Wow, I'm talking to myself on -project...who wants to vote for me! First off, I wanted to comment on Branden's platform, mainly dealing with the delegation. He has some very good points about delegating tasks to others. IMO, he is talking more about "officially" holding people responsible for tasks they already have (DAM and NM). To be honest, I am somewhat leary about what he is proposing.
While this might sound like a good idea, I don't really see it making anything work better. There are several sides to this. Some might consider it a good thing to suddenly be able to point fingers at DAM or NM or ftp-master when they aren't doing their job well enough. Some might think that DAM and NM being against this is just The Cabal trying to retain it's power. You might be right, and you might be dead wrong. I see it this way. Currently DAM is doing it's job very well. Why bother them? We have pools and testing from the Release Manager and the ftp-masters. We have a well greased machine rolling on ftp-master. Incoming stays pretty clear. All of our *.debian.org machines are documented on the machines.cgi. They all have a well developed user maintenance setup (ud-ldap). What if we suddenly say "here is your job description, report to the DPL immediately, send regular progress reports to -project, and keep on your toes or we'll replace you"? I think they'd be pretty pissed at having to be in a position where the slightest thing happens and they have to answer to every whim of every developer. I don't think the DAM has ever done anything harmful to Debian, and they are long time trusted developers, very capable, and working quietly in the background. I think we should just let them do their job, and just define what that is for the developers benefit, not to declare to these people what their job is. Outlining who these people are would also be helpful, so it doesn't seem like such a secret. Now, as for NM, I am hoping that my proposal on allowing new maintainers with less privildges will make this go more smoothly, with some sort of bar to reach before becoming a full maintainer (time, references from others, etc..?). I don't think holding NM responsible will fix the problem. IMO, it is more of an issue about the process. The newest incarnation of NM has made leaps and bounds, we need to build on this from what we have learned already. On Tue, Feb 20, 2001 at 06:05:49PM -0500, Ben Collins wrote: > > One of these areas is visibility. We all know that the DPL is a figure > head for Debian. They get invited to all the neat Linux expos. Quite > honestly, being a father/husband, I may not be able to travel as much as > recent DPL's, are as much as any of the other candidates (I'm unaware of > their specific situation regarding this). I am more than willing to > spend as much time as possible, however, keeping contact with outside > factions who are interested in Debian workings, and keeping our > developers informed of such factions. I will travel to as many Linux > related events as humanly possible for a man in my position. > Anthony Towns pointed out that I did not cover "sponsors" as he expected, which was an oversite on my part. I actually implied that in this statement, and I want to clarify and expand on that. The bottom line is, sponsors have very little reason to donate to Debian, other than being able to say "we did that" and for us to pump that fact as much as possible. When they loan or give us equipment, we need to stay in very close contact with them, and give them warm fuzzies about what they did, and show everyone else that it was an important thing. I've worked directly with several sponsors as a developer. One of the main ones being Sun. None of our sponors get recognized as much as they should, and some do not even get a "thank you" afterwards. This needs to change, if we are to expect continued good relations with these companies that practically support our work. Without sponors, we would not exist at all. Ben -- -----------=======-=-======-=========-----------=====------------=-=------ / Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \ ` [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ' `---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---'