Try making the term as a developer time limited, such as for a two-year period. The developer must actively renew the term. The point wouldn’t be to kick developers out after two years; there would be no limit on renewals and no requirement for approval. Rather, it makes the commitment a limited rather than unlimited one and forces the developer to periodically think: do I still want to do this? Then, passively taking no action causes the commitment to end, rather than the developer having to actively say “I don’t want to do this anymore.” This takes the shame out of it.
Debian's Challenge When Its Developers Drift Away
21–26 of 26 posts
Re: Debian's Challenge When Its Developers Drift Away
#22I believe the problem with Debian and many open source projects is that communities outside the US, Greater China, India, and some advanced European countries are relatively weak, making it difficult for project leader-level figures to emerge. I was born and raised in South Korea, a virtual open-source wasteland. Listening to testimonies from developers working here, many say, “I was captivated by the GNU spirit and…
The challenge outlined by the article is the lack of communication regarding the change in availability of Debian volunteers themselves. TFA doesn't mention issues regarding recruitment of new developers.
Re: Debian's Challenge When Its Developers Drift Away
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mindshare matters, too. A big reason why small distros manage to get a foothold is because they're highly visible in places that get traffic (which then kicks off a virtuous cycle further increasing visibility). When existing Linux users get an itch to try a different distro, the ones that will come to mind to try are those they saw on reddit/youtube/xitter/etc, and Linux newbies are also going to be inclined towards…
Speaking from personal experience which is admittedly quite old at this point, but it used to be the case that Debian definitely didn’t go out of its way to try to pull in devs. When I had a few small open source things myself I packaged them for RedHat (this is pre-fedora when RedHat didn’t have a commercial and free version, they just had “RedHat Linux”) and looked to package them for debian, given I was actually u…
[2]: https://www.debian.org/events/keysigning
People should only sign a key under at least two conditions:
The key owner convinces the signer that the identity in the UID is indeed their own identity by whatever evidence the signer is willing to accept as convincing. Usually this means the key owner must present a government issued ID with a picture and information that match up with the key owner. (Some signers know that government issued ID's are easily forged and that the trustability of the issuing authorities is often suspect and so they may require additional and/or alternative evidence of identity).
The key owner verifies that the fingerprint and the length of the key about to be signed is indeed their own.
--
...debian is INDEED old-school and slightly derpy (see their use of the condorcet voting method), but it has boded extremely well for their longevity. Debian exists for its users, and its users are generally developers.
Re: Debian's Challenge When Its Developers Drift Away
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mindshare matters, too. A big reason why small distros manage to get a foothold is because they're highly visible in places that get traffic (which then kicks off a virtuous cycle further increasing visibility). When existing Linux users get an itch to try a different distro, the ones that will come to mind to try are those they saw on reddit/youtube/xitter/etc, and Linux newbies are also going to be inclined towards…
Speaking from personal experience which is admittedly quite old at this point, but it used to be the case that Debian definitely didn’t go out of its way to try to pull in devs. When I had a few small open source things myself I packaged them for RedHat (this is pre-fedora when RedHat didn’t have a commercial and free version, they just had “RedHat Linux”) and looked to package them for debian, given I was actually u…
> I couldn’t get anyone from Debian to sign my gpg keys which if I recall correctly was a necessary part in getting my package upstreamed
You recall it incorrectly. You need that for becoming a Debian Maintainer and gaining direct upload rights, but for contributing a package you only need to have it sponsored by a Debian Developer.
Re: Debian's Challenge When Its Developers Drift Away
#25I believe the problem with Debian and many open source projects is that communities outside the US, Greater China, India, and some advanced European countries are relatively weak, making it difficult for project leader-level figures to emerge. I was born and raised in South Korea, a virtual open-source wasteland. Listening to testimonies from developers working here, many say, “I was captivated by the GNU spirit and…
The challenge outlined by the article is the lack of communication regarding the change in availability of Debian volunteers themselves. TFA doesn't mention issues regarding recruitment of new developers.
Yes. But in my opinion, this is more than a problem of communication.
Many open source projects fail to retain their management cycle, or ecosystem even they have their Discord, or IRC to communicate. Many open source projects are having trouble retaining themselves and the core problem of them are 'they are just thriving in their cultural boundaries'. For example, in our country, South Korea, many open source projects are born and just die within a few years. And their core problem was 'only Korean developers can understand what is actually happening in that open source group'. I think that Debian volunteers communicate quite well, but the way how they communicate is immature. And, at least, they should let people know how they try hard to keep them alive. Debian is famous, and many developers in here think that it is 'a standard one for the normal office'. That means, no matter how Debian volunteers trying so hard, many people would perceive it as a 'untouchable' realm. Then it is important to re-think how to get people to continue on some positions. Debian still has translated documentations, even in a niche language. Like that, Debian should make more ways to 'encourage' developers to cooperate, in many languages. In 21th century, there's a great translator, so allowing people who don't speak English well, may not be a problem. Something like..yep, better than disappearing.
I guess my comment is kinda messy, hm..Anyway, thanks for the reminder. Have a good day!
:)
Re: Debian's Challenge When Its Developers Drift Away
#26Try making the term as a developer time limited, such as for a two-year period. The developer must actively renew the term. The point wouldn’t be to kick developers out after two years; there would be no limit on renewals and no requirement for approval. Rather, it makes the commitment a limited rather than unlimited one and forces the developer to periodically think: do I still want to do this? Then, passively takin…
Not too bad!