Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2013-09-10

[Dirkjan Ochtman]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 6:33 AM, Daniel Campbell <lists@××××××××.us> wrote:
> The organizational and social aspects of it pushed me away the most. I'm
> completely okay with a test that ensures that you either know what
> you're doing or are resourceful enough to figure it out when in doubt.
> It's Gentoo as an organization that seems foreboding and intimidating.
> One must wonder if they should bother applying, if they're good enough,
> if a mistake would end the work they put in to become a developer, etc.

That seems worrying. Can you give more of an expression of the kind of
thing where you get this impression?

> Additionally, I couldn't really come up with a solid goal to work on; an
> answer to "why do you want to become a developer?" My computing
> interests lie in problems that are already solved for the most part (IOW
> I don't know how to find an unsolved problem). My favorite software
> already has capable maintainers on Gentoo, as well. So if I found myself
> as a developer, I don't know what I would work on. I'm interested in
> writing better guides for things, making corrections, updating out-dated
> stuff, and wouldn't mind adding new packages to portage, but that
> strikes me as something general that all developers pretty much do already.
>
> I've thought about giving it a try, but I don't want to waste people's
> time if someone more useful applies. This conflicts with my desire to
> learn and improve, because you can't learn everything alone. So I'm stuck.
>
> Sorry for the long, personal answer. I would've responded sooner but I
> wanted to give the question some thought.

Thank you for giving the long, personal answer! I think it's very
useful to hear. I also think that anyone willing to think about
something like this or who can explain it this way on this mailing
list should most definitely be a developer, because you're so
obviously motivated to make Gentoo even better than it already is.
AFAICT the documentation team is definitely understaffed, so helping
out there would be an obvious win. Just fixing bugs and updating
out-dated packages would also be very welcome. Please apply, I'm
personally happy to be your mentor if you do (find me on IRC or email
me personally if you're interested). Don't be afraid of "wasting" my
time, you can easily repay it by making Gentoo better.

Cheers,

Dirkjan