Re: What will improve Debian most?
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 04:49:21PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Anthony Towns writes:
> > Over the next twelve months, what single development/activity/project
> > is going to improve Debian's value the most? By how much? How will
> > you be involved?
> Maybe you meant to ask "what are you going to work on over the next twelve
> months that will improve Debian's value?" Because the right answer to
> "what one thing is going to improve $FOO the most in the next twelve
> months," for pretty much any value of $FOO, is "ask us in twelve months
> and we'll tell you."
Well, there was that bonus question, which asked about the previous
twelve months, that I haven't seen any answers to. I'm not sure it's
actually any easier to answer, tbh.
Ultimately, I don't see any problem asking what people see as the biggest
forthcoming improvement for Debian though; sure it's impossible to say for
certain, and most people will pick something that's somewhere between the
second most important thing and the hundredth. But that's still useful
and interesting; and finding out what other people are focussing on in
preference to what you think is most important is interesting no matter
who ends up being right.
FWIW, I chose the focus ("what's important, how will you help" rather
than "what are you doing, why's that important") deliberately. Maybe the
best thing for Debian is something that you can't work on directly --
but it can still help to identify that thing, both so the people who
are working on it feel appreciated, and so people who could help if only
they were aware of the challenge become aware of it and do help.
> Personally, here's some things that I plan on working on over the next
> twelve months that I think will improve Debian's value:
> * [...]
> None of these are exponential and I don't care about percentages with any
> of them. I'm okay with that. I don't think those are useful measures,
> and I don't think exponential growth is a useful or interesting goal.
I thought about this some more, and wrote up some of those thoughts on my
blog at [0]. YMMV obviously.
I'd still be interested in seeing how much of an effect you think those
changes will have (and for whom), FWIW.
It'd be nice to know what people's actual priorities are these days, in
some way that's independent from people pointing blindly at the social
contract at just repeating "our users and free software". Are Debian
developers mostly interested in doing things that help themselves? Other
developers? People who file bugs? People in their LUGs? How about Ubuntu
or Eee or Mi users? Desktop or server users? Embedded stuff? Upstream
developers? Something else entirely?
> One thousand people all improving the parts of Debian that they care about
> produces incredibly impressive results.
Yes, that's completely true. To double Debian's usefulness, 1000 people
only need to individually contribute a change that improves Debian's
usefulness by a little less than 0.07%. (1.000693387..^1000 = 2) If you
somehow had a thousand people that each increased Debian's value by an
appreciable amount, say just 1.5%, you'd get an overall 292,443,586%
improvement -- that's higher than Zimbabwe's annualised inflation rate
[1].
Which is to say, definitely, and I don't think that sense of things --
that a lot of people each contributing in small amounts adds up amazingly
-- is incompatible with making numerical estimates.
For comparison, my estimate of the value of a small speedup on m68k
was a 0.2% improvement, which is already quite a bit better than the
0.07% above.
If it turns out Debian's aiming for a thousand 0.07% improvements,
there's no point identifying which is the 0.071% improvement and which
is the 0.069% improvement; but getting an idea of the scale is still
useful. Personally, as was probably implicit in my examples, I think
there's at least a handful of 10% or better improvements that could
happen over the next year or two.
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 06:04:47PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> I should probably note here that it looked like Anthony had carefully
> phrased his question to apply to the entire project, not just the DPL
> candidates, and I replied in that context. If it was intended as a DPL
> candidate question, er, never mind. :)
It was something that I think DPL candidates ought to be able to provide
some interesting answers for; but I'm more interested in the question
(or its answer) than in how particular people happen to respond to it. In
other words, thanks for the answer. :)
Cheers,
aj
[0] http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2009/03/28/exponential-growth
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/09/zimbabwe
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Re: Amendment: automatic expiry-on-failure, to Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 06:38:30PM +0100, Kurt Roeckx wrote: > On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 01:52:43PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > > On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 08:43:16AM +, MJ Ray wrote: > > > AMENDMENT START > > > > > > Replace "too small" with "thought to be too small, but there is a > > > lack of evidence about the correct level". > > > > > > Replace clause c with "c) if a year has passed, starting from the > > > proposal of a general resolution, without any proposal receiving the > > > required number of seconds, then this resolution expires and the > > > required number of seconds returns to K." > > > > > > AMENDMENT END > > > > Seconded. > > What exactly are you seconding? This is a proposal that modifies > *3* of the other proposals. Eh, not the way I read that. But, well, this amendment as applied to the original proposal by Jorg. -- Home is where you have to wash the dishes. -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment: automatic expiry-on-failure, to Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
Frans Pop wrote: > MJ Ray wrote: > > Replace clause c with "c) if a year has passed, starting from the > > proposal of a general resolution, without any proposal receiving the > > required number of seconds, then this resolution expires and the > > required number of seconds returns to K." > > Although I understand where this is coming from, I have fairly strong > reservations about coding something like this in the constitution. For > one thing at some point we'd need yet another GR to revert the text to > its old form if the "experiment" were to fail. I don't understand: the motivation for my amendments is to avoid having yet another GR if the experiment were to fail... because if the experiment fails, that means we don't have a viable GR process, which means we're stuck and are responsible for running the project aground. I've been there, done that and want to avoid it here. If the experiment succeeds (GR-2Q or whatever works fine), then it needs another GR to make the increased seconding more permanent, but that's as trivial as a GR can be. The argument will be over and it'll be a simple evidence-based decision IMO. Hope that explains, -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Question: Why do you [not] candidate?
Hello, The question seems very simple: Why do you [not] candidate?, but I'm looking more about: - Why only two candidates ? - Is it good for campaign and discussions? - Why so low interest for DPL? ciao cate -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
