Gene Heskett wrote:
On Thursday 23 March 2006 10:05, tim hall wrote:
Lee Revell wrote:
almost a religious debate, so we shouldn't get into it (as you might
have guessed I'm a fan of the former). The main issue is that
developer time is a very limited resource and from the developer's
POV once a problem is fixed in the latest release, it's history -
the longer ago it was fixed the less interest they will have. So
the older a distro's software versions the less help they will get
from the developers and the more work required to maintain the
distro.
Thanks Lee, very clearly put.
Yes, I have nothing more to add.
I just want to add that I think there's room and need for another layer
of support programmer/developer/code-maintainer to serve as a buffer and
conduit between users and upstream developers. As has been said, this is
often the distro maintainers' job. It's where I think I see myself
heading and is the role I'm currently playing at RFA. I don't think I'll
ever have the ability to keep on top of bleeding edge development the
way developers like Lee do. On the other hand I think (hope?) I have the
aptitude for, and certainly know I have the interest in, acquiring the
skills needed to help service that middle ground between the bleeding
edge and a stable end-user platform.
I'm sure there's already a name for this role. The nearest I'm aware of
is "Debian Developer". What else do people call this?
-Eric Rz.
