You may recall the news last month around no one was left on Debian’s data protection team and other volunteer staffing challenges with different Debian efforts in the past. Debian Project Leader Andreas Tille has been looking at the issue of the challenges that arise when Debian’s all-volunteer developers quietly drift away either due to time commitments, other interests, or other reasons but don’t properly communicate it to the Debian project.
The issue being encountered isn’t that Debian’s volunteers stop contributing but that it happens without communicating it to other Debian developers. Particularly for those delegated to different Debian teams and they stop being involved or Debian packages that gradually become unmaintained. Without other Debian developers being aware when one temporarily or permanently steps away from the project, they aren’t able to effectively deal with the situation.
DPL Andreas Tille summarized the situation well today in a mailing list post for Debian Developers:
“The following thoughts are not specific to the recent changes around FTPmaster or DFSG, but reflect a more general pattern I have observed across different areas of Debian over time.
During my time as DPL, an earlier gut feeling has gradually turned into a clearer observation: Debian has a structural challenge that is easy to overlook precisely because we are a volunteer project.
Debian exists because people freely choose to spend their time on it. That is something I deeply value, and it is a large part of why Debian works as well as it does. At the same time, most of us joined with enthusiasm, not with an explicit agreement to later announce when our available time, energy, or interests change. Life circumstances shift, priorities evolve, interests fade – all of this is normal and entirely legitimate.
What we largely lack, however, are lightweight and reliable ways to communicate those changes to each other.
For many volunteers, being asked directly whether they are still active or whether others can rely on their work can feel uncomfortable – especially when the question comes from a friend or colleague. Out of consideration for each other, we often avoid asking. Out of the same consideration, we also avoid proactively stating that we have stepped back. As a result, responsibilities can quietly drift rather than being consciously handed over or concluded.
This dynamic creates a kind of implicit protection for contributors, which is understandable and well-intentioned. At the same time, it can have real consequences for the project: bugs remain unattended, security-relevant accounts are left without active oversight, or delegated roles continue to exist on paper without clear current ownership.
This is not about questioning anyone’s commitment or goodwill. It is about recognising that, in a long-running volunteer project, availability changes – and that Debian currently has few established ways to make those changes visible in a timely and low-pressure manner.
Over time, this has led me to think about how Debian could handle such changes in availability more consciously and more consistently. Rather than treating each situation as an isolated case, I believe it is useful to look at a few recurring areas where this dynamic becomes particularly visible, and where clearer structures could help both contributors and the project as a whole.”
He went on to outline some ideas around the MIA team as well as keeping packages approachable and handling of delegates. A proposed process being discussed following last year’s DebConf for the MIA team would be to have an automated system to automatically email individuals flagged as potentially being inactive contributors after a period of time (~6 months) and then monthly follow-up automated emails to try to solicit a response about the individual’s status.
This is an important initiative for the health of the Debian project — and really any open-source project for that matter — and for their volunteer contributors to be able to work effectively especially in cases of open-source developers quietly drifting away. More of the DPL thoughts on this topic can be found via today’s mailing list post.
