Attracting and Retaining Debian Contributors

by sohkamyung • 2 years ago

153 112 2 years ago

mistrial9• 2 years ago

for those (rightfully) complaining about the experience of making dot-deb packaging .. yes all true and needs to improve YET the Apple iPhone app developer experience has been tremendously painful and rude for a decade also.. somehow given $INCENTIVES the app devs for iPhone just consider it table stakes?

adamc2• 2 years ago

Money is a powerful incentive.

robocat• 2 years ago

Except for 99% psych studies showing that it is a poor incentive[1].

Talking to a person doing hotel reservations today - his personal incentives were to do give quality service (unfortunately the managers incentives were financially misaligned with that!). Most job satisfaction seems to be derived from internal incentives and money is not that good in my experience. Maybe different in the USA from New Zealand.

[1] see psych reproducability studies.

o11c• 2 years ago

Apps are usually first party, which makes a big difference.

The thing that seems to be relatively rare about Debian among Linux distributions is that the packaging data is intrusive - a debian/ directory within the package itself, which must have already been downloaded. Most other distros seem to have external packaging - some sort of package specification that points to the URL of the upstream and is responsible for pulling it.

It cannot be overstated how much friction this inversion adds, whether for new packages, for updated upstream packages, or for distro-specific (hopefully temporary, but Debian has a bad record for that) patching.

(I actually tried filing this as a bug once, but it immediately got moved to the mailing list, and I promptly got un-CC'ed and stopped being able to reply, since what lunatic actually subscribes to a firehose of a mailing list? Email also considered harmful)

candiddevmike2• 2 years ago

Debian losing contributions is a fairly big deal because Debian and its derivatives represent the most popular Linux distributions.

You'd think Canonical would contribute more...

I think there's also a larger conversation of what folks really need from a Linux distribution in the year 2020+. Desktop Linux is fairly needy but AppImage and flatpak have largely fixed that.

mass_and_energy• 2 years ago

Do we want canonical that involved in our beloved Debian? Look at what they did to glorious Ubuntu, if they think Snap is a good addition to any OS then should we listen to their input?

bee_rider• 2 years ago

Canonical was with Ubuntu from the beginning, so if it was ever glorious, that was partially their doing.

jcastro• 2 years ago

that involved in our beloved Debian?

They've been there for 20 years already.

bregma• 2 years ago

What percentage of Debian Developers are Canonical employees? 40%? 60%?

Rinzler89• 2 years ago

The beauty of Linux is that we can have a new popular Linux distro. It doesn't have to be Debian based. It can be Opensuse, Fedora or Arch based.

develatio• 2 years ago

You'd think Canonical would contribute more

Context: I have +10y exp with Python, Linux (some packaging, kernel hacking, sys admin / SRE), C, several cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Hetzner, DO, OVH), etc...

Applied to a Canonical position (Senior Python Eng + required Linux exp + nice to have cloud knowledge), got rejected automatically because I don't have a university degree.

Tweeted about it, asking for some feedback. Tons of replies, same opinion: Canonical are plain elitists.

Don't expect them to contribute.

intelVISA• 2 years ago

I'd rather work fast food than Canonical, you dodged a bullet.

marcolussetti• 2 years ago

Isn't Canonical the one that hires bases on High School performance?

rlpb• 2 years ago

You'd think Canonical would contribute more...

How much is enough? Did you know that significant contributions to Debian are made by Canonical employees who are Debian Developers being paid to do so?

As a recent example, Debian's recent 64 bit time_t transition was driven by Canonical employees. Canonical employees continue to maintain various packages in Debian, but it's not obvious because they use their Debian "hats".

kombine2• 2 years ago

I see little reason to use Debian on a personal computer, despite using a Debian-based distributions (Ubuntu and Debian itself) for more than 10 years. I switched to Fedora and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and they perfectly fit my needs.

pmontra• 2 years ago

Honest question. What do they do that Debian or Ubuntu don't?

dilawar• 2 years ago

For openSuSe, their open build service is awesome. You can create packages in your personal repos and submit to the official repo in one click. Though zypper (suse package manager) download packages serially and takes a lot of time during upgrades.

Yasuraka3• 2 years ago

Major advantage of Fedora is being closer to the upstream sources, both in terms of freshness and in terms of not meddling with libs or similar. Debian patches lead to several possible exploits over the last few years.

shiroiushi5• 2 years ago

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is a rolling-release distro, so it has up-to-date packages unlike Debian where the packages are years out-of-date. This should make stuff like flatpaks and snaps much less necessary, since these are basically work-arounds for ancient packages.

Also, KDE seems to be very well supported on OpenSUSE, whereas it's more of an afterthought in most other distros, including Ubuntu and Debian.

kombine2• 2 years ago

Basically they have up-to-date KDE desktop environment unlike the obsolete version in Debian. Ubuntu always lags behind too.

lucifargundam• 2 years ago

I'll concede with it being a matter of preference. For me, I used Debian for everything. I even use it to play VR games on Steam.

loughnane• 2 years ago

Same for me

mvavassori• 2 years ago

Genuine question(s): Who pays maintainers? Are they even paid? If they aren't paid, why do they do it?

candiddevmike2• 2 years ago

This is the open source paradox. Fun, fame, power/control, employment... If you think about it, with how useful/critical some open source projects and distributions are, it seems bizarre to have what amounts to a "group of monks of yore" maintaining it vs government funded.

binary1323• 2 years ago

At least monks have free time and presumably sponsorship or at least survival necessities

stcroixx• 2 years ago

The first generation of open source devs did it for fun and ideological reasons. Back then, before any of the big tech companies even existed (except Microsoft, who was widely hated) software was not a highly paid profession, more in line with being a CPA, so people looking to maximize their earning potential weren't in the field at all. Those people did finance back then.

skobes• 2 years ago

I had the same thought. For all the talk of lowering barriers... should we really be surprised that unpaid labor is hard to find?

Maybe if I were independently wealthy I would spend my time contributing to Debian.

5040• 2 years ago

should we really be surprised that unpaid labor is hard to find?

Music is mostly unpaid labor and there's no shortage of musicians.

bityard4• 2 years ago

I nearly down-voted this question because every time funding and open source come up together, there will be a lot of arguments about it.

But to answer your question: Debian maintainers are not paid to maintain Debian. People volunteer to work on the Debian project because it's something they use, love, and believe in. Working on Debian is where they get their passion and joy, money comes from somewhere else.

A few maintainers few _might_ get paid by their employer to work on Debian packages that the employer has a vested interest in. As an example, there were some Canonical employees who were also Debian maintainers, but I don't know if this is still true today. I think there are a few companies that tend to hire established Debian developers, like Freexian.

taftster• 2 years ago

Do you feel like Debian has it different (worse) than other distributions? Does Debian not have the same number of maintainers paid by corporations, etc.? Like in comparison to Ubuntu or Redhat?

lynx23• 2 years ago

Most developers are not payed.

lofaszvanitt• 2 years ago

Well, this problem needs to be solved. Even if you get a tiny amount, that would inspire a lot of people. Having something in return helps a lot vs invisible hands patting on your shoulder. Most people are ungrateful and take this FOSS ecosystem granted.

My idea is to separate a 5 eur/usd from every EU/US citizen's monthly paycheck and allocate that money to the sites the user frequents, the foss tools used.

rstuart41332• 2 years ago

As others are said Debian developers aren't paid, by Debian at least.

Many of us use Debian in our day jobs. I used to Windows at first because there was very little else, ran away to RedHat when it became clear it's very hard to develop something reliable on a base that is a black box and so unreliable and had abysmal support, ran away from RedHat to Debian at about the time of the Fedora / RedHat enterprise split because they pushed a minor update with so many incompatibilities it broke my systems.

In Debian I found a whole pile of like minded sysadmins/system builders working collaboratively on distro they can use in their day jobs. What do you need as a sysadmin - a rock solid base. Debian moves slowly, is tested for over a year prior to release, backports security patches to stable instead of moving to a new version, has hundreds if not thousands of rules and tools to enforce quality standards, and discussions with its users (who are also the developers) that span weeks if not months over technical changes to ensure they don't break things. The flips side of this coin is you will see people complaining about how old Debian is, or how hard Debian packaging is. All true. And it's that way because it's the only way we've found to create the distro these sysadmin/system builders can build on and trust. It's not a coincidence Debian lead the world into reproducible builds.

In answer to your question "why do they do it", the answer is because we haven't found a better way. Ubuntu's constant introduction home grown features like MIR, their desktop, and the snap store are designed to benefit them, but it's users. Proprietary systems are out of the question now in many places - hidden code with hidden bugs controlled by hidden entities and state actors isn't we or many of our employers can tolerate. What other way is there? It seems to me that open source (which is what Debian is - an open source distro), it the only way to build these types of systems.

jmclnx• 2 years ago

Getting smart young people to contribute to Linux Distros (and BSD for that matter) to me is a tough job.

Linux kicked off in the 90s because young people at that time wanted a real OS, so Linux came out and people flocked to improve it.

Today, almost all kids use Cell Phones, which are all locked down. I think only a few young kids rely on PCs, thus the issue. I hope it can be solved at some point and good contributors can be found. Otherwise we will be left with just IBM Red Hat.

shakow2• 2 years ago

Getting smart young people to contribute to Linux Distros (and BSD for that matter) to me is a tough job.

I mean, they came with enthusiasm and a lot of hard work, brought a new language with many advantages (as said by the BDFL humself), dusted off the whole GPU stack, tried to formalize a bit the FS systems, then got shunned out by the greybeards because “muh youngsters and their religion”.

arp2429• 2 years ago

That's not really a fair representation of the argument, and the stereotyping of everyone who disagrees or expresses some caution as an old stubborn greybeard who refuses to learn anything new is exactly the thing people (rightfully) complain about.

renewiltord• 2 years ago

Rust on Linux will happen. One way or another. At the worst, one funeral at a time. I wouldn’t sweat it.

I remember a HN comment that I really liked and can’t find now that went something like:

You know what stopped me from programming? It wasn’t that I didn’t have a good computer. It wasn’t that I started later than all the other kids. It wasn’t that I had to work. Nothing. Nothing stopped me from programming.

There’ll always be folks like that. And I hope I’ll be like that for some thing too!

mustache_kimono4• 2 years ago

It's a shit take, but I like it. Upvote this guy.

cesarb• 2 years ago

Linux kicked off in the 90s because young people at that time wanted a real OS

It's easy to underestimate how inferior MS-DOS was, unless you lived through it. Windows (3.x and later 9x) was slightly better, but still had severe issues. Modern Windows is, from what I've heard, a lot better, so the incentive to migrate is not as strong.

Today, almost all kids use Cell Phones, which are all locked down.

Not just cell phones; with Secure Boot and BitLocker, computers are more locked down too. In particular, BitLocker means that it's harder to share disk space between Windows and an alternative operating system; back in the MS-DOS (and Windows 9x) days, it was not unusual to install Linux in a directory (or a disk image file) on the same partition used by the other operating system.

arp2429• 2 years ago

Not just cell phones; with Secure Boot and BitLocker, computers are more locked down too.

You can just disable secure boot, no? I just got a brand new laptop today, and I could just disable it. I know you can get Linux to work with it, but I can't be arsed to mess about with it and the practical security benefits for me are basically zero.

Also, don't underestimate the friction that existed in the 90s or early 00s. Nothing worked on Linux or BSD. My government sent me .doc files. Tons of stuff was Windows-only desktop software.[1] Mucking about with xfree86 -configure and /etc/X11/.... was far from easy or straight-forward. Internet access was far more rare and "just Google it" wasn't really a thing, etc. etc. etc.

If I look at the amount of effort I spent to "just get Linux running" back in 2000 or so when I first tried it vs. today, then I'm fairly sure the overall experience is a lot better today. Sure, you need to deal with some stupid nonsense, but that was always the case.

[1]: For all the hate the "modern web" gets from some people here: it does replace tons of crappy desktop stuff with an abstracted isolated VM which, among other benefits, makes running "alternative" systems like Linux or BSD far more viable.

whyoh• 2 years ago

In particular, BitLocker means that it's harder to share disk space between Windows and an alternative operating system

BitLocker is completely optional, even on Windows 11 (although in some cases encryption does kick in automatically - but you can revert it).

And if you want to both use BitLocker and share files with another OS, you can easily do it with a separate unencrypted drive or partition.

augusto-moura• 2 years ago

There are still a bunch of young ones on PCs because of gaming, unfortunately the gaming scene is chiefly on Windows. Proton and Steam Deck were improvements, but the market share is still heavily leaning towards Microsoft.

Maybe if things get better we could see a steadily increase in Linux users, as we are already seeing

lolinder• 2 years ago

I suspect the same number of people want a real OS as before, the difference is that everyone now has an OS of a weaker kind that gives them access to the same web that we're all on. So it's a similar problem that we have on the web as a whole—it's not that there's less good content (there's actually dramatically more), it's that it's hard to find it in the deluge of bad content.

The trick that we have now is that young people with potential to be highly technical won't just come to us automatically like they did when we were 60% of the web. Instead we have to make a more conscious effort to do outreach and give people a taste of the power of real computing.

skinner927• 2 years ago

I agree with your assumption that there’s the same number of people who want a real OS as there ever was.

However, I believe there are more active distros and related highly-technical projects today than ever. So everyone has to share fewer contributors, except of course whatever the few hot/popular projects are (the latter is nothing new).

I do worry though. Major academic institutions are having to put freshmen in remedial computer classes to teach them what files, folders, and devices are.

The average persons is getting farther and farther away from an actual PC and deeper into the “app” world. Everything is moving to “the cloud”. Even software development is being pushed to virtual desktops/thin clients (look at GitHub workspaces [or whatever it’s called] as an example). The extremely large majority of software development today is web/cloud based. There are more and more of the non-technical buying “computers” that are really just glorified tablets.

At some point, likely not/hopefully not in our lifetimes, it could become unprofitable for manufacturers to build PCs or only a few remain and the costs become prohibitively expensive to anyone but for-profit companies/corps.

Hopefully that’s a pessimistic outlook.

cedws• 2 years ago

I’m ~young (23) and care about Linux. But I’m not going to volunteer to work on it for free. I have bills to pay. I’m here to get paid.

Something that I hope dies off in the next decade is corporations leeching off of passionate volunteers doing free work.

Piraty2• 2 years ago

Debian doesn't do a good job in making life easier for its maintainers. https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2019-03-10-debian-windin...

imtringued• 2 years ago

I made my own custom packages for Alpine Linux and Arch Linux for personal use. It is so easy that I am honestly I'm not seeing the point in doing things the way Debian does it. It just makes things unnecessarily difficult for no reason.

What does a maintainer realistically do?

He builds the software, so you expect that the package builder automatically installs the development dependencies and runs the build software inside a chroot.

In case the software requires modifications, there needs to be a way to deliver patch files or additional files that aren't part of the original software or at least a standard location to store the distro specific fork that everyone agrees on.

Once the software is built, the maintainer creates a directory structure that conforms to the distributions's conventions, adds things like systemd unit files or desktop shortcuts and other distro specific changes that exist outside the software.

I would encourage everyone to at least give Alpine or Arch Linux packaging a try. It really is quite easy. Almost as easy as writing a docker file.

sangnoir2• 2 years ago

What does a maintainer realistically do?

Debian maintainers have to coax upstream packages to behave like other Debian packages and use supported linked dependencies. This covers everything from log and config file locations, startup scripts patching dependencies to match the versions supported by the release, backporting security updates, and documenting.

I trust Debian (and in turn Debian maintainers) more than I trust the upstream developer of lib-random-4-dev. I only ever had to build a custom package from source a handful of times.

Piraty2• 2 years ago

I agree and add Void Linux to the list in the same vein.

Generalley, ports-like package repos (all package build recipes in one repo) are really beneficial for large-scale operations or simply rollbacks. Being able to bootstrap the distro from a git repo and a well-defined set of bootstrap tools is really nice. try that with debian.

See Void Linux and Alpine for a simple, yet refreshing aproach to distro package maintenance, with low overhead.

homebrewer5• 2 years ago

Almost as easy as writing a docker file.

It's easier because you get a sane shell instead of a poor reimplementation of a tiny subset of one.

I maintain many aur packages, and wrote the first one in half an hour, knowing nothing about Arch packaging at the time. Now it takes me maybe 5-10 minutes to package a small application that adheres to the standard conventions.

I spent maybe two days on my first Debian package. It was also the last one (not really, but almost so).

bityard4• 2 years ago

I can't find it now, but I read something just a few days ago saying that some prominent Debian members very much want to see the development/maintainership experience of the OS modernized and improved. They are suggesting (but not demanding) that packages be maintained by teams rather than individuals, manage source packages on Debian's own Gitlab instance, accept issues and PRs via Gitlab, better CI and testing infrastructure for packages, and so on.

I respect the fact that current Debian development practices have carried the OS this far, but lowering the barrier to entry for volunteers to help maintain the OS going forward could only be a good thing.

JonChesterfield2• 2 years ago

Lowering the bar to entry in software can absolutely be a bad thing in a wide range of ways.

The most obvious in the current context is possibly well intentioned amateurs proposing LLM generated patches for the usual developers to fritter away their time on until patience runs out.

homebrewer5• 2 years ago

https://lwn.net/Articles/986480/

binary1323• 2 years ago

open source ain’t what it used to be

myprotegeai• 2 years ago

It's only going to get worse. There's a storm coming. The ageing open source engineers who hold up the whole house of cards cannot keep going indefinitely. It's going to turn into tragedy of the commons very quickly.

shiroiushi5• 2 years ago

This is one of many reasons humanity really needs to work on anti-aging and life extension therapies. If we can make these old-timer maintainers biologically immortal, we won't have to worry about this stuff collapsing one day.

zokier• 2 years ago

From my point of view it doesn't seem like really appreciate the Debian-style integrated self-contained OS model; what people want (these days) is more just a platform to run 3rd party applications. It is easy to see why some people see Debian more just getting in the way rather than being an asset.

Part of the problem might be that Debian is something for everyone, and has cast a very wide net in terms of packages. Especially not all packages are all that integrated to the whole, or follow Debian guidelines very closely. I don't know if it would help if Debian would tighten ship, raise the bar for packages and cull more aggressively some of the less maintained ones. Although on the flip side one of the big advantages of Debian is its vast package archives so its a balancing act.

Regarding the language aspect, that is the focus for much of the article, while I think local communities working in their native languages is definitely good thing ultimately I believe that any potential Debian contributor needs to be somewhat fluent in English. Debian is communal project after all and I imagine all the official discussions happen in English; its difficult to see someone being effective contributor if they can not communicate comfortably in community.

Barrin92• 2 years ago

IRC is the default chat mechanism for Debian, but younger people do not use IRC; in Brazil, they use Telegram instead.

This is I think one of the major reasons why a lot of older open source projects are absolutely starved for developers in their 20s and 30s. A lot of the mail based workflows or IRC based communication is just utterly foreign to any young person and also objectively atrocious in many ways. Having to rely on a chat service that doesn't let you see offline messages without setting up a proxy in 2024 is just not comprehensible to anyone used to modern services, for good reason.

It's very obvious that open source projects that embrace github, discord, social media are able to do much better and attract contributors much more effectively. Purism is nice and all but if most of your core maintainers are in their 50s and 60s which is a reality now for a lot of long lived projects with no replacement coming up you're looking at the whole thing dying in a generation.

davisr2• 2 years ago

You've outed yourself as not knowing why IRC and email are the established media. IRC is meant to be live chat rooms -- and explicitly not persistent conversation. That is the whole point. For persistence, use email. These are the only two protocols required to cover most all needs of communication. It's the simplicity and stability that is why they are preferred, and their usage translates to higher quality development -- much higher quality than is usually ever found on GitHub or Discord.

Also, putting the keys to one's communication into proprietary platforms, like GitHub and Discord, is a horrifyingly bad idea. Maybe it helps graduates of computer science work faster, but graduates of computer science also are (usually) embarrassingly bad hacks at what they do.

duskwuff• 2 years ago

IRC is meant to be live chat rooms -- and explicitly not persistent conversation. That is the whole point. For persistence, use email.

Is there a compelling reason for those to be separate, beyond "we've always done it this way"?

daedrdev2• 2 years ago

and their usage translates to higher quality development -- much higher quality than is usually ever found on GitHub or Discord

There are plenty of great software projects with development run using both discord and GitHub. The advantages are that it allows one to run both development and a grow a community, and more importantly it brings in massive numbers of young developers who will one day become important figures in a long term project. Simply ignoring where young developers are today is not a good idea imo.

The tradeoffs you said are real, but the benefits I argue are real as well. And it's easy to make a discord bot to have all messages be duplicated in another application, such as irc, or record them.

rstuart41332• 2 years ago

in Brazil, they use Telegram instead

Telegram is a proprietary protocol, run by servers controlled by private entity. That is a complete anathema Debian. If IRC is replaced, it will be by open source, open access, probably running on hardware controlled by Debian, and done in a completely transparent way.

That takes a lot of effort to get going. Nonetheless, experimental servers have been set up, and everyone invited to use them. The Debian developers voted with their feet. They kept them firmly in place, on IRC.

To be fair, IRC works. Email works. Young entrepreneurs, jailing of CEO's by the French Police, and skilful marketing will attract the young to newer platforms, and so current flavours of the month you mentioned - they will become the IRC's of the next generation. When looked at in that vein, the constant churn to the new shiny platform looks like a very uninviting hamster wheel to the existing Debian Developers who just want to get shit done.

And as it happens, the youngsters seem to have no trouble adapting themselves all sorts of new software they haven't seen before - like IRC. Compared to the effort they must go to become a Debian Developer (you have to pass an exam of sorts, and there are a lot of new Debian specific tools you have to use), using IRC is a very, very small road bump.

hinkley• 2 years ago

Every volunteer group eventually starts to look alike.

This is as it was explained to me over a decade ago, and I don’t really need to change much since human nature doesn’t change very fast, and this holds for all the groups I’ve belonged to.

You get a lot of young adults who have more time than money. Their contributions are energetic but often short lived. They move away, their sense of self shifts away from the cause, their lives get too complicated, or they overdo it. It’s the people who pace themselves that avoid burnout. The trap is caring so much about a cause that they hurt themselves and have to step back. You get a smaller number of generally older regulars who keep the wheels on, and you have a few old timers who remember all the way back to the beginning. What has been tried. Who we have collaborated with or gotten donations from in the past.

So attract your volunteers, identify and groom some for small leadership roles. But make sure not to overload them, and encourage them to set healthy boundaries. It’s keeping them that kills many orgs. Though some only focus on retention and become an echo chamber of greybeards. I don’t believe Linux has that problem. Yet.

meisel• 2 years ago

Moving Linux and its associated projects to GitHub would definitely help. I don't buy the arguments that GitHub isn't suitable for it, e.g. because it doesn't allow each sub-project to have its own area. Things like tags help a lot to separate issues and PRs based on which sub-project they're a part of.

JonChesterfield2• 2 years ago

Totally. Microsoft is a surely benevolent entity to host the Linux project. They've proven to be excellent stewards of open source in their copilot project.

never_inline• 2 years ago

One reason I see hardly mentioned is change of tech stacks.

Most modern developers do web development with a highly abstracted stack (including yours truly).

So nobody is much familiar with C / Perl / OS level APIs. Closest they get is adhoc shell scripting in form of devops tools.

Since people are so much abstracted from the stack, they don't feel much need to contribute to it or improve it to scratch their own itch.

That's why new stuff like CNCF gets many contributions, old ones like Debian don't.

jauntywundrkind• 2 years ago

I'm very conflicted, because Debian's strength is the intensity of package maintainership, but it's weakness is the intensity of package maintainership. Debian has a strong focus on being a in-group culture, believes in maintainers as strong operators over their fiefs, with freedom to operate in manners they like, usually with little support or help.

There's been suggestions - ideas that maybe Debian should be a little more open to outside contributors, should have ci/CD tools & accept PRs more publicly. https://salsa.debian.org/dep-team/deps/-/merge_requests/8

I do think there would be a lot of help that would show up, a lot of drive by contributions. And some people actively converting to maintainership that wouldn't have. But at the risk of a lot of people being able to help, without acculturating onto Debian, contributing more without becoming a full maintained.

My only real Debian developership attempt was a go at packaging wayvnc a long time ago, and it's deps, well before it was available. Seems fairly straightforward, but I felt very unwelcome when I tried to ask about finding a maintainer or getting mentorship; it was a long time ago so I don't fully remember, but it was pretty discouraging and experience having re-learned so much about Debian & having some the deeds, only to feel turned away for unclear reasons.

Tarucho• 2 years ago

The problem with these large open source projects is that they are already on maintenance mode and the fun part has already been done a long ago. Who wants to work for months doing menial tasks so that when they "graduate" they can start doing maintenance.

recursivecaveat• 2 years ago

Truly. God bless the maintainers and we couldn't do it without them, but I cannot imagine myself sitting down on the weekend to do maintenance on a 20yo disk partition utility or something.

Quekid5• 2 years ago

I'm not qualified to comment on the larger Debian ecosystem, but having been forced (due to work) to create some Debian packages... the tooling is awful. Packages are two(?) layers of tarballs, there's the option of free-form shell scripts in there to do whatever as a pre/post-install step, etc. etc. There's even several ways to try to hide some of that awfulness under the carpet, and yet it's still there.

If they want to attract people who care in the least about developer experience they'll need to consolidate and fix their package system and tooling.

homebrewer5• 2 years ago

Search HN for "Debian packaging", it's a very old issue that's been discussed at length.

Apparently the solution is to write yet another automation utility:

https://people.debian.org/~nthykier/blog/2023/a-new-debian-p...

Personally I have given up on Debian packaging. Work applications get shoved into /opt and configured via Ansible, and desktop systems run other distributions with simpler packaging formats (with internal or home stuff wrapped into proper packages).

I've thought about alternatives for the servers, but Alpine et al have their own issues. Nothing has been decided yet.

ThinkBeat• 2 years ago

I think having high-quality documentation in one language would be a huge win. That is lots of effort can be spent improving, expanding, and editing existing documentation. English is a prerequisite for the wider Debian community, and it is the most widely spoken language in the world says Wikipedia¹

English 1.5 billion Mandarin. 1.1 billion Hindi 0.7 billion Spanish. 0.6 billion

I wonder how real that number is for English. In a lot of nations, people are taught English in school officially, and it is true but with very poor results. (I was taught French in school and that had catastrophically bad results)

When it comes to Mandarin Chinese, I wonder if the wider community has better mastery of it compared to English or if its the same or if it is much worse.

When it comes to the tools used for communication, having a strong standard is again beneficial. What every 10 years? Every 5 years? There is a new and hip platform that "everyone" uses.

If you can't expect younger people joining to adapt some to the wider community, then you will need a lot of difficulty to handle bridges that will cause all manner of problems.

Or should "adult" community members have to adopt whatever "everyone" is using every 5 years?

IRC has all sorts of different clients, in all sorts of different platforms.

Becoming a developer or maintainer for Debian will involve learning to use a lot of different tools that are needed to perform the tasks involved. Surely most of those tools don't change around every year?

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...

AzzyHN• 2 years ago

Reading stuff like this makes me think I should look into contributing. I don't have much programming experience, just some college courses and a very good understanding of the basics, but I'm certainly willing to learn if it would help a package I enjoy

slavik81• 2 years ago

Absolutely. That sounds like all the qualifications you need.

There are general channels where you can ask questions (like Debian Mentors on IRC and the mailing list), but feel free to reach out if you need a bit of extra help getting started. My time is limited and I am a relative beginner myself, but I'm happy to give a few pointers.

Attracting and Retaining Debian Contributors

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