posts/Why ask for an unskilled, not-yet-involved comaintainer?

openid [milliways.fr]: Choosing people for FOSS projects

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 23:52:43 +0000

Each year, choosing students for our GSoC participation is a grueling two months marathon of reading resumes, code samples, IRC interviews and so on. We trim down 100+ candidates to about 10 and after the fourth participation into the program, we're still reworking the process each time to get it right. Gah. Ever felt like mentoring a student for GSoC ? It's starting soon again

bahumbug [wordpress.com]: GSoC

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 03:23:54 +0000

My first thought was, as the other comment says, this is like GSoC. But you're more ambitious: GSoC is a scattergun approach (catch lots of candidates, and a few of them will stick with it), while you're trying a single shot. Good luck with that!

Can I assume you'll post occasional updates where I'll see them from a planetdebian feed?

brainwane [dreamwidth.org]: Another project interested in new contributors

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 04:30:31 +0000

You can check http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2010/01/18/metacity-journal-2010-01-18/ for at least one project (& mentor) to shunt some excess volunteers to. And of course there's always Dreamwidth.

best, Sumana

madduck.net: Good idea

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:11:05 +0000

While I continue to be sceptical of the geek feminism wiki (mostly due to the unbalanced, unjust level of hostility it exposes), I think your initiative is great! I hope to find the time to do similar. What would be even better is if we could somehow institutionalise this, maybe revitalise the Debian Women Mentors idea!

maco [myopenid.com]: comment 5

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:45:05 +0000

My flatmate suggested I ought to email you about it. I didn't because I figure others are more in need of the mentorship than I (as I'm already fairly used to packaging debs and rpms and an Ubuntu developer). I very much like the idea though! Every time I'm asked about how to become an Ubuntu developer, I try to point out that programming skills are not necessary, hoping it'll attract more folks. I'm also always hoping that one of the people showing up in #ubuntu-motu asking for mentorship will be a woman. Not yet, it seems... Please, if you know any women wanting to get involved in Ubuntu development, I am more than willing to help mentor them!

Though I do have a question, something I don't quite understand in Debian processes. If you adopt an orphaned package or submit a new package, are you automatically a DM maintaining that package?

-- Mackenzie

christine-spang [myopenid.com]: comment 6

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:35:37 +0000

Martin: Yeah, getting something like the Debian Women mentorship program back up and running again would be great. Unfortunately I don't think I have the spare cycles right now to push forward something on a broader scope.

Mackenzie: Yes, for example I've heard of you and in my mind you're past the sort of person I was looking for, so you're roommate was probably right! Glad you posted a comment, though.

RE: your question, no, that's not how it works in Debian right now. I'm not sure whether you're confused on the terminology or the rights, though. When you adopt an orphaned package or create a new package, you become the maintainer for that package, yes. However, you have to go through a Debian Developer sponsor in order to actually make uploads to the archive. So you'll prepare an upload for the package and a sponsor will check it, rebuild it, and upload it to ftp-master. A "Debian Maintainer (DM)" is a sort of middle ground between a person who just maintains a package and a full Debian Developer. To become a "DM" you go through a short advocation process and this gives you upload rights on whichever of your packages were requested. It's unfortunately a bit complicated, and reforming the process(es) people go through to become "official" contributors to the Debian project is a source of continuing discussion.

maco [myopenid.com]: Thanks

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:52:20 +0000

The overloading of the term "maintainer" was confusing me. I've got Mako sponsoring a package for me now... though I should check and see if that has gone through yet...

christine-spang [myopenid.com]: comment 8

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:06:41 +0000

Awesome!