The Debian Python Modules Team is discussing which DVCS to switch to from SVN. Ondrej Certik asked how to generate a list of commiters to the team s repository, so I looked at it and got this:
emilio@saturno:~/deb/python-modules$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
865 piotr
609 morph
598 kov
532 bzed
388 pox
302 arnau
253 certik
216 shlomme
212 malex
175 hertzog
140 nslater
130 kobold
123 nijel
121 kitterma
106 bernat
99 kibi
87 varun
83 stratus
81 nobse
81 netzwurm
78 azatoth
76 mca
73 dottedmag
70 jluebbe
68 zack
68 cgalisteo
61 speijnik
61 odd_bloke
60 rganesan
55 kumanna
52 werner
50 haas
48 mejo
45 ucko
43 pabs
42 stew
42 luciano
41 mithrandi
40 wardi
36 gudjon
35 jandd
34 smcv
34 brettp
32 jenner
31 davidvilla
31 aurel32
30 rousseau
30 mtaylor
28 thomasbl
26 lool
25 gaspa
25 ffm
24 adn
22 jmalonzo
21 santiago
21 appaji
18 goedson
17 toadstool
17 sto
17 awen
16 mlizaur
16 akumar
15 nacho
14 smr
14 hanska
13 tviehmann
13 norsetto
13 mbaldessari
12 stone
12 sharky
11 rainct
11 fabrizio
10 lash
9 rodrigogc
9 pcc
9 miriam
9 madduck
9 ftlerror
8 pere
8 crschmidt
7 ncommander
7 myon
7 abuss
6 jwilk
6 bdrung
6 atehwa
5 kcoyner
5 catlee
5 andyp
4 vt
4 ross
4 osrevolution
4 lamby
4 baby
3 sez
3 joss
3 geole
2 rustybear
2 edmonds
2 astraw
2 ana
1 twerner
1 tincho
1 pochu
1 danderson
As it s likely that the Python Applications Packaging Team will switch too to the same DVCS at the same time, here are the numbers for its repo:

emilio@saturno:~/deb/python-apps$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
401 nijel
288 piotr
235 gothicx
159 pochu
76 nslater
69 kumanna
68 rainct
66 gilir
63 certik
52 vdanjean
52 bzed
46 dottedmag
41 stani
39 varun
37 kitterma
36 morph
35 odd_bloke
29 pcc
29 gudjon
28 appaji
25 thomasbl
24 arnau
20 sc
20 andyp
18 jalet
15 gerardo
14 eike
14 ana
13 dfiloni
11 tklauser
10 ryanakca
10 nxvl
10 akumar
8 sez
8 baby
6 catlee
4 osrevolution
4 cody-somerville
2 mithrandi
2 cjsmo
1 nenolod
1 ffm
Here I m the 4th most committer And while I was on it, I thought I could do the same for the GNOME and GStreamer teams:
emilio@saturno:~/deb/pkg-gnome$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
5357 lool
2701 joss
1633 slomo
1164 kov
825 seb128
622 jordi
621 jdassen
574 manphiz
335 sjoerd
298 mlang
296 netsnipe
291 grm
255 ross
236 ari
203 pochu
198 ondrej
190 he
180 kilian
176 alanbach
170 ftlerror
148 nobse
112 marco
87 jak
84 samm
78 rfrancoise
75 oysteigi
73 jsogo
65 svena
65 otavio
55 duck
54 jcurbo
53 zorglub
53 rtp
49 wasabi
49 giskard
42 tagoh
42 kartikm
40 gpastore
34 brad
32 robtaylor
31 xaiki
30 stratus
30 daf
26 johannes
24 sander-m
21 kk
19 bubulle
16 arnau
15 dodji
12 mbanck
11 ruoso
11 fpeters
11 dedu
11 christine
10 cpm
7 ember
7 drew
7 debotux
6 tico
6 emil
6 bradsmith
5 robster
5 carlosliu
4 rotty
4 diegoe
3 biebl
2 thibaut
2 ejad
1 naoliv
1 huats
1 gilir

emilio@saturno:~/deb/pkg-gstreamer$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
891 lool
840 slomo
99 pnormand
69 sjoerd
27 seb128
21 manphiz
8 he
7 aquette
4 elmarco
1 fabian
Conclusions:
- Why do I have the full python-modules and pkg-gstreamer trees, if I have just one commit to DPMT, and don t even have commit access to the GStreamer team?
- If you don t want to seem like you have done less commits than you have actually done, don t change your alioth name when you become a DD (hint: pox-guest and piotr in python-modules are the same person)
- If the switch to a new VCS was based on a vote where you have one vote per commit, the top 3 commiters in pkg-gnome could win the vote if they chosed the same! For python-apps it s the 4 top commiters, and the 7 ones for python-modules. pkg-gstreamer is a bit special

(long post, you've been warned) With his his 'Omelette Post' about FOSS.IN/2008 Call for Participation, Atul Chitnis, the FOSS.IN team 'leader' indeed sent an strong sign. For those who aren't aware of it, FOSS.IN is the longstanding major FLOSS event in India and, still (just like our beloved Debconf) only run by volunteers. Last year, along with Sam Hocevar, I had the chance to attend the event and share the groove of that big, huge, conference, with over 2,000 participants. Some other Debian fellows also made it in the past (Jaldhar, Bdale...). During the Debian Project Day as well as regular conference days, we had the great opportunity to meet with the people who currently participate in Debian (and Ubuntu) in South Asia, as well as first meeting some major contributors from other projects. For me, and, I think, of all people I met up there, this was a great *and productive* event. Maybe not productive at the moment it happened, but productive in terms of mutual awareness, knowledge and friendship. All people who attended such conferences (should I say "Debconf" or "FOSDEM"?) know what I'm talking about. The conference was still quite focused on "real" FLOSS contribution more than evangelizing or politics. And I think it succeeded in it quite well. This year, I already planned to not attend...mostly because such event, with the associated long travel time, is something I can't really fit in my real life right now. Also, because it conflicts with a planned Extremadura work session, indeed. Still, I would indeed not have attended it. Atul's post makes it clear: the even will only be about coding. The point is to put focus on people who code and we do 'real' code. Bug fixing is not coding. Translation effort is not coding. Work on support for complex languages is not coding. Actually, what FOSS.IN/2008 organizers are trying to do is a kind of big Debcamp. I'm afraid it won't work this way. From what I have seen in years of participation to Debian, things just don't come up this way. People don't sit down and code because they're invited to. And, still, are only "people who code" the only people that matter in a project? Debian is sometimes seen as one of the biggest FLOSS projects all around (probably shared with the Linux kernel). How many people in Debian just "sit down and code"? What about those people who maintain our web site, our archive, setup our infrastructure, our new maintainer queue, our communication channels? What about those dozens of people who nicely maintain packages and keep the link with upstream developers, or fix bugs.... Those people do not seem welcomed at FOSS.IN/2008. "Not only bug fixing" is said in this announcement. This, I don't get it. At all. Why would "bug fixing" be second class work? Why would it be more noble to "code" new stuff? Maybe Atul did not mean to say this. He wants to have Indian contributors in FLOSS to be more visible....but I don't share this. Indian contributors in Debian *are* visible. Giridhar Appaji Nag is visible, "my" translator crew is visible, Kartik Mistry is visible (he once was too visible, even, by maintaining a little bit too many packages...). Bug fixing is the most noble task I see in FLOSS development. This is what we need the most. I recently blogged about how I feel APT to be 'poorly' maintained (once again, that was not targeted to current APT maintainers). What I would respect deeply is to see a bunch of Indian contributors stand up and take this task over. Atul, that would certainly not be "outsourcing code/package maintenance" and, no, these are not things one can get involved with instantly. Really, I don't buy this vision and that saddens me. That saddens me mostly because I know the folks there. I know the FOSS.IN organizers and I have deep respect for them. I just think they're missing the target and are too ambitious: one cannot change an event so drastically by just saying it has to change..:-) And, really, I'm even more sad to see localization work be called a low-hanging fruit from a country where there are 22 official languages. Or take words such as "talk is cheap, show me the code" as $ DEITY 's Holy Word just because it was once said by Linus Torvalds (who said many stupid things). Code is just one part of FLOSS development. Certainly one of the important parts but still one part. What would have happened to FLOSS if only "coders" had been working on it all over those years? It would be something used by about 10,000 people all around the world, that's all. We should not make an opposition between those who code and those who don't. By the way, do *I* code? When I'm sitting at 07:00AM on a Saturday morning, hacking on Samba packages and try to have Samba 3.2.4 built with the set of patches we have on Debian....do I code? I'm not *producing* code....the code was produced by those wonderful Samba Team folks. Does Karolin Seeger code when she's releasing samba with such a precise and constant schedule as she's doing since early 2008? Or Ana Guerrero when she (not alone!) compiles dozens of KDE packages and organizes and bumps the maintenance of KDE in Debian for the best of our users. Or Miriam Ruiz when she picks up each and every possible free game and tries to get it in Debian, talks with upstream developers, help them to fiw their code to suit the severe requirements of the Debian policy? Or Clytie Siddall when she translates about every major FLOSS in Vietnamese (nor URL here, sorry)? All these folks are part of the FLOSS game. You want Indians to be part of FLOSS game? Then allow the potential Karolin, Ana, Miriam or Clytie to be part of Indian FLOSS game and don't try to make FOSS.in the place where you seek the future Indian Linus Torvalds and only him her. Talk is cheap, show me the contribution.