Where are we going? (Not a rant)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sun, 09 Dec 2012 18:21:43 +0100, Roberto Ragusa wrote:

> I can only say that at
>   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers
> 23 steps are shown under "Becoming a Fedora Package Collection Maintainer".
> 
> Some of them are technical and more or less unavoidable (koji, expiring certificates,
> scm, bodhi), others are more social (ask a review, introduce, inform upstream,
> get sponsorship), finally there is legal stuff (the CLA).

Some are very small steps and only a very small hurdle.

If you give up so early, it's likely that you would give up quickly also
later when you are confronted with typical problems during ordinary
package maintenance. For example, some packagers would be fed up as soon
as they run into issues with Fedora Project development (arbitrary stuff
they don't like or don't agree with), or Fedora infrastructure (even if
just something like the move from cvs to git and a fundamental change in
the tools being used), or other maintainers modifying their packages (even
if following guidelines), or package dependencies causing build failures
or run-time failures, or non-responsive bug reporters, … not limited to
that.
 
> My enthusiasm has never been powerful enough to overcome such an amount
> of static friction.
> I do not have a bag of packages to add to Fedora, so going through all the
> steps just to maintain one rpm or two is costly.

It has been mentioned a couple of times in past and similar discussions
that the "How to join" guidelines are just a recommendation, a way that
should work, but not the only way how to find a sponsor and how to become
a maintainer/co-maintainer.

It should be obvious that if somebody else already has packaged something
for Fedora before, which you would also like to package, you cannot use
such packages for Fedora Package Review requests. Still, you can contact
the existing maintainer(s), offer help, tell about your plan of joining as
a co-maintainer and ask them about their opinion. Even better if you
contribute to the package regularly. It could be that they would welcome
the offer and might sponsor you directly, so you could go ahead with
package maintenance directly and prove that you are familiar with
packaging and with how things are done at Fedora. In other cases, you
would still need to find a separate sponsor, *but* there are ways to do
that without any package review requests, especially if there is an
agreement with existing package maintainer(s).

> I'm sure that after being
> "inside" the willingness to do more will raise easily, but the initial
> investment appears unjustified.

IMO, not seldomly it's the opposite. The "initial investment" is an effort
you would need to go through only once. Once you are responsible for a
package, however, you may need to show a lot more motivation as not
become one of those, who have managed to join too easily and leave
the project silently once a first roadblock is met.

> Replying to random posts on the MLs or contributing patches to random projects
> is more appealing (write mail, click send, finished).

It's much more convenient, requires no dedicated commitment, you can stop
any time. That's true. Especially if an upstream maintainer is much more
responsive than a Fedora maintainer and your patch in Fedora bugzilla
seems to be ignored, you may enjoy that more. Don't forget the added
convenience of being able to touch Fedora packages yourself and not having
to wait for somebody else.

-- 
Fedora release 18 (Spherical Cow) - Linux 3.6.9-4.fc18.x86_64
loadavg: 0.47 0.25 0.16