There are a few difference tiers of involvement with the Gentoo project. I have learned these things from taking the staff quiz.

First, there is the staff level. Staffers have a higher amount of privileges than users of the Gentoo project. Staffers do things like user support on Internet Relay Chat (IRC), write documentation (the Wiki), and produce the Gentoo Monthly Newsletter (GMN). To become on staff with Gentoo a staff quiz must be filled out.

Second, there are developers. Developers have all the privileges of staffers, and more. Developers can do things such as pull and push code from the Git repositories, maintain ebuilds, edit all pages on the wiki, and e-mail on the gentoo-core mailing list. To become a developer another quiz called the developer quiz, must be taken.

The process of becoming a Gentoo developer

The developer who offered to let you take the quiz becomes your mentor. The recruit will send the quiz to the developer. The quiz will be reviewed and sent back to the recruit if it needs to be made more accurate. Once the mentor creates a bug report for the recruit on Gentoo’s Bugzilla site the recruit is ready to send in the quiz to the recruiters. The recruiters will then review the quiz with the recruit over IRC (or some other means of chat). The recruiter will ask various questions for extra clarity in the recruits answers or to test critical thinking skills. After this the recruiter will approve the disapprove the recruit from becoming a developer.

Hopefully this post is somewhat informative for those interested in becoming a Gentoo developer. I did not know much going in, but I think I’ve learned a quite a bit so far.

There more to learn!

Maffblaster