but it's not a place read by the general public, but by Debian Developers who are looking for package that require sponsors, and (hopefully) by people who are looking for a sponsor for their package.

mentors is also a platform as in “a website that provides a service” (I'm not a native English speaker, so maybe that's not the word you expected?): mentors.debian.net/ and it has documentation on how to use it to put your work somewhere where interested people can look at it, and on the process in general: mentors.debian.net/intro-maint…

Note that you will have to *describe* the package, but not to write marketing copy for it (with the amount of Debian developers who are on the spectrum that's not likely to receive good reactions :) )

"submit it to mentors (a platform and a mailing list)"

in this text, "mentors" and "platform" imply winding up a group of people on social media about how great your program is and that debian would be hopeless without it.

These are the challenges I had trying to figure out the process, which quickly spiraled into being a debian developer because nowhere did anyone just say "submit your package to this email address"

And in case there is a generational misunderstanding at work here: “mailing list” doesn't mean “asymmetrical place where one person writes more or less marketing material so that a lot of people will read it”, but has the old meaning of “a place for asynchronous communication for a somewhat big community of more or less peers”.

You were told earlier today, in this thread.

https://social.gl-como.it/display/3e3ce0df-156a-820f-9c4b-a0c112038808

What more do you want?

..... so.... what the truth about it then?

in case somebody is reading this and wondering, the process to start contributing packaging work to Debian is more or less:

* at first you need to do some work, submit it to mentors (a platform and a mailing list) and get a Debian developer to vet it: this can be quite easy or quite hard, depending on how niche what you're working on is: finding a volunteer that feels confident working on a python module with common applications is much easier than finding one for something written in a niche language that is only relevant for a few people. There may be a bit of back and forth requiring changes to the package: Debian covers a number of non-obvious usecases, and providing packages for that requires more nuances than building a package that just works on one computer.

* continue working on it in time: maintaining a package is a long term commitment, not something that works well with hit and run contributions. While doing so you're likely to establish a working relationship with one or more DDs.

* this is where being able to travel (or living in Germany :D ) helps: then you need to connect your contributions to a GPG (not USB) key and long-term identity: the easiest way is to meet one or more Debian developers in person, chat a bit, and exchange cryptographic signatures on that key, but since 2020-ish (for obvious reasons) there is at least one alternate procedure where meeting is optional. Having the same name on the GPG key and a government issued ID makes the process easier, but is not mandatory either.

* once you have both an history of contributions and a signature you may be given permission to upload a small number of packages without supervision (Debian Maintainer)

* and after some time as a Debian Maintainer you may, after a bit of exam, become Debian Developer and get permission to upload anything, voting rights, and everything.

Honestly 3 years between the first contribution and becoming DDs sounds even a short time, unless somebody has a *lot* of time to contribute, but it's not like your contributions aren't getting into Debian during that time, they only need an extra step or a few because they have to be supervised.

(Also, if your contributions aren't packaging related the process is different, and depends on what they contributions are related to. And there is a way for people to get voting (but not uplading) rights without ever having to learn how to package, if they are contributing in different areas.)

I honestly have no idea how ANY of the packages in debian got there, but I can TOTALLY understand when projects host there own packages.