 How do they do this? Debian is a vast and messy and wonderful creative environment. So there are these accounts that everyone can have and give you the right to be credited on www.debian.org and you are a Debian contributor. And then people become Debian maintainers. Some people become Debian maintainers to do packaging independently. People become Debian developers, which is exactly the same as Debian contributor plus at Debian.org address voting right. And I attack everyone. Right? So minus, minus can. And you can actually get elected. You can? Yeah. So we are giving responsibility to people we cannot trust. Okay. So, how do you account anyone technically at any time? Debian maintainer, there is a procedure to apply Debian developers. There is a procedure to apply called a new member procedure. And that's what we are talking about here. So the general idea is that one doesn't need to be a Debian developer to contribute to Debian. But at some point when somebody is a Radio Debian contributor, it's nice to get it into it. It's a bit like I don't need to be a German to work in Germany, but after 10 years I've been living here, it's nice to be able to vote for the federal elections. That sort of idea. The process, so how many of you already know about all this? How many of you didn't know about this kind of structure? Okay, so mostly that's it. How many of you do not raise your hand? Okay. So the point of this meeting is a bit about figuring out how this is working at the moment, if there are problems, what could be improved. It's not just the people who kind of the core developers of the project that have an idea of what is going on, but that other people know it. Because for example I'm the person that develops the site and I'm Debian or mostly. I write code and then I tend to forget to tell people what I did and there is confusion. And so at least once a year we can have a meeting like this and try to improve it. The new member process has a number of people involved. There's Dan that have responsibility over the membership in Debian. So I am one, Mu is one, Ganef is one, Kuba is not here. He took the new members in Debian thing very seriously and started really creating new ones. And so I think he is now cradling new developers at the moment. And then there's FranBesca that help run the process. And Francesca is a FranBesca member. I miss someone, I think that's about it. There's more who are not here. I'm a next member. Yeah, Walter is a emeritus member. And FranBesca of the NM process is not FranBesca of that code. But I'm both. And then there's application managers that are Debian developers that have a conversation with people who are getting an account to kind of figure out if it's people that already have experience of Debian. And then there's advocates that are people who, that any developing developer can say that person is not a developing developer, but he or she should be. And that starts the process. So you enter somehow by invitations and then there's the rest of the ritual. And that's I think the, what did I miss? The NMs. Oh yeah. And the applicants of course. How many of you are Debian developers? Debian maintainers? Applicants? Advocates? Application managers? Okay, there's a bit of everything, good. Okay. Shall we start with asking problems? Yeah, why not? Right. It's not just me talking because it's above. So we are all here and there's a rather diverse representation of things. We also have some key link maintainers, at least one, who prefers to remain anonymous. That after, in the NM process, after we decide that a person should have an account, we ask key link maintainers to add their GPGT to the Debian key link, which then makes that he recognizes to the rest of the system for holding, uploading, and all sorts of things. And then there's Debian system administrators that create the account that they're going to have machines. So there's a bit of everyone in the room. Maybe not Debian system administrators. Oh, where again? Hey guys. Hello. So any of you who has questions, problems, feedback? I have a question based on something Enrico and I have been talking about, which is sort of the disconnect between Debian maintainer process and the new member process and how that looks from the other side. I mean I never went through the Debian maintainer process that exists. So for those of you that are Debian maintainers who are either already gone through the new member process or are in the process of starting it, what does that look like? Does that work for you or does it look weird? Or I have no idea what it looks like from your side and I'd love some information about it. That actually looks to me hard. I'm a Debian maintainer since 2008-2009. That's what my co-chair work and then my, unfortunately, it's bad, not so good. And I had, at that time, already disappeared from the philosophy in licensing questions, not the technical stuff. That's no problem for me. But these questions, stuff looks for me hard to find. Because I have no clue about licensing and my English is not that good. So that's what's here. What's my question here? So how is it for us to deal with how hard this is and how long it will take to switch from Debian maintainer to Debian developer? Right. Yeah. May I ask? Yeah. I went through Debian maintainer. I haven't yet started Debian development process. In my case, it looked like I started Debian maintenance packages just of sheer laziness because I didn't want to my system to start different things. Then I uploaded and I was sponsoring my usual sponsor after some time. Okay. You are providing quite a few packages to the Debian maintainer. And then I keep on looking to the Wiki page about it. I wrote the emails, started also. I got applications from him and then uploaded to him that's all. And after some attributes that I want to evolve from of course I heard that you are using, you are never asking questions. You are doing everything on your own. So you should be ready for Debian developer. But at the same time from looking at Debian development and stuff like this, I'm not sure whether this is correct or not because as we heard today after the kid of one of the girls, Debian is about people not about doing all the technical stuff. So I'm wondering how they are. I'm ready for Debian development. You mean that you don't want to rewrite that many emails? I'm trying to read emails. Okay. I did not try to put emails about system. That's why. Do you see anyone? You did not write any email about system, do you say? No. You are ready. Yeah, just go for it. Debian Devil is about the whole Debian technical ecosystem and you don't need to be part of all of the subsystems. So I don't know what you are maintaining. Python? Yeah, there's a Python universe. You can stay in there and never leave it. You are leaving it. I'm leaving it. I'm also part of the Debian class. Not very active. I think I stumbled about your sentence. You are not asking any questions anymore. You are ready for Debian development. If this is a criterion, I should lose my status. Because I have a lot of questions. I can't answer myself. I also asked on Debian mentors, which is to mentor people because you have so many different fields of knowledge. Not a single person can manage this all. I keep on asking questions and apply as Debian developer. One thing that I noticed is that a lot of the documentation for the new member process is from before Debian maintainers were a thing. So if you are a Debian maintainer already, you start in a different part of the process. If you are just following the checklist, the first four or five steps don't apply. None of the documentation reflects that. You simply start as being advocated. So it wasn't clear about that? Until you ask and then... Version, there is a third way of entering the process because you can already have a Debian account technically for reasons of portal boxes and whatever. And then again, you enter at a third point. It's very important for team members and DD to just remind people who are contributing to try to apply, to tell them to apply. Exactly, because of this. I felt very intimidated by the whole DD Spring and I had team members in the work team telling me, mostly every day, no, you should apply, no, you should apply. It worked. Can you please, for those who don't know, tell how you applied and that you are not working with packages and so on? Yeah, I'm not uploading DD, which means that I don't have uploading rights in the archive because I don't do packaging work, basically. And I have every other right at Diaz. So, yeah, that's it. My MMS process was slightly different because obviously I didn't need to get tested about packaging work or other different services. So, yeah, that's it. It can be an unnatural DD as well. It depends on your interests and what you do and kind of stuff. And the reason there's a distinction is because if somebody is not interested in uploading, then we can just skip a lot of checks during the new member process. It's about responsibilities. So, normally there's... What's checked in the new member process is that one knows what that union is about because we want to trust that people become voting members in a community that they have some idea how it works because otherwise there's not much point of voting. And then we need to trust that people know how to interact with the rest of the community. So, using the backtracking system that people understand the social contract and then in free software guidelines that are the essential common guidelines of the whole process that people understand the rules for using Debian infrastructure so you don't log into a Debian machine and start sending out time or something like that. And that's for everyone. So, being responsible members of the community because the account kind of gives what you get from what you don't have as a Debian contributor is official responsibility. You kind of have a responsibility towards your own reputation but that's it. But when you are a member of the project you have a responsibility of sending out emails with a Debian org address, somehow representing the project or voting or logging into the machine. So, we kind of want to make sure that you have roughly an idea about that and if you have roughly an idea about that apply to the Debian developer. And to get the flow rights we also want to have a look that you have an idea about maintaining packages which ideally should only mean having a look at your history of contributions in Debian and saying all your maintaining packages since 2008 and apparently you have closed, so good. And there could be some extra questions asked but you have a minimum of two questions. Yes. But for the tasking skills, no. At some point you have a minimum of two questions, but yes. The tasking skills? The whole process, yes. I have an idea of automating that alternatively. The whole thing has only two mandatory questions which is please sign this, your reply to these two questions with your GPGT and the question did you aid the Debian social contract and free software guidelines and do you agree with them? Yes. And did you aid the Debian machine users policy and agree with it? And there's only one valid answer for those who didn't get that part. So someone recently said they'd already done that as part of the Debian network system and were complaining that they had to do it twice. I know how to fix it. I have planned that in the next days. So I want to implement the concept of validated key fingerprint in the site. So when you have a record in the site you get a fingerprint and you can say validated and it will ask to answer those questions sign and paste the signed bit and check the signature. At that point it goes in a queue where from this people go, yeah, yeah, yeah. That pasted stuff was nonsense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You answer no and no because you can't machine parts the content of that. And everything that is a book says that that fingerprint has a signed statement on record so we don't need to ask for that anymore. And everyone can just go and do it. And that's kind of something I want to do because that enables applying for Debian maintainer using the site. It's kind of a precondition to that. I had that idea recently and I'm like, ah, I'm trying to implement it. Now, yeah, maybe to abstract from the technical implementation of that. 20 years ago Debian was a small project and getting into it was pretty easy. You just had one phone call but then there were more people and the getting into Debian part needed to be formalized. That was when the new member process was invented. It was called the new maintainer process for added confusion. And at one point it got very complicated and that's when people started to get afraid of it. Like being afraid of getting to having to answer too many questions about licenses. And currently or since a few years ago we are trying to get that back to the more sensible state. Like if you have been packaging stuff for, yeah, since 2008 it doesn't have to be that long. Then we just end wave that part and we work with it. You will still be required to ask some questions about licensing because it's not obvious about usually not obviously visible in your previous Debian contribution but if it is because you have been posting to, I'm not going to say legal but Debian Devil a project for some time answering questions reasonably then you can probably also hand wave this part. So to answer two questions at the same time you have just applied, give it a try. It's not that bad. Bad English is the problem. We've had applicants who didn't speak English at all which somehow worked out but you don't make yourself understand those or it will just work. Okay, thanks for your answer. The general language in Debian is English. We don't send like a volt ballot in multiple languages. So basic English like understanding written English helps but understanding written English is very broad. Your process is a conversation. So if you are writing something that doesn't there are other languages that might help you. Yeah, let's be clear. But that's time here now. Yeah, we're right. It's a conversation where you live. And if you send me something I don't understand. I just ask you back. What do you mean there? Could you please rephrase it? And then you just... No problem. And there is no time limit for the reply. Yeah. You are allowed to use the internet. I've been there for 10 years. I've gone on the durations and I've been there for a long time. I was allowed to put to be a material very low. Whatever. Just complain. Yeah. If you get stuck in the process complain to the front desk because we cannot know but if you made us... There's a new thing that is happening now because we have a problem with some application manager tend to take longer and longer longer, kind of lose enthusiasm but not retired, just kind of have they have really good intention and they still want to do it but they don't have the time and so there's a time that they take like weeks to apply and that they motivate people and that's currently a bit of a problem. It also works the other way around with applicants taking longer and longer and demotivating the application manager but we now have a prototype to calculate the median response time to email all the person in the process so we can see if we have some application manager that's starting to become struggling and say well take a break. It's okay, I mean it's perfectly normal to have a life and to not be able to Oh yeah, life. So really don't feel bad with yourself if you are not able to have a running time. Just notify the front desk or the other person you're talking to and it's fine, you can be put on hold or something but yeah. So the ideal process and I say that's a shame because I'm really bad answering email but the ideal process should go through in a week. Obvious from the ideal process. They actually went through it in a week, it's not that impossible. Yeah, I had an applicant that went through in two days and that was because I was slow as an application manager. He would reply to each of my millions of questions within half an hour because he got bored waiting for an application manager so he downloaded the list of all the questions and answered them all to have some fun while he was waiting and then it was just coffee pasting, his previous answers and then so he was like unusually fast and I was like what's going on and so he explained and I was like oh that's actually an excellent idea. What's your name or do you want to say? Reinhardt. But that's been cases where it has been that fast in this non-previous answers. Yeah. I think one of my end-in-process took three days because I was one day on vacation or something like that. So the idea of a week is because when you join you already have experience in Debian. If the application manager sees that people really struggle with finding basic things then one should say as soon as possible you may want to try again later and have more experience in Debian. If somebody joins then it's impossible to find any track record of contributions visible and one asks so what did you do and one says I figured if I was just passing by and got curious then one could say you want to get a bit more involved and come back. So ideally it should be obvious that a person is ready to become a Debian developer. There's a bunch of exchange of questions to work out the non-obvious bits. Like can this person be trusted to upload new software in Debian? Do they have an idea whether a license is free or non-free or they can't tell and they should ask somebody else? This third thing is extremely important because none of us are lawyers. There are licenses that I read them and I was like okay one error. I don't understand it so I won't upload it and I'll ask and that's responsible behavior. So absolute knowledge is not requested. Responsible behavior is requested. That's the idea and responsible behavior is able to say well I don't know I'll ask and that's perfect. So yeah and so a quick ping pong for five emails answered in a day or two that gets you at the end of the week. And that's it. If somebody is busy one can say I'll be busy for a while. Let's put it on hold. I'll be back from holidays in September. Or the application manager can say I'm busy for work this week, ping me back at the beginning of next week. Those can happen. But that's kind of the expected process. If an application manager becomes busy there's a button on the side to say give this applicant back to from desk and we'll find another person and there's no shame in that. If an applicant becomes uncomfortable with the process it's totally okay to say sorry I think this is not my place. I'll come back after six months and there's no problem with any of that. So that's the ideal thing. The practice is different because I guess so far it's a system that follows the role of inflation of bureaucracy. Where when people are responsible for making a choice they try to make sure that it's the right choice and always ask for something more. With the good intention of improving the process but that tends to inflate and require more and more energy. So as an application manager it's much better to tell a person you should come back after six months than having lots of enthusiasm and try to teach them and the pleat of energy over the course of months trying to say okay then make any upload of that package trying to fix that thing. Let me see that you learn that thing. That's mentorship. It's not application management. Needing to mentor means not yet. There's a few mentors for it. I hope they do their job well. So yeah that's the expectation. Real life may diverge from expectations by a week or two. More it's a sign that there's a problem. So application managers here, can you tell me some stories or reasons why things get stuck? I'm reviewing applicants and I have time for them to report. Right. Then a month later I get an email saying something happening. Yes I really want to look at your packages. I just can't sign time right now. Right. That happened to me in the last round and that's why I'm not coming here again. Okay here's a tip for you. Don't look at that packages. Look at the change works and there's a function for it on the site. And if you see that there are uploading packages since a bunch of years and you Google for their name and Debian and you don't see people screaming. Done. Especially if advocates said... I'm not happy with that. See I've loaded for years already and the packages are already in the archive. They're really doesn't have to pick it anymore. Those packages must be okay. And I'm serious. I'm not joking here. If I say things like you can copy and paste URLs in your event process supplies, I'm serious. You can. What is not allowed is pasting things with no attribution because that's plagiarism. But it's totally okay to say I have no idea. I Google. Here's what I found from that link. Sounds reasonable. Another problem of the NM process is that it looks a lot like a university exam or something or a high school exam. It comes with a lot of baggage that really does not fit. It's an exam with no time limit the possibility of us. And mostly things are asked to make sure that one is aware that things exist. There's one of my favorite, one of my favorite questions is this one. Is there any of these bits of Debian that you haven't heard of or of which you would like to know more? And then there's QA team, localization, website, box-washing parties, there have been wiki debt tags, conflict of interest for debt tags, all of the ends on or anything else you're curious about. Know that I only want to show that they exist and to offer pointers or some tips if you are interested. So there's questions like that that kind of human idea of the spirit of things. Any more stories about things getting stuck? Oh, Stefano, yes. And in case you don't feel comfortable looking at a change organ and saying this person is good enough, you have two options. One, reject. Two, give it back. Then we could have you only ask philosophy and possibility. And then hand over to another again to do the technical bits. Oh, I just stopped giving the packages and saying at that point I would be happy with the check. Have you looked for the change logs of your own packages? Do that. It's a wonderful ego boost. Like, what did I do in 2005? Oh, and in theory, from tomorrow, there will be more bags of data into contributors that you know, and you may find out that you've been a Daniel contributor since 2003 because we write mails to the BTS from way more time than we think. So that's going to be interesting. I have had a case of me getting stuck in the process because the applicant sent a mail and it got stuck in my spam filter and he didn't want to ask me because I thought something was wrong and that got stuck for, I think, a month before he sent another pinmail which I think is fairly problematic because I should have sent a pinmail as well. Applicants in the room, how long do you wait before contacting front desk if your application manager is not applying to you? I get no mail. No mail? Yes. Do you check this spam folder? I check it, but maybe... Okay, you... Not very... Okay, I can't look into the website. Oh, okay. Oh, from... What is your name? Oh, I think that's you. Oh, yeah. I want to say I'm in the process of talking to this employee with my manager and in the beginning the first initial mail he sent to me he said like, let's keep the two weeks time frame for answering and if you know for how you can, you will not have time answering those two weeks if or I will not have time, we will send mails and say to each other that so I think that's reasonable. In the initial mail to say let's have that time frame to... And that was true? Yeah, and he said to me after a month like, I'm not having time like when I look at the time... No, no, no, in the month during the process it was regular he said like, I'm not sure I'm going to have time next to... No, no, that's perfect. I think that's a reasonable set of time frame for an initial mail and try to keep it and if it's like two weeks and you don't get response like sent to me. Can I? I have experience because this is my second time I try to do this my first time was like, you are so overwhelmed or like they really saw these guys are gods and I don't know nothing and of course he sent me a bunch of leads and I was like, I have to answer right every fucking phrase should be perfect and the grammar and whatever and it took me like, I don't know, a month just to say yes and the guy was like, okay, but what's going on? Are you like, no, no, to be seen, you know and the first time it was like, it was my problem actually because you want to be perfect and that's the problem I think it's like, come on, they gave you the leads the way to... Okay, if you don't know, just take some time and that's it and the second time is like that it's like, okay, if I don't know anything, come on I've been around years and it's like, this should be fast because come on, I know the work, I know what I'm doing and it should be fast. I also have the feeling that applicants are usually too shy I have this observation that I would later take about this is Connolly of Dance, that was a guy in the energy room has uploaded, oh, I sponsored for him 50 packages or so and he is now teaching me things, I'm not aware of and getting this guy to apply was really hard and he's running the whole energy team now and finally he applied it took me one year to convince him because he was like, I don't want to, you know something like... and if somebody doesn't want to apply and it's okay he said I'm not good enough which was definitely wrong yeah, that impression is... there are DDs who had to be told that they were yes, definitely good enough to become a DD because they already maintained 200 packages and yes, definitely good enough to be calling themselves the maintainer of this particular package because they've been doing the uploads for like two years now so this is perfectly normal that you have people who think they're not good enough and convincing them otherwise might be difficult but yeah, it happens more often I've had experience outside of the community that people actually intimidated by Debian in our process it was, even if I joke, like... Valve is giving free games for Debian authors and it's probably much easier to do a NASA comment or something, you know, graphical stack it's not reality graph, it's much harder than applying actually for Debian membership, but they have, you know, like if they say like, yeah, I apply for Debian Debian has like that intimidating, you know, public picture I don't know why that happened, but it's dead yeah, it's difficult to say I mean, we can't really say anyone can become a Debian developer apply now and it's easy to do it because there are ways to do it I mean, a lot of capable people who have, you know, the picture like Debian it's like too hard, I'm not going to go to Fedora it's much easier for me, or I'm going to arch packages you know, they're going to be way too hard for me even if they didn't try at all that's the problem quality standards are so high I'm sorry I can't hear you Oh, sorry Oh, that's a second I'm at the counter Yeah? I'm already stopping I'm already on the counter so receive me up and look at this I'm at the counter Yeah? I'm already stopping I'm already on the counter so receive me up and look at this Yes but if I press the no advocate button search then I'm listed as received enough and look at this like 10 other people I'm confused like this That sounds like a bug It's so applicant and then receiving as the focus is Click on that That's not a bug there are advocates the last one now okay okay there's activity poll may have gone missing Freerack Oh Oops Applying for that Oh, I see It's an entirely different problem It's entirely my fault You see I wanted to implement becoming the administrator also through the site so I added an advocate for the administrator button but that goes nowhere at the moment and it ended up over there and I sort of forgot it and I guess some advocates clicked the wrong button at least for me and the Oops but so the lesson in this is to get no apply within March to August is about five months but even one week send an email to NM at WNL Organist what is going on because yeah You would have been through it four months ago if you had done that We are I will take that button away from the site I should actually the best solution is to implement it but at the moment it's probably an improvement to take the button away so to prevent the chaos and whatever it will take me to implement it and then send an email to all the people that are in that site Thanks for raising that By the way I always expected to be able to choose whether I am applying for DM or DD but actually because my advocate you need to have the choice because it was some kind of confusion it was not the documentation of the procedure it was so easy to implement it in this way there is another potential factor that confusing things and I think at this point it's only really old documentation refers to Debian developers with uploading privileges as Debian maintainers for me no with uploading yeah Do you see Debian? Do you want to join whatever? maybe it's also in the constitution they make references to Debian maintainers meeting all Debian developers because this is it meant Debian developers and they're ill or something I don't know no, it's mentors, this is maintainers but not DMs what does it say? lower KSM maintainers someone needs to read that and then make some editorial changes editorial? watch out with that friends is it in the constitution or it's in one of those principle level documents it may not be the constitution itself but it's one of the really old big ones if I list them as uploaded another maintainer in a package that term is maintainer is slightly overloaded maintaining a package doesn't make you formal Debian maintainer Debian maintainer are you if you're in Debian maintainer's hearing that allows you to actually upload stuff to Debian if you are listed in a control file of a package that just makes you someone maintaining this package so there's no point in getting my keys signed to upload reading? if you want to upload the package yourself you need a signed key yes and then you can apply for Debian maintainer which doesn't go through this website but some other new sponsor I'm a old timer I didn't follow the sponsoring is something yet different which is how you get your package uploaded if you're not uploading yourself but ask Debian developer to upload it it's not really complicated it's not so lots of terms at once so if you have a package and you want to get it into Debian you can upload it yourself for which you need permission or you ask someone else to sponsor it for you so in the control file the maintainer field is the person that gets email if a bug is reported to the package it's a team in this case it's not often the team but it doesn't have to be the uploader uploaders are the people that sign appearing the change log as the usual maintainers instead of non-maintainer upload so the people that generally do the work in the package what was the question I listed as uploader which makes you a package maintainer you are one of the maintainers uploader is a maintainer uploader the uploader's field would better have no point as a non-maintainer uploaders is a bad name and in that case it's also used for uploading but it doesn't make uploaders means that you are maintaining Debian package but they are not maintaining it so it is confusing and all uploaders are maintainers unless they start doing it but not all maintainers are uploaders because you can maintain things and ask somebody else to upload it it used to be worse when the new member process was called new maintainer process the constitution there's no mention of the word Debian maintainer I think it's in one of the policies I'm trying to find it now yeah yeah I agree on w3debian.org I think it should just be removed because it's outdated and no one is working on it or should be moved I just wait for the private talk sign but there's no gap in this talk in the next so maybe we should end this okay well to summarize what I wanted to know is that the website because I guess the big deal is the RPC okay it's an improvement and the site is Internet Django where the knows Python and Django and would like to help with working on it can you get in touch with me does that mean you get to cheat and make yourself um it means that you are listed as a front desk contributors or contributors to Debian.org right for the rest and then Debian.org is the email to use for pretty much anything and it's a safe space it's pretty hard that you write to that and somebody replies you shall never be a dv ever again that's what you write but you really don't take that as a challenge please so we should be expecting you lots of new happiness lots of new am records that too yes it's the developer's reference developer's reference like it doesn't look like it's been updated since this play ok so there's no gap from this talk to next so we need to evacuate the room nooo