Hi, On 18/03/13 at 13:55 +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > Some of the longest -devel thread in recent years have been about > Debian's (default) init system: SysV, SystemD, Upstart, OpenRC, etc. > Despite folklore, I don't think those thread have been (entirely) > trollish, they all hint at a concrete problem: > > How do we make an inherently archive-wide technical decision when > multiple, possibly equally valid solutions do exist?
Regarding the default init system decision: There must be compromise in any such issue. My compromise is to ignore anything from lennart. Then, anything from Ubuntu. Once we've done that, we've decided. But sometimes, such archive-wide technical decisions don't involve Lennart or UbuntuĀ¹, so it's harder to decide. Our goal should be to *make the best decisions*. For that, we need to make sure that there's an healthy discussion. There are several ways someone can contribute to having healthier discussions, and the DPL authority is helpful for them, while not mandatory (I've done what follows on a few occasions myself): - summarize long discussions so that: + people can join the discussion without feeling they have to read everything + the same arguments stop being repeated over and over again - calm down people who get too vocal I find it great that such discussions usually result in a throughout review of the possible solutions by Debian. Often, there's the possibility to limit the impact of the decision, e.g. by providing a default, but also supporting alternatives. When that's possible, that's something that should be explored. It's a good thing for the current alternatives, but also to help future alternatives later. Regarding the decision itself, we often have developers in position to take a decision about the default solution (d-i maintainers, maintainers of important packages that depend on one or the other solutions, etc.) In the last resort, it's also possible to bring the issue to the TC. Also, as I said in https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00132.html, on rare occasions and especially when there's no clear possible decision-maker, we could ask the TC to decide. Lucas PS: [*] In case you are not sure: yes, the first paragraph of my reply was not serious. And mostly motived by: 18:47 <someone on #d-release> lucas: I'll buy you a beer if you post that. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130319203200.gb15...@xanadu.blop.info