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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.



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