On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 10:02:24AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> I am of the camp that believe that the only power people have in any
> capacity in Debian flows from the constitution; which means either the
> powers listed for developers, or as delegates of the DPL. Recent
> delegation activity seems to bear this out.
That's the problem - it's supported by recent activity, but not by the
previous ten or so years.
> We have had full members added to the FTP team, to the DAM, and
> I don't think we had issues with any other tesm refusing to accept
> people.
Well, that's not really true, I distinctly recall problems with buildds
as well. And there's probably more, I've written about it before...
> As it stands, with the delegations already in place, and with
> the detailed team reviews underway, which indicates that the current
> DPL is going to be actively addressing the problems we have, that a GR
> is just a waste of time.
You state the problem yourself - the *current* DPL(s) are doing *something*,
but we don't actually know much about it, or if any of it will happen again,
or if the next different DPL and his inaction will mark the start of another
fifteen years of problems...
One could argue that this pair of DPLs will lead by example, and set
a standard for all future ones. But has that historically happened,
and if so will it repeat itself? I don't know. I don't like not knowing,
when there's a reasonably simple option that can fix that.
> I tend to agree with joeyh that GR's lead to controversy, are
> overly bureaucratic, and should be a matter of last recourse; we are
> hardly at last recourse here. The problems are already being addressed.
I don't think that they all have to lead to controversy, or be overly
bureaucratic. I remember that GR that was about IRC as a communication
channel, which seemed to me to have appeared out of nowhere (i.e. it had
no major controversy attached to it that I could remember), it sounded
very frank and lax to me, and it passed.
This view that GR's are a problem in itself and that we shouldn't do them is
indicative of the whole situation - nobody thinks that calcified teams are
a problem so major that they need fixing with a big ol' GR, so the status quo
can freely persist, for years at a time.
In essence, this is analogous to the real-world issue of people not thinking
that some general problem is their problem, and nothing much gets done
before someone takes the plunge and does a more revolutionary thing.
Whereas, in the more organized societies, people use the mutually agreed
upon (constitutional) processes to create procedures which avoid major
problems before they escalate.
--
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