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I am floating this for comment. |
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|
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Several Gentoo projects --- the ones CC on this note come to mind --- |
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are pure staff (or support) projects. As members of these projects we |
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do not develop anything; what we provide is support to Gentoo as a whole |
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and to individual developers, users, and projects. To do this |
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effectively, we must be known and visible. |
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|
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Recently, however, we ran into a question of whether or not a particular |
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developer was or was not a member of one of these support projects, and |
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resolving this (if it is resolved) was not as easy as you would think. |
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|
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Why not? First, it is just a fact of Gentoo that the home pages for our |
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projects are often out of date and thus unreliable indicators of who |
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does what (yes, devrel is guilty of this: slarti --- who is retired --- |
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is listed as a member of devrel). Second, the developer in question was |
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not marked present on the project's channel. Nonetheless, all these |
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projects do have IRC channels and their members are often online. |
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|
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Thus, I propose as a devrel policy (and as a suggestion to the other |
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support channels) that (1) if you are a member of devrel, and (2) if you |
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are online in freenode, then (3) you must take the time to /join |
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#gentoo-devrel unless you can articulate a good reason not to. |
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|
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Reasoning suggested above, but follows specifically thus: |
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(1) devrel (or whatever) is a support project (like juman resources for |
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Gentoo); |
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(2) You are a member of devrel; |
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(3) The only reason to be a member of devrel is to provide support of |
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some sort; |
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(4) To do this, you most likely have to be visible (there are a couple |
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exceptions, I think); |
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(5) The easiest way to be visible (to others on IRC who need immediate |
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support) is to be marked present on #gentoo-devrel (and marked as an |
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operator). |
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(6) And in the contrapositive, the person seeking support may conclude |
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that if you are not there, then either you are not online or you are not |
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a member of devrel (and so this person need not bother tracking you |
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down). |
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|
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I just happen to think it is a reasonable to require that if a developer |
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wishes to be a member of a support group, then that developer should |
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care enough about that group to show up on the group's IRC channel. |
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|
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For devrel, at least, I'm proposing it as one of the requirements of |
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membership. Others might have differing opinions; hence the designator |
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RFC. |
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|
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As always, comments, criticisms, dissents, flames, etc. requested and |
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welcome. |
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|
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Regards, |
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Ferris |
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-- |
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Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@g.o> |
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Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc) |