Re: What do you expect from the DPL?
On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 02:41:18PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
>On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 10:07:08AM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
>> My own view on the original question ("What are you expected the DPL to
>> do?") is that the main thing the DPL must absolutely do is being a good
>> "garbage collector" (I think the original naming comes from Zack).
>
>Possibly. I think I actually used "decision garbage collector", but the
>notion is exactly the one you explained.
>
>FWIW, that aspect of the DPL "job" seems to be frequently overlooked in
>DPL candidate platforms, which often tend to focus on ambitious Debian
>reform plans. They are all fine and well of course, but DPL time will in
>the end have to be split among implementing those plans and tending to
>often unpredictable day by day duties, with the latter often dominating
>the DPL agenda (IME).
Yeah, that was my experience too. I'd offer as advice to any DPL
candidate: don't try to do everything at once, as that leads to
burnout. I think personally that I did spend too much effort up-front
on the teams survey in my first term, and that ate a massive number of
hours.
What takes time day in, day out, is the misc mediation and discussion
that people will expect you to help out with, and random folks will
contact you from time to time to ask for help with all kinds of
stuff. The more difficult part of this is that it'll often be
happening in hours that don't suit at all - people pop on irc at the
worst times... :-)
--
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* naming things
* cache invalidation
* off-by-one errors -- Stig Sandbeck Mathisen
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Re: What do you expect from the DPL?
On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 10:07:08AM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> My own view on the original question ("What are you expected the DPL to
> do?") is that the main thing the DPL must absolutely do is being a good
> "garbage collector" (I think the original naming comes from Zack).
Possibly. I think I actually used "decision garbage collector", but the
notion is exactly the one you explained.
FWIW, that aspect of the DPL "job" seems to be frequently overlooked in
DPL candidate platforms, which often tend to focus on ambitious Debian
reform plans. They are all fine and well of course, but DPL time will in
the end have to be split among implementing those plans and tending to
often unpredictable day by day duties, with the latter often dominating
the DPL agenda (IME).
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
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Re: Why are in-person meetings required for the debian keyring?
Hi Ian and All, On Fri, 2015-02-13 at 15:14 +, Ian Jackson wrote: > Sending a warm body to turn up at a conference is much riskier. Even > if the person just turns up at the KSP, and engages in no small talk > with anyone, their photo might be taken; they might be `made' by > suspicious attendees; their (no doubt offically issued) alias > documents might be scrutinised and recorded; and so on. > > These are perhaps small risks, but a small risk of headlines like > `spooks found covertly infiltrating Free Software project' is a big > cost to those kind of people. I think you can find many people that will meet for you someone with his IC card for few hundreds of €. You just identify that person, create a mail with his name and start sending contribution. Then give him less that 1k€ and ask him to meet someone on some debconf and give him a small paper. That person does not even know who you are and probably even not know much about debian. I don't talk about French ID card, that anyone can change easily. As DD will not verify the integrity of the ID, I think your argument become very light. For me mandating that people contribute at least 3years with signed mails/uploads is probably better than asking for a key signed by 2 DDs. You can easily setup a DD rating tool, so that only keys above a certain rate allow their holder to apply for DD status. This rating shall be done by DDs only based on their technical contributions. That way you have probably more secure process. Cheers, Abou Al Montacir, -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1423910865.20958.46.ca...@sfr.fr
Re: What do you expect from the DPL?
Hi,
On 13/02/15 at 11:08 +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 4:57 AM, Ana Guerrero Lopez wrote:
>
> > Lucas sent an email asking people to encourage their 'dream DPL' [1].
> > I have already encouraged a few people in the last weeks, but when
> > discussing
> > with them, they all tell me very different things about the DPL role. When
> > I asked: "What are you expecting the DPL to do?", I got a bunch of different
> > replies:
>
> The DPL role is defined in the constitution.
>
> https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-5
Please note that it's very well possible that the constitution is wrong,
or needs to be changed, as Debian changed a lot since that document was
originally written. For example:
The Project Leader should not use the Leadership position to promote
their own personal views.
This has been violated by several DPLs (me included), who pushed forward
things they cared about, or discussed them in interviews, without
necessarily first ensuring that it matched the project's consensus.
My own view on the original question ("What are you expected the DPL to
do?") is that the main thing the DPL must absolutely do is being a good
"garbage collector" (I think the original naming comes from Zack). There
are lots of areas of Debian that suddenly get broken, often in
unexpected ways, or where there's no-one clearly responsible. And
usually, the DPL ends up being the ultimate fallback for those things.
This is also what makes the role particularly hard: the DPL usually get
involved when it's (too) late to find easy solutions, or in areas
that are not covered by the typical expertise of a DD.
It's also the most crucial part of the role because often, there are
people blocked by the lack of progress, being deeply frustrated about
their Debian involvement due to that.
Of course, when there's a recurring flow of requests in the same area of
expertise that end up in the DPL's hands, it makes sense to create a
specific team to work on those issues. That's what was done recently
with the trademark team, and the auditors team (to improve interactions
with TOs, deal with reimbursement requests, etc.). But creating teams
out of nothing is also not particularly easy, especially in
non-technical areas.
Then, with this 'Garbage collector' / 'Facilitator' part is covered,
there are of course lots of other things the DPL can do using the
remaining time, but, IMHO, they mostly fall in the 'Could do' rather
than 'Must do' category. Also, as Paul pointed out, we have teams
covering most of the areas listed in Ana's email, and it is not healthy
when the DPL starts overstepping on those teams' work.
Commenting on some of the list from Ana's email:
> > - Set technical goals for the project
>
> That seems like the responsibility of Debian as a whole.
That's indeed something that is the responsibility of everybody, and of
no-one in particular. In the past, we had 'release goals'. But when I
worked on the release team delegation, it was really hard to include
something about release goals (see thread at http://deb.li/3D9kV).
Do we need an entity in Debian that decides on the technical agenda?
(That's probably a good question for DPL candidates :P)
> > - Be aware of everything that goes on with Debian. E.g. I have the feeling
> > some
> > people expect the DPL to read all the Debian mailing lists.
>
> That is simply not feasible, even though the amount of discussion that
> goes on in Debian feels like it is going down over time.
Interestingly, that is part of the constitution, though:
The Project Leader should attempt to participate in discussions
amongst the Developers in a helpful way which seeks to bring the
discussion to bear on the key issues at hand.
My own take on this is that various other people have been doing that
very well (probably better than what I would have done), so I've
generally decided to focus on things where the DPL was the bottleneck,
rather than things that are already well covered by others.
> > - Debian representation: give talks on behalf of Debian in important
> > conferences
> > or congresses. Also give interviews.
> > - Handle the relationship with the open source ecosystem
>
> I would add here:
> - Handle the relationship with the Free Software ecosystem
>
> There isn't anything in the constitution about interacting with
> external entities. As the "Leader", the DPL is probably better known
> outside Debian than most Debian members due to external press coverage
> etc so it makes sense that they would be contacted more often about
> being a speaker. I think that Debian as a whole should be responsible
> for interacting with external orgs, giving talks/interviews etc. We do
> have a number of folks who have volunteered to be speakers at least:
>
> https://www.debian.org/events/speakers
Regarding talks, my experience is that most event organizers are not
ready to cover travel costs. Which turns the question into: Given the
expected impact
