$Id: nm_assigned.txt,v 1.17 2004/03/14 17:28:27 joerg Exp $

I'm glad to say that I have been appointed as your Application
Manager.  As such, I will go through the New Maintainer process with
you and then send a summary to the Developer Account Managers (DAM)
and a brief summary to the debian-newmaint Mailing-list.

First a quick note: please read all of my mails carefully. Many
applicants have a tendency of only answering half the questions. This
generates more work for both of us and means we will need more time
for your NM process.

At http://www.debian.org/devel/join/nm-checklist you can see the steps
we have to go through.  I hope you know about the basic steps.  If
not, please read the information at the New Maintainers' Corner and
feel free to ask any questions you might have.  I'm here to help you
get yourself integrated in the project, and I'm glad to help you in
any way.

The first step was to sign up to become a Debian Maintainer and get an
Application Manager (AM) assigned.  You have completed the first step.
Now it's time to check your identity.

1. Please send me the keyid of your GPG public key so I can fetch it
from a keyserver. If your GPG key is not on a public keyserver, please
upload it to subkeys.pgp.net. If your GPG key is signed by a Debian
developer, the ID check is completed.  However, if your key is not
signed, then we have to figure out what to do for the ID check.

Since many people trust Debian, we have to make sure that new
volunteers are who they claim to be.  The easiest check is having your
GPG key signed by a Debian developer because this means that he has
met you in real life and confirmed your identity.

Also: please read http://www.dewinter.com/gnupg_howto/ to learn
more about the web of trust and key signing.  Also:
http://www.herrons.com/kb2nsx/keysign.html

If you dont have your key signed by a Debian Developer please let me
know and we can discuss it. Usually I can find someone that lives near
you that would agree to meet you and sign your key.

Besides the requirement to have a signature from at least one existing
Debian Developer there is a strong advice to get more signatures on your
key and to make sure you are in the strong set of keys. Of course noone
request you to be at the top position in the world-wide Web of Trust,
but you should try to get at least into the strong set of keys. A site
to check whats up with your key is
http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/henkp/henkp/pgp/pathfinder/
Enter your keyid in the statistic box and see some stats about it. If it
complains it can't find your key, and you are sure you have used the
right ID it means that you are not in the strong set of keys, which is
not very good. This is not a showstopper for this application, but you
should try to get more signatures by meeting other people, exchanging
signatures, etc.

Please sign all mail to me. It's not that I'm paranoid about security,
it's just a good habit to get in to, and it shows me that you know
how.

2. Please tell me your preferred account name for the Debian machines
and the email address to which mail should be forwarded.  Please make
sure that the account name is still free -- visit http://db.debian.org/
to find out if this is the case.

3. Finally, please tell me about yourself and what you intend to do for
Debian (and how this fits in with The Social Contract).  Also, how
you came to Linux and free software, and why you want to volunteer
your time.
Note: I would like to post a summary about your biography to a public
mailing list so other developers can get to know you.  Please indicate
which parts I may publish and which not.

If you have packaged an application for Debian already, please take
another deep look into it, eliminating any error you may find. When we
start with T&S, you will need to send me its sources, so I can review it.
If it is a big package just give me the URLs where i can download the files
with wget.
Please also give me the Name of your sponsor for your package if it is
already in the Debian Archive.

I look forward to hearing from you and hope we will be able to go
through the steps without any problems.  The next step is "Philosophy
and Procedures" -- I will ask you a few questions by e-mail which you
will need to answer. This will inevitably lead to a discussion about
Debian's goals and core beliefs as well as the way we do things.

Finally, thanks for volunteering!  Debian is a volunteer effort and
you can make a difference!

Note: If you ever need more than 2 weeks for an answer of a mail,
please inform me about the delay. If delays are long or frequent, I
may put you on hold until you have time to complete the process. This
is not a bad thing, it just allows me to take on other applicants
during the time you're busy.