Hi, I think that everyone will agree that we are having a big crisis about the role of the TC in Debian. What saddens me deeply is how some of us framed this as a "Debian vs the Technical Committee" fight. The Technical Committee _is_ Debian. If we feel it's malfunctionning, it's our problem as Debian Project Members, and our responsibility to fix it.
So I agree with what Steve wrote: On 16/11/14 at 11:37 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > This demonization of the Technical Committee for doing their job under the > constitution needs to stop. If you don't like the way the TC is structured > under the constitution, feel free to propose a GR to change that. But if > all you (and certain others across various Debian lists) are going to do is > attack the members of the TC for making a decision they've been asked to in > the way that they believe is technically correct, then I invite you to be > the next Debian Developer to leave and I promise you I will not mourn your > departure. I also would like to point out that decisions related to init systems (default, coupling, upgrades, etc.) are probably the hardest decisions that Debian ever had to make, because they mix political (Canonical influence vs Red Hat influence), philosophical ("unix philosophy" vs integrated solution), and technical aspects, and at the same time have an impact over a large portion of our packages. The fact that those decisions push our governance processes to their limits is not surprising. We need to be a bit careful here, and understand what are the root causes for the problems we are seeing, before discussing possible changes: depending on the identified causes, we could need a mix of constitutional changes for TC composition and processes, agreed good practices for the TC workflows, etc. At the same time, we need to find a way to continue to work, especially given that we are trying to release Jessie at some point in the near future. There are some decisions that Debian needs to make rather sooner than later, like the question of what to do about init systems during upgrades. Even if many of us expressed disappointment about how the TC worked recently, it served us well since 1998, so I am quite sure that we could find a way to return to a way of making decisions that is considered acceptable by most of us, until we agree on more radical changes to TC procedures. Specifically, I would like to ask Debian Developers to contribute (positively) to TC discussions when relevant, in order to help the TC get a complete understanding of the issues, their consequences, and possible resolutions paths. I was disappointed to see that only a handful of DDs (outside of TC members) took part in the recent technical discussions. Every DD should really feel welcomed to act like a (non-voting) TC member. I would also like to ask the TC to provide a bit more time for public discussions (during the technical discussions, and on draft CfV), as many project members felt that some recent votes were a bit rushed, and did not allow enough time for public review. Thanks, Lucas
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature