If its not enough we can't handle your application over to an AM who has to spend a lot of time for your application (the NM-process takes quiet some time for you and your AM!). The package check itself is handled by the Application Managers. We have to do some more checks than just checking those fields. Best Regards, Patrick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100706140914.ga7...@debian
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 10:09 PM, Patrick Schoenfeld schoenf...@debian.org wrote: And that is already wrong and (for now!) IMHO disqualifying you from beeing a DD. The point is, we want our DDs to take some responsibility for the ideals and goals of the project and to be trustworthy. That is because they have unlimited upload access, are able to access the porter machines and decide on the future of Debian by voting. If you are not even taking responsibility for _one_ package by becoming the maintainer of it and this way stating I feel responsible for this package how do you expect us to see weither you feel responsible for a certain package? Just because of two uploads in one month? If you don't want to follow the common procedures in the project (e.g. for taking over packages) how are we supposed to know that you will, once you are a DD? A lot of folks have pointed this out (including myself in private mail before these public threads started). AFAICT, Manuel simply misinterpreted Debian's confusing terminology to mean that he couldn't put himself in the Maintainer/Uploader fields of packages until he became a DM/DD (and his sponsor should be in those fields instead). I think this has been explained to him enough now and would assume he can understand the situation properly now. Everyone needs to calm down, use less emotive language and forgive misunderstandings and miscommunications. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktilrv01hdvwr2iaf6pcfdlnvv1xa2yau3m4w-...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
On 07/06/2010 02:24 PM, Carsten Hey wrote: * Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo [2010-07-02 19:01 +0200]: [4] Including not acknowledging NMUs (many of them FTBFS), not replying to most (any?) bug reports, not replying when people asked to update the software or orphan it if he was not interested anymore, not replying to my (private) offering to co-maintain them as I am doing unofficially with OpenSceneGraph that I sent more than 2 months ago, and a previous warning about the intention to NMU the packages... all this while he did attend other packages in the past weeks, so he's not Missing in Action. Sounds like these packages are in fact orphaned, at least it should be ok if you add yourself as uploader with your next upload. Next step is to become DM and then if you want to DD ... NO. This is *not* okay. The proper way is to contact the MIA team and let them handle the situation *OR* to get the OK from the maintainer. -- Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org GPG Fingerprints: 06C8 C9A2 EAAD E37E 5B2C BE93 067A AD04 C93B FF79 ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c3341b3.7040...@bzed.de
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
Hi, Firs of all: for people who are going to reply me from now on: Please don't make me repeat the same thing a dozen times, it's boring for me to have to do so and for people reading. So if you're going to tell you opinon about whether you consider that I made effort enough or not to apply for DD without being DM first (which by now is of little interest), please read my application and the advocation message before, available from the archives of the appropriate mailing lists. http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2010/07/msg2.html (This was the advocation for DD, but the information is superseded by the previous one: http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2010/06/msg00022.html ) On Tuesday 06 July 2010 16:09:20 Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: Yes, you did three uploads on two packages for which you are not the maintainer in a time range of one (!) month. In other words: No one can see from this as much commitment as we require from people who want to be a Debian Developer. We can't even tell from this if you'd be active in a month from now. [...] If with the one (!) thing you mean that it's too little commitment for me to apply for DD you're wrong here, because I was not defending (in the lines that you're quoting) the case about why I considered that I could start the NM process (apply for DD) without being official DM first. [Refer to the messages pointed in the hader. They wiped my application from the NM database and I won't apply again, so that's why there's no need to discuss that again, anyway.] So in what you quote, I was replying only to Russ' paragraph: You do not need to be a DD to address this, and if you're interested in maintaining this package, you should not wait to be a DD to address this. You can start working on this now. I'm in effect taking responsibility for those packages, I'll put myself in Maintainers/Uploaders field if that's the right thing to do in the next uploads. If you mean that I was rejected because I required more time from Front Desk, I don't think that's true. Instead of looking to Maintainer or Uploaders field, all I was asking is to just look at a few entries in a changelog, approved by the maintainer of the package himself who is a Debian Developer since very long ago, and who was the person who uploaded the package. And that is already wrong and (for now!) IMHO disqualifying you from beeing a DD. The point is, we want our DDs to take some responsibility for the ideals and goals of the project and to be trustworthy. That is because they have unlimited upload access, are able to access the porter machines and decide on the future of Debian by voting. If you are not even taking responsibility for _one_ package by becoming the maintainer of it and this way stating I feel responsible for this package how do you expect us to see weither you feel responsible for a certain package? Just because of two uploads in one month? If you don't want to follow the common procedures in the project (e.g. for taking over packages) how are we supposed to know that you will, once you are a DD? Apart from the one month thing that I replied to above, I was not putting myself as maintainer because: 1) OpenSceneGraph does have a maintainer, I'm just co-maintaining it unofficially. (And reason 3) after this). 2) The NMUs to Aqsis and K3D, after previous NMU-notice and my offering to co-maintain them several months ago, were not replied, so before seeing whether the maintainer reacts or not, I didn't feel that it was appropriate to overtake the package (without doing the MIA process, which I didn't want to, as explained in other message). 3) As a Debian user, I don't think that it's appropriate that random people appear as Maintainer of a package when they didn't get DM or DD status, especially if (for the time being in two of the packages) they only upload once or twice; and unless they are in the process of becoming DMs or DDs. So I was trying to state I want to be responsible for this and that when I submitted my appplication and before they wiped my application to NM; and when I applied to DM before the wiping because of the unofficially enforced rule. And that's why I didn't want to put myself as maintainer before having some kind of official engagement with Debian -- not wanting to pretend that I'm officially Debian-something, instead of not wanting to take responsibility. Was I wrong? Yes. Will I fix it? Hopefully yes. Sorry, my bad, and thanks for pointing it. Cheers. -- Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo manuel.montez...@gmail.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007061710.50622.manuel.montez...@gmail.com
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
On 06/07/10 10:09, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: some stuff about Manuel not being ready for DD status AFAICT, none of this justifies silently removing someone from the NM database. -- Saludos, Felipe Sateler signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010, Felipe Sateler wrote: On 06/07/10 10:09, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: some stuff about Manuel not being ready for DD status AFAICT, none of this justifies silently removing someone from the NM database. I can't speak for the NM team, but if he was asked to go through DM first (and that's what I understood), I could understand that his NM application got removed for now. Don't attribute it to malice. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Follow my Debian News on http://RaphaelHertzog.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100706191100.gd12...@rivendell
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
On Tuesday 06 July 2010, Raphael Hertzog wrote: I can't speak for the NM team, but if he was asked to go through DM first (and that's what I understood), I could understand that his NM application got removed for now. This is the thing I'm having some problem with in the discussion so far. Is it actually OK for FD to demand that candidates go through DM before applying for DD, or as part of the NM process? As I remember it, DM was primarily intended as an alternative *end point* for those contributors who are not interested in going through the full NM procedure and are happy with both the facilities and limitations that DM offers. From his mails Manuel clearly intended to go for DD. Sure, in a lot of cases getting DM first can help to be more productive sooner. But shouldn't that remain the choice of the candidate him/herself? I can see loads of cases where going straight for DD is much more logical: - contributors who's primairy interest is not packaging - contributors who already have a very solid history of contributions - contributors who work mainly on team-maintained packages and thus only need commit access to the team source repos while leaving the uploads to other team members - contributors who have a good relationship with the current maintainer of a package or sponsors and thus see no need for upload rights In Manuel's case I personally would say that getting DM status on the route to DD *does* seem to make sense, but still IMO that should be *his* option. In past discussions we have explicitly stressed that it should be possible to tailor the NM process to the ambitions and background of individual candidates, in discussion between the candidate and FD and/or assigned AM. Have the FD and NM-team (silently?) inflated DM beyond what was originally intended? I would personally be against listing DM on the website as a required or even desired stage to go through for NM, as some have suggested; it should of course be listed as an option. I agree with others that the main problem in this particular case seems to have been a communications failure. But IMO refusing or declining to go through DM should by itself never be a reason to reject a candidate. I don't think it was in this case; the escalated communication has probably contributed. However, the FD and DAM have a very strong responsibility when it comes to trying to avoid such failures given that new candidates probably will not be familiar with all options and terminology. Cheers, FJP -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007062157.01615.elen...@planet.nl
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010, Frans Pop wrote: Is it actually OK for FD to demand that candidates go through DM before applying for DD, or as part of the NM process? If the FD isn't fairly confident that someone has enough experience in Debian to make occupying an AM's time and taking slotes and time away from more qualified candidates, then yes, they should be strongly suggesting that people aren't ready to become DDs, and thus should spend more time working on Debian, possibly as DMs. Don Armstrong -- It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free. -- Terry Pratchet _Pyramids_ p25 http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100706202512.gd27...@teltox.donarmstrong.com
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
On Tuesday 06 July 2010, Don Armstrong wrote: On Tue, 06 Jul 2010, Frans Pop wrote: Is it actually OK for FD to demand that candidates go through DM before applying for DD, or as part of the NM process? If the FD isn't fairly confident that someone has enough experience in Debian to make occupying an AM's time and taking slotes and time away from more qualified candidates, then yes, they should be strongly suggesting that people aren't ready to become DDs, and thus should spend more time working on Debian, possibly as DMs. Strongly suggesting (or advising) is different though than requiring or demanding. And IMO in that case it is the task of the FD to make completely clear *why* that advise is being given: that it will help the candidate to be more productive sooner and that it should not make the total process towards DD any longer. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007062235.32580.elen...@planet.nl
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
On 06/07/10 15:11, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Tue, 06 Jul 2010, Felipe Sateler wrote: On 06/07/10 10:09, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: some stuff about Manuel not being ready for DD status AFAICT, none of this justifies silently removing someone from the NM database. I can't speak for the NM team, but if he was asked to go through DM first (and that's what I understood), I could understand that his NM application got removed for now. The part I find strange is the silentness of the removal, not the removal itself. Don't attribute it to malice. I didn't. I can be a honest mistake (like forgetting to mail the applicant indicating the removal, or millions of others). I'm just stating that silent removal does not seem justifiable. And the NM team has not yet spoken about that point. -- Saludos, Felipe Sateler signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010, Frans Pop wrote: On Tuesday 06 July 2010, Don Armstrong wrote: On Tue, 06 Jul 2010, Frans Pop wrote: Is it actually OK for FD to demand that candidates go through DM before applying for DD, or as part of the NM process? If the FD isn't fairly confident that someone has enough experience in Debian to make occupying an AM's time and taking slotes and time away from more qualified candidates, then yes, they should be strongly suggesting that people aren't ready to become DDs, and thus should spend more time working on Debian, possibly as DMs. Strongly suggesting (or advising) is different though than requiring or demanding. The FD can say that someone isn't ready to enter the NM process, though, and then provide specific suggestions as to how they can demonstrate to the FD that they are ready to enter the NM process. The FD is responsible for gauging that someone looks to have been active in Debian enough to assign them an AM. Don Armstrong -- Build a fire for a man, an he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. -- Jules Bean http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100706210101.ge27...@teltox.donarmstrong.com
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
On Tuesday 06 July 2010, Don Armstrong wrote: The FD can say that someone isn't ready to enter the NM process, though, and then provide specific suggestions as to how they can demonstrate to the FD that they are ready to enter the NM process. I'm not disagreeing with that. But that's a completely different issue than I raised in my initial mail. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007062328.30966.elen...@planet.nl
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
Hello, On Tuesday 06 July 2010 21:11:00 Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Tue, 06 Jul 2010, Felipe Sateler wrote: On 06/07/10 10:09, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: some stuff about Manuel not being ready for DD status AFAICT, none of this justifies silently removing someone from the NM database. I can't speak for the NM team, but if he was asked to go through DM first (and that's what I understood), I could understand that his NM application got removed for now. Don't attribute it to malice. 1) Re: Rejected by not applying first to DM That's not the reason that they gave here (in which they do not mention that I was removed, though can be deduced, that's why I went to find about the status of my application to DD): http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2010/07/msg3.html reasons that I refuted in the subsequent message in the thread (that neither Christoph nor anybody else from FrontDesk replied, or explained in any manner, publicly or privately): http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2010/07/msg4.html and that occurring *after* I had abided their (quoting Christoph) 'DM before NM' is a rule we have been inofficially enforcing for some time now and which will be officialised soon, accepted the counsel and had applied to DM: http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2010/07/msg0.html My application for DM was 1 Jul 2010 03:11:46 +0200, the advocation message for DM at 01 Jul 2010 18:33:01 +0200, the deletion at some point the day after at 2 Jul 2010 10:23:37 +0200. So wouldn't the application to DD should be put on hold, at most, after I accepted the counsel? Isn't the requirement of DM fulfilled anyway by the active co-maintenance of OpenSceneGraph that I'm doing since the end of last year, even if I was not doing it properly putting myself in the Uploaders field, etc? If Front Desk people don't think that I'm a good candidate because I've been arguing with them, doing the finger-pointing that they say, etc, shouldn't they explain themselves more clearly and refute/prove it (maybe appointing someone external but maintaining things private, if they think that my supposed finger-pointing is harmful to be made public)? 2) Re: notifications Shouldn't the applicant receive a similar automated message when being dropped/rejected as the one when somebody is applying, or receive advocation (quoted below)? Or at least appear in the weekly NM report or somewhere that I was rejected for this and that? Application confirmation: Thank you for your interest in becoming a Debian Developer. Your name and email address has been entered into the new maintainer database at https://nm.debian.org/; Advocation confirmation: Thanks for your recommendation of: Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo manuel.montez...@gmail.com This applicant will hopefully be assigned an Application Manager soon. I received neither automatic messages nor official explanations for rejection, other than the generic message of the 1st link in this message. Cheers. -- Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo manuel.montez...@gmail.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007062338.52336.manuel.montez...@gmail.com
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org writes: On Tue, 06 Jul 2010, Felipe Sateler wrote: AFAICT, none of this justifies silently removing someone from the NM database. I can't speak for the NM team, but if he was asked to go through DM first (and that's what I understood), I could understand that his NM application got removed for now. Don't attribute it to malice. Yeah, I'm sure it's not malice, but it does seem like we're missing a tracking state if such records disappear from the web pages entirely. Admittedly, I'm a data hoarder and I hate to see anything ever be dropped, but it seems like it might be good to have a list of candidates who were asked to reapply later or something in addition to the categorizations that are available now. Maybe capped at only the last six months of them similar to now-approved candidates are by default. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/874ogcp2v3@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
On Tue, Jul 06, 2010 at 02:01:01PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote: On Tue, 06 Jul 2010, Frans Pop wrote: On Tuesday 06 July 2010, Don Armstrong wrote: On Tue, 06 Jul 2010, Frans Pop wrote: Is it actually OK for FD to demand that candidates go through DM before applying for DD, or as part of the NM process? If the FD isn't fairly confident that someone has enough experience in Debian to make occupying an AM's time and taking slotes and time away from more qualified candidates, then yes, they should be strongly suggesting that people aren't ready to become DDs, and thus should spend more time working on Debian, possibly as DMs. Strongly suggesting (or advising) is different though than requiring or demanding. The FD can say that someone isn't ready to enter the NM process, though, and then provide specific suggestions as to how they can demonstrate to the FD that they are ready to enter the NM process. That doesn't seem to be what's happened here, though. Admittedly we've only seen Manuel's paraphrasing of the conversation he had with FD (Manuel, please post actual mails, not paraphrasing!), but from there it appears that this was not being proposed as an example of how Manuel could demonstrate his involvement and committment to Debian, but rather as an enforced precondition for the NM process. I also find that troubling. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo manuel.montez...@gmail.com writes: I have to reply briefly, I hope that you can infer the rest of the story from the replies or pointers. It wasn't particularly brief! But I've read through your entire message twice now. I don't think there was a great deal of new information in this followup message, which implies to me that I have a reasonably good understanding of the situation from your perspective. This probably isn't going to make you any happier with me than you are with Christoph, but I feel obligated to say it anyway: I think you are reading way more hostility and negative reaction into e-mails that you were sent than was actually there. I also don't think you're seeing how hostile your mail messages sound. I'm not saying that the conflict in e-mail is entirely your fault, but from your mail messages here and the additional mail that you've quoted, in emotional tone you seem to be doing roughly the same thing to others that you feel they're doing to you. Please try to use a charitable reading of other people's messages when understanding e-mail and, as you said yourself: The first thing that a Front Desk person has to do is to investigate, try to understand what the people is saying (applicants are not [always] familiar with Debian's inner ways of working), and more important, read it twice or ask if you don't understand what the applicant is saying, not mocking them. I think the situation would not have escalated in the way in which it did if you had followed the smae advice, because I don't believe either Cristoph or Joerg meant their messages anywhere near as negatively as you perceived them. c) Re: the MIA stuff: he is not MIA, he does some work to some of his packages, you can see it in the PTS; but didn't do any work on these ones for 3 years, nor replied to offerings of help, bug requests telling to orphan them, etc. And I'm no DD to start inquiring DDs and bothering people with MIA stuff, I think. BTW, He just replied to a bug report after I we updated the K3D package. I appear to have not been sufficiently clear here, so I'll try to be even more direct. Absolutely nothing changes about this procedure whether you are a DD, a DM, or someone with no official relationship with Debian. If the package is unmaintained, someone needs to follow the process described in the Developer's Reference for dealing with this. If the maintainer is not responding to bugs about that package and not maintaining that package, they are MIA with respect to at least that package, even if they're doing other Debian work, and regardless of terminology, that's a problem that needs to be addressed. You do not need to be a DD to address this, and if you're interested in maintaining this package, you *should not* wait to be a DD to address this. You can start working on this now. This sort of social process is as important in Debian as technical abilities. Without the social process and without resolving problems like unmaintained packages, technical skill cannot be applied appropriately or fully utiliized. Given two people working on package GIMP, with 6 months or 1 year of collaborations each and similar work done (e.g. they're technically about the same good), one being DM and another not and they both decide to apply for DD the same day; on which grounds do you deny the one which is not a DM to apply for DD? If the contributions are the same, then it shouldn't make a difference, but they do need to be the same at all levels, not just technical competence. OpenSceneGraph has an incorrect Maintainer and Uploaders field from what you've said, which should be fixed, and the other packages you've done work on have not been properly investigated and orphaned and are being maintained via NMUs. Those are both things that I, were I your application manager, would expect you to fix before I would be comfortable approving you as a Debian Developer. Debian is *not* just about technical work. It's also about interacting well and effectively with other developers, including developers one is not already working with. Also, note that being a DM lets you get experience with parts of Debian that you cannot without being a DM, specifically the process of doing direct uploads and unattended and unreviewed work in Debian. They're not major things, and I don't think they're absolute requirements for applying to be a DD in all cases, but it's still experience and there's no point in turning it down, IMO. Also, Christoph Berg and the rest of the Front Desk understand it like me, since they apply the unofficial policy of requiring DM, he said that very clearly. If they had understand it like you, it would not be unnofficial policy, it would be official. This line of argument is just not going to go anywhere. The job of the Front Desk, and the New Maintainer process, is not like a legal process where you are following a set of exhaustively documented and
Re: Problems with NM Front Desk
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo manuel.montez...@gmail.com writes: Precedents == After being unofficial co-maintainer for months of OpenSceneGraph [1] The way that the maintenance of that package is noted in the package control fields is strange. Recent non-NMU uploads appear to have been made by people who are not listed in Maintainer or Uploaders. This is probably just a matter of some confusion (although you say something below that makes me wonder), but it would be nice to get the package control file to accurately reflect who's working on it. and while creating new packages for newer versions of Aqsis [2] and K3D [3] before the freeze, which they were neglected by their maintainer for 3 years [4], What's going on with the status of these packages? Maintaining them via NMUs isn't something that we should be doing in Debian in the long run. If the current maintainer isn't interested or doesn't have time to maintain them, they should really be orphaned. Have you (or someone) already been in touch with MIA about that? K3D in particular appears to have been maintained solely by NMU for nearly three years. after all of this, I decided to apply for Debian Developer, which I judged appropriate in the case that any conflict arose with the maintainer for the ownership of the package. I have to say that's a disturbing reason to apply to be a Debian Developer. I'd like you (and anyone else who is interested) to apply to become a Debian Developer because you want to work on Debian and have direct upload rights, but not as a way of helping with conflicts with other package maintainers. Being a DD or not should not, at least in my opinion, make any difference in such a conflict. If the maintainer isn't maintaining the package, it should be orphaned or put up for adoption, regardless of whether the person who wants to take it over is a DD, a DM, or has no formal affiliation with the project at all. Signature by Debian Member Since I wanted to be DD, I needed the signature of a Debian Member (as some web pages say, I won't spend time seeking it now), so I wrote to newmaint@ asking for a clarification whether DMs were considered Debian Members or not for this purpose. Christoph Berg replied telling me, among other things, that Debian Members were only Debian Developers Which is true, and it would probably be a good idea to clarify wording that refers to Debian Members, since that's not the terminology that we use in general and, with the existence of DMs, it can be confusing. But yes, to be a DD you need a key signature from another DD (or follow the alternative procedure, but we try to avoid using that procedure if at all possible). (There are more official Debian Developers in that city but they didn't reply to the calls, and they do not maintain packages at least in some cases, so probably they should resign from Debian, by the way.) There's no requirement to maintain packages or to help with key signings to be a Debian Developer, just to mention. If someone doesn't think they're likely to do any Debian work in the future, then yes, resigning is probably something they should consider, but Debian is a community and I don't want to see people leave that community unless they want to. If they just don't have time but may have time in the future, I don't see a need for them to stop being Debian Developers. Christop Berg sent me a questionnaire on behalf on Front Desk on June 27th, asking me to explaining my accomplished tasks in Debian, if I was already Debian Maintainer and a few other things, the usual template (emphasis mine): You are currently waiting to get an Application Manager assigned. Before we do so, we would like to ask you a few questions about what you have done in and for Debian so far. ***We want to make sure that New Maintainers already have experience working in Debian***, so we would like to know which areas you are actively contributing to. Additionally, this will allow us to find you a matching AM. Right, this is a normal and expected question. People should not apply to be DDs unless they already have a demonstrated track record of work with the project in some area, and are ready to be a DD from both a technical and a procedural direction. You do, as you've mentioned, have some track record of work with the project. (I haven't personally reviewed it in detail to see how extensive it is.) One of the questions was (*): --- Are you a 'Debian Maintainer' as described on http://wiki.debian.org/Maintainers or do you plan to become a DM? a) No b) Not specially, my main intention is to become Debian Developer. DM doesn't allow to do what I'm doing with Aqsis and K3D when the official maintainer doesn't cooperate, that's one of the main reasons why I want to become DD instead of just DM (so I don't have to bother any sponsor,
