[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Bugzilla handling for maintainer-wanted things

[Duncan]

Nathan L. Adams posted <430885BD.4010607@××××.org>, excerpted below,  on
Sun, 21 Aug 2005 09:46:37 -0400:

> My experience with Gentoo is that certain developers ignore user
> submitted ebuilds, bugs fixes, etc. and claim its a manpower/time issue.
> Yet they fail to court the user submitting the ebuild into becoming a
> developer too (thus helping relieve the manpower/time issue). And this
> isn't me wanting to get noticed, mind you; I'm talking about other users
> who regularly submit ebuilds and get ignored. So you end up with the "in
> crowd" capable of making Gentoo better and the rest forced to either
> fork or just go away. Chris even told Ciaran to not look at a user
> submitted ebuild because it was the games group's territory. Yet the
> games group 'FAQ' complains about how little time all of those dev's
> have. Wouldn't it make more sense to recruit those folks and make your
> team more capable of handling the load? THERE is your cathedral.

It has been said (and is no secret) that the fastest way to become a
Gentoo developer is to act like one.  Submit bugs with the patches
attached to fix them. Attach suggested patches to other bugs you find. 
Etc. Basically, become helpful enough that you catch a current dev's eye
and they decide to mentor you into full Gentoo dev-ship.  However, that's
certainly not all of it.  An ability to work as part of the team and at
least a basic understanding of the politics involved in teamwork and the
volunteer dynamic is also quite helpful.  No offense, but this latter part
doesn't seem to be an area you have either developed very well, or are all
that interested in demonstrating your development in, anyway, in the
context of the current discussion.  If you had, it should have become
quite obvious by now that the discussion isn't getting much of anywhere in
terms of your originally stated goals, and even tho you likely still
disagree, you'd have decided it's better to shut up, become a dev, and
bring up the topic another day, preferably from the inside.  Certainly,
there's  not much to be gained from continuing that argument, here and now.

In terms of becoming a developer, there are currently two possible
"shortcuts", for the impatient type. The monthly bugday is a
/very/ good way to get noticed, and several devs have come from there. 
The fairly new arch-testers are another way, particularly if you have a
machine other than x86.  Currently, most arch-testers are amd64, but
there's at least one PPC arch-tester, so far, and because the concept  has
been found to work so well for amd64, other archs are adopting it as well.
Note that to do well in either situation (or both), you'll not only need
some degree of technical skill (tho not all /that/ much, really), but more
importantly, you'll have to demonstrate your ability to work with others
-- people skills, as they call it.  Someone who cannot do this latter
shouldn't ever become a developer, as I expect you'll agree.

One of the problems with ebuild submissions is that even if great, they
can't simply be taken and added to the tree.  Basically, they aren't added
until a dev (or herd) is willing to take maintainership, over the longer
term.  With a herd like the games herd, they already have more packages to
maintain than they can really efficiently handle.  Yes, getting more devs
is nice, but it's not an instant thing.  The mentoring process takes time
from both the mentor and the "mentee", and certainly, some non-zero amount
of calendar time as well.  It does normally take a bit of self 
initiative, as well, but not in the confrontational way that's been
demonstrated here, as much as simply being aware of the situation, and
making the best of it, with one's goal in mind.  You've demonstrated some
initiative, certainly, but not the ability to read well the situation and
make the best of it, politically and otherwise.

(Said as a user, not a devel, myself.  I've been asked to become an AT,
and intend to do so in time, but am deliberately taking it slow.  I've no
immediate plans to become a dev, tho it's possible down the road somewhere.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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