A while ago, I got a request from Kentaro Hayashi on the project I use to manage funding requests addressed to Freexian. He was keen to see some improvements on the way reimbursement requests are handled in Debian. In my opinion, the idea is certainly good but he’s not part of the treasurer team and was not willing to implement the project either, so it was not really ready to be submitted to us.
To be able to fund a useful project, we need either someone that is willing to do the work and try to push it further in Debian, or we need a Debian team interested in the result of the project (and in that case, we can try to find someone willing to implement the project). In this case, it’s a bit sad that the treasurer team didn’t comment at all… but in general, what should we do with those suggestions ?
It would still be interesting to have a list of such suggestions and have Debian developers be able to advocate (+1) those suggestions. It’s in this spirit that Kentaro created the “Grow your ideas” project on salsa.debian.org. Browse the list of issues, submit your own and click on 👍 (+1) to bump the suggestions that you find interesting. And click on the “Watch” button on the homepage to receive notifications when others submit suggestions so that you can evaluate those suggestions and possibly improve them through your comments.
In the end, this can only help those that are looking for ways to contribute to Debian: maybe some of them will formalize a concrete action plan and request funding for it! We have a pile of money sitting unused that’s clearly targeted to pay contributors to improve our infrastructure. And we have endless lists of (wishlist) bugs on all our infrastructure projects (dak, distro-tracker, …). What are you waiting ?
