We got a lot of (>= 10) new Debian developers recently. I’m really happy to see that the bottlenecks in the New Maintainer process were (at least partially) solved. My first NM (actually my second, my first one is on hold) also became a DD today.
So, how long does it take to become a DD ? Let’s take 2 examples. Both are very active and skilled new contributors, that probably were quite close from being the faster you can be through NM:
Name | Applied | AM assigned | Approved by AM | Account created |
---|---|---|---|---|
Chris Lamb | 2008-05-01 | 2008-06-12 | 2008-07-22 | 2008-09-16 |
Sandro Tosi | 2008-03-24 | 2008-05-06 | 2008-06-22 | 2008-09-16 |
We have the proof: provided you have all the required skills, you can become a DD in less than 6 months!
Of course, some things are not perfect yet:
- A lot of very good contributors are waiting for an AM, because not enough DDs volunteer to be AMs.
- Some NMs still take too long to answer questions, using AMs that could probably mentor faster NMs. If your AM is waiting for you, feel guilty now!
- Front Desk and DAM are still managed by a small set of very active (and very busy elsewhere) DDs. Many of the new DDs were FD-approved and DAM-approved by the same person, which is not so great if we want to keep this two-steps check.
Well I talked to Myon at Debconf and he said that he’s currently pulling out of Frontdesk. So the two stamps check should be in action again pretty soon I think…
6 months is still pretty far from Gentoo’s 4-5 weeks…
Nice.
Now I wonder if a package I’m interested in (kmuddy) can set the longest “in queue” record for Debian. It’s there for four years so far! :D
6 months was possible two years ago, so I don’t see much improvement. And there is still 3 months delay between approval and creating account, what was most diappointing part of NM process from my POV.