Re: Questions for all candidates
On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 09:39:56PM -0600, Graham Wilson wrote: On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 12:56:19AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: If my reply to Steve Langasek was insufficient to answer your questions, please let me know. im assuming the one in [EMAIL PROTECTED]? if yes, then it wasnt exactly what i was wondering about. Yes, that's the one I meant. mostly i was wondering if you were elected, if the release process would be an area of focus for you. It will be important, but not priority one. The release process is primarily the responsibility of the Release Manager, who is a delegate of the DPL. I have no intention of usurping the authority of the Release Manager until and unless I can determine that there is a serious problem with the current delegate. That's not presently the case. It's important to remember the meaning of delegation -- a task isn't being delegated if it's being micromanaged. that does not necessarily mean forcing any particular release schedule, but rather, if you would survey the developers and users[1] and try to get a process going that might improve the release process somehow.[2] Yes, I'd like to work with Anthony Towns, Joey Schulze, and perhaps some other people to come up with a formal survey that would help us learn a little more about where the Project wants to go. i wonder because i didnt see anything in your platform about the release process. That's mainly because I'm not running for Release Manager. [1] i think you and martin already said you planned on doing this. [2] the release process is not necessarily broken, but could use some improvements, especially for workstation users, who like to have more recent software. I agree that a lot of people have concerns about the release process; I also think that some of the goals people have are in conflict with each other. I think John Goerzen said: Pick two: * Latest software * Broad selection of software * Rock-solid stability I advance that you cannot choose three simultaneously from that list. Debian chooses the last two. OpenBSD chooses the first and last. Mandrake chooses the first two. [1] I think John may be right about this, in which case actually coming up with a list of Debian release traits, asking people to rank them, and then processing the results with the Condorcet method might be an educational experience. Still, I envision that this would be a survey only, not marching orders for the Release Manager. [1] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- G. Branden Robinson| Don't use nuclear weapons to Debian GNU/Linux | troubleshoot faults. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- US Air Force Instruction 91-111 http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: our users as one of our priorities
On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 12:48:37PM +0900, Oohara Yuuma wrote: [see the Future of Debian uncertain? thread on -devel for background] Hello DPL candidates, can you tell me what Our Users in #4 of the social contract means? Since Debian is not a market-share-seeking organization, we don't care about people who don't use Debian, so it seems a tautology. I think it means that we need to listen to and be accountable to our users. This means helping our users to get the most of our system, following up on bug reports, and improving the system to benefit them. Free Software is also a priority, so we should also ensure that we do not serve the needs of our users at the *expense* of Free Software, say, by authoring and shipping proprietary extensions to Free packages. -- G. Branden Robinson| One man's magic is another man's Debian GNU/Linux | engineering. Supernatural is a [EMAIL PROTECTED] | null word. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Robert Heinlein pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: our users as one of our priorities
#include hallo.h * Branden Robinson [Thu, Feb 27 2003, 04:25:34AM]: can you tell me what Our Users in #4 of the social contract means? Since Debian is not a market-share-seeking organization, we don't care about people who don't use Debian, so it seems a tautology. I think it means that we need to listen to and be accountable to our users. This means helping our users to get the most of our system, following up on bug reports, and improving the system to benefit them. Funny to hear it from someone still refusing to change few things to improve useability on _small_ costs of mental consistency (remember x-session-manager story). Gruss/Regards, Eduard. -- The early bird gets the worm. If you want something else for breakfast, get up later. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: our users as one of our priorities
* Oohara Yuuma [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2003-02-27 12:48]: can you tell me what Our Users in #4 of the social contract means? Since Debian is not a market-share-seeking organization, we don't care about people who don't use Debian, so it seems a tautology. You say that we don't care about people who don't use Debian. However, you assume that we *do* care about people who *do* use Debian. While many might share this assumption, it is nothing natural. Some people might argue that we should not care about people who merely use Debian, but only about those who actually contribute to it. The SC therefore says that we (that is, the Debian Project as a whole) do care about users (and not only about developers for example). -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: our users as one of our priorities
On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 11:05:21AM +0100, Eduard Bloch wrote: Funny to hear it from someone still refusing to change few things to improve useability on _small_ costs of mental consistency (remember x-session-manager story). Again, a moral condemnation grounded upon my disagreement with you on a technical issue. If you have that big a problem with my differing opinion, appeal the issue to the Technical Committee. -- G. Branden Robinson|People are equally horrified at Debian GNU/Linux |hearing the Christian religion [EMAIL PROTECTED] |doubted, and at seeing it http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |practiced. -- Samuel Butler pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Debate
Saturday 22:00 UTC is too late for me. -- Moshe Zadka -- http://moshez.org/ Buffy: I don't like you hanging out with someone that... short. Riley: Yeah, a lot of young people nowadays are experimenting with shortness. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DPL live debate (candidates, read this)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Martin Michlmayr) writes: * Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2003-02-26 11:43]: Saturday night would be best i think, UTC makes it hard for most people in europe (that would be 0100 on sunday morning, ending at 0200 or so). I'd prefer 2200 UTC as well, but I also mentioned because of Branden. In fact, I think Bdale is even more west... but if 2200 UTC is fine for him, I'd be happy (I'd prefer 2200 to anyway because I'd like to go to the beach after the IRC session :-) ). Anything during daylight hours on Saturday in the US Mountain timezone, which is currently -7 hours from UTC, is a problem for me due to family commitments. Bdale -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for Bdale
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Raphael Hertzog) writes: First of all, you give 2 or 3 areas of focus, but what is that exactly ? ... A set of tasks that you'd like to highlight in the hope that more people will work on them ? That's pretty close. One of the roles of a leader is to help identify areas where additional attention or effort would help to advance our vision. Sometimes, a quiet suggestion or some encouragement to a person already working on something is enough. Sometimes broader attention by the project is required for a change to be successful, and I believe these three areas are all in this category. Concerning the flavors: even if it has not explicitely been said, with the growing numbers of subprojects it's self-evident that the notion of flavor is gaining momentum ... I suppose that you want to push that even more ? I'm with you, that's good for Debian. When I mentioned the concept of flavors of Debian during my recent trip to Linux Conf Australia, the idea captured people's imagination much more than it has in the past. This is partly because of the recent emergence of subprojects... but I also had strongly positive reactions for other reasons. Some people were worried about the sheer size of Debian overwhelming new users, and see flavors as a way to address that. Others are working on automating installations for specific server and/or thin-client applications, and see flavors as a way to describe what they're doing and make it available to others easily. Giving flavors a name, and talking about the idea in the context of advancing our vision for Debian's future, is part of what I think I can and should do as DPL. As the Debian project has grown and evolved, the early idea we had that Debian might be a base others build application-specific derived distributions on changed to one of Debian growing to encompass all the people, packages, and activities required to meet the needs of many application areas. I believe adding explicit support for flavors to our thinking and our infrastructure is a logical step in our evolution. But do you have some specific plans, ideas ? My platform is the first time I've given the concept of explicit support for flavors broad visibility. Anthony Towns indicated that he would investigate adding support for flavors to our archive management tools. Everyone I have talked to about the idea so far is enthusiastic about it, and so I'm hopeful that we can actually deliver a couple of flavors as part of our next stable release. Same question for the two other areas of focus, do you have specific ideas or plans ? I think I was fairly explicit about my goals for internationalization. I've talked on IRC with some of the people working on debian-installer, and they already intend to deliver improved support for native language installations. My goal in putting this in my platform is to help everyone see this as something I believe is important for the project as a whole. In the area of community, I expect to continue to try and meet more Debian developers, and to help promote events that bring members of the Debian community together. I have a number of ideas for improving communication that aren't fully formed yet, ranging from trying to lead by example with some sort of web log of the things I'm working on as leader that aren't worthy of some huge announcement, to asking for more explicit reports from teams and delegates within the project whose activities aren't well understood. Concerning the last year, how do you feel about the way you managed internal dissensions ? DAM and the NM is the most critical example that comes to my mind but I'm sure you have worked on several other problems. I don't know that we had many internal dissensions, but I certainly had a number of issues brought to my attention during the past year! In each case, the first step was to exercise due diligence by investigating what was really happening. Often, the problem was solved by pointing to documentation, forwarding to the right place to get help, or helping decipher what someone else had said that seemed confusing without sufficient context. In the cases where there seemed to be a real problem, I contacted the person or group responsible, communicated the issue, and worked with them to identify solutions. While I always attempted to follow up with whoever reported the initial issue, my preference is generally to ask the person or group responsible for a process to communicate what they did to the project at large. I think it's best for the project overall if the people actually doing the work report on it and get credit for their accomplishments directly. You mention the NM process specifically, and it was indeed one of the ones I investigated. There have been persistent concerns expressed about how well it works, most of which result from how some individual applicant was handled. I served briefly as an AM after the
Re: Questions for all candidates
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Raphael Hertzog) writes: 1. master.debian.org is still running potato. What do you think about that ? As long as we continue to support security updates for potato, I'm not concerned about it. 2. If you're regularly in contact with debian-admin or ftpmasters or some other important team, you will have faced rejection of ideas or requests, and if you criticize them because of that, you may get an answer like bingo, I'll never do anything for you in the upcoming year. What do you think about such an answer ? Actually, that hasn't been my experience at all. I've had our listmasters tell me there was a better way to do something than what I was asking for, I've done stupid things on debian.org machines that someone in the admin team had to come clean up, and I've uploaded packages that our ftpmasters bounced because I'd missed something in a license or done something else weird. I don't ever recall feeling that I had been treated worse than I deserved. 3. We'd better release : The first priority of our releases should always be quality, and not schedule. Having said that, I talked about release predictability last year in my platform, and after many conversations with many different people inside and outside the project in the last year, my personal opinion is that we should try to release a new stable version about once a year. 4. The DAM is : James Troup. I regret that I have not yet met James in person... but I talk to him fairly regularly on IRC and occasionally via email, and find him quite reasonable to discuss things with. He does an amazing amount of good work for Debian behind the scenes. Bdale -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A question for all candidates
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rune B. Broberg) writes: Only one person can 'win' this election, meaning we'll have 3 candidates remaining after this election. How will not getting elected affect your work within Debian, and the goals you stated in your platforms? I will continue to work for Debian regardless of how this election turns out. Since none of the other candidates presents a vision for how Debian should grow and evolve that conflicts with the ideas I presented, I hope these ideas will be carried forward by the project no matter who gets elected. Bdale -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: our users as one of our priorities
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Oohara Yuuma) writes: can you tell me what Our Users in #4 of the social contract means? When the Social Contract was originally drafted, the title Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software was meant to strike a balance between meeting the needs of those who would use Debian and the idealism of the Free Software movement that we emerged from. The most concrete example of this balance is the existence of non-free. Since Debian is not a market-share-seeking organization, we don't care about people who don't use Debian, so it seems a tautology. While Debian cares more about quality and freedom than about seeking market share in the traditional, commercial sense... One of the many ways that members of the Debian community are rewarded for their efforts, and receive positive feedback that encourages them to continue to do things, is when the work they do is appreciated and used by others. Another way to look at this, which I think is more practical and helpful to Debian package maintainers on an average day, is to think about it in the context of how we package software. I often get asked for advice about how something should be packaged, and I almost always start by asking well, how do you expect it to be used? This reflects my underlying belief that it works for me isn't good enough, and we should try to deliver software that users (whether they are other members of the Debian community or kids in a classroom somewhere) find relevant and helpful. Bdale -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for all candidates
Le Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 12:59:15PM -0700, Bdale Garbee écrivait: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Raphael Hertzog) writes: 1. master.debian.org is still running potato. What do you think about that ? As long as we continue to support security updates for potato, I'm not concerned about it. Unfortunately I am. Since the first day that the PTS web interface has been running, it runs on my own machine and the content is rsynced to master several times a day. A couple of features are also disabled because of that ... (cf the notice at the bottom of each page of the PTS) At the beginning, I kindly asked when master will be upgraded and nobody could give me an answer ... I asked several times in order to put some incentive and nothing changed. Then I proposed to recompile the required packages for potato so that they could get installed on master.debian.org and they declined this offer as well ... So basically I'm stuck. I don't want to blame anyone for this problem but I just want to show you that I reached the limit of what I could do and that I have absolutely no fallback solution. This is just a single case of a problem, maybe not enough to worry about but I can show you other examples which causes similar troubles : - you want to create a new subproject but the listmaster will take way too much time to create the list you need to go further - a cvs repository not created by debian-admin but you feel it's important to have this repository hosted on an official debian site (because it's for debian-edu for example) 2. If you're regularly in contact with debian-admin or ftpmasters or some other important team, you will have faced rejection of ideas or requests, and if you criticize them because of that, you may get an answer like bingo, I'll never do anything for you in the upcoming year. What do you think about such an answer ? Actually, that hasn't been my experience at all. You're really lucky. :-) I've had our listmasters tell me there was a better way to do something than what I was asking for, I've done stupid things on debian.org machines that someone in the admin team had to come clean up, and I've uploaded packages that our ftpmasters bounced because I'd missed something in a license or done something else weird. I don't ever recall feeling that I had been treated worse than I deserved. I've had debian-admin refusing to create me a CVS repository because it's too much work for them and I should better wait for the Debian Sourceforge (codenamed alioth.debian.org). And they have been refusing to create CVS repositories for several months because of that. I replied that creating a repository is a 10 minute work and that they should consider appoint new people if they can't take 10 minute for helping DebianEdu which needs this repository. And I said too much ... I was faced with an answer like I presented above. Of course, I'm used to those answers now and I know that I can still count on everyone for other requests but the fact is that you can't always be sure of what you can expect from the people who are in charge of some important tasks. They'll happily take 10 minutes to install you the required packages for helping you to setup the PTS but they won't take 10 minutes to create a CVS repository. In fact, I can understand that but I can't approve the way it is done. It's not the time that is problematic, it's the fact that installing yet another cvs repository is boring and they already decided to never create any new CVS repository and to remove this burden from their shoulder by using SF/Debian. Ok, that's fine, but please then they should tell it to everyone ... and stop telling to people that 10 minutes is too much work for them who are spending many hours each week. They're just frustrating people with such answers ... Okay, that has not much to do with the election, but this is a real concern ... I tried to expand to the general case based on my personal experience. Feel free to comment on it if you think that you can add some more perspective to the problem that I exposed. I have the feeling that the leader should be concerned by those cases where volunteers are unintentionnaly blocked in their contribution to Debian. I regret that I have not yet met James in person... but I talk to him fairly regularly on IRC and occasionally via email, and find him quite reasonable to discuss things with. He does an amazing amount of good work for Debian behind the scenes. And yet he would never advertise his work. Don't you feel that you should tell everyone what he's doing so that people stop ranting about him ? And so that people know a bit better how the DAM really works and so on ... Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog -+- http://www.ouaza.com Formation Linux et logiciel libre : http://www.logidee.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for all candidates
#include hallo.h * Raphael Hertzog [Thu, Feb 27 2003, 10:04:08PM]: I've had debian-admin refusing to create me a CVS repository because it's too much work for them and I should better wait for the Debian Sourceforge (codenamed alioth.debian.org). And they have been refusing to create CVS repositories for several months because of that. I replied that creating a repository is a 10 minute work and that they should consider appoint new people if they can't take 10 minute for helping DebianEdu which needs this repository. And I said too much ... I was faced with an answer like I presented above. Same here - when I asked to have for the debian-desktop repository - the answer was that the new repository server will be set up, soon, and having all repositories there is A MUST, we have to wait for it, it will be ready soon. Wiggy is working on it. Everyone pointed to Wiggy and Wiggy ignored my mails, and my complaints about broken logics (that you describe above) either landed in /dev/null or with comments like that logics is okay and I should fix mine. Well, how should we make any progress with a such attitude of some core admins? Gruss/Regards, Eduard. -- Röhrt's im Haus mit viel Getucker, ist es wohl ein Nadeldrucker. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for all candidates
On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 09:39:56PM -0600, Graham Wilson wrote: On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 12:56:19AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: If my reply to Steve Langasek was insufficient to answer your questions, please let me know. im assuming the one in [EMAIL PROTECTED]? if yes, then it wasnt exactly what i was wondering about. Yes, that's the one I meant. mostly i was wondering if you were elected, if the release process would be an area of focus for you. It will be important, but not priority one. The release process is primarily the responsibility of the Release Manager, who is a delegate of the DPL. I have no intention of usurping the authority of the Release Manager until and unless I can determine that there is a serious problem with the current delegate. That's not presently the case. It's important to remember the meaning of delegation -- a task isn't being delegated if it's being micromanaged. that does not necessarily mean forcing any particular release schedule, but rather, if you would survey the developers and users[1] and try to get a process going that might improve the release process somehow.[2] Yes, I'd like to work with Anthony Towns, Joey Schulze, and perhaps some other people to come up with a formal survey that would help us learn a little more about where the Project wants to go. i wonder because i didnt see anything in your platform about the release process. That's mainly because I'm not running for Release Manager. [1] i think you and martin already said you planned on doing this. [2] the release process is not necessarily broken, but could use some improvements, especially for workstation users, who like to have more recent software. I agree that a lot of people have concerns about the release process; I also think that some of the goals people have are in conflict with each other. I think John Goerzen said: Pick two: * Latest software * Broad selection of software * Rock-solid stability I advance that you cannot choose three simultaneously from that list. Debian chooses the last two. OpenBSD chooses the first and last. Mandrake chooses the first two. [1] I think John may be right about this, in which case actually coming up with a list of Debian release traits, asking people to rank them, and then processing the results with the Condorcet method might be an educational experience. Still, I envision that this would be a survey only, not marching orders for the Release Manager. [1] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- G. Branden Robinson| Don't use nuclear weapons to Debian GNU/Linux | troubleshoot faults. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- US Air Force Instruction 91-111 http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgpMD2JZM7DFq.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: our users as one of our priorities
On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 12:48:37PM +0900, Oohara Yuuma wrote: [see the Future of Debian uncertain? thread on -devel for background] Hello DPL candidates, can you tell me what Our Users in #4 of the social contract means? Since Debian is not a market-share-seeking organization, we don't care about people who don't use Debian, so it seems a tautology. I think it means that we need to listen to and be accountable to our users. This means helping our users to get the most of our system, following up on bug reports, and improving the system to benefit them. Free Software is also a priority, so we should also ensure that we do not serve the needs of our users at the *expense* of Free Software, say, by authoring and shipping proprietary extensions to Free packages. -- G. Branden Robinson| One man's magic is another man's Debian GNU/Linux | engineering. Supernatural is a [EMAIL PROTECTED] | null word. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Robert Heinlein pgpPxT07pCY1K.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: our users as one of our priorities
#include hallo.h * Branden Robinson [Thu, Feb 27 2003, 04:25:34AM]: can you tell me what Our Users in #4 of the social contract means? Since Debian is not a market-share-seeking organization, we don't care about people who don't use Debian, so it seems a tautology. I think it means that we need to listen to and be accountable to our users. This means helping our users to get the most of our system, following up on bug reports, and improving the system to benefit them. Funny to hear it from someone still refusing to change few things to improve useability on _small_ costs of mental consistency (remember x-session-manager story). Gruss/Regards, Eduard. -- The early bird gets the worm. If you want something else for breakfast, get up later.
Re: our users as one of our priorities
* Oohara Yuuma [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2003-02-27 12:48]: can you tell me what Our Users in #4 of the social contract means? Since Debian is not a market-share-seeking organization, we don't care about people who don't use Debian, so it seems a tautology. You say that we don't care about people who don't use Debian. However, you assume that we *do* care about people who *do* use Debian. While many might share this assumption, it is nothing natural. Some people might argue that we should not care about people who merely use Debian, but only about those who actually contribute to it. The SC therefore says that we (that is, the Debian Project as a whole) do care about users (and not only about developers for example). -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: our users as one of our priorities
On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 11:05:21AM +0100, Eduard Bloch wrote: Funny to hear it from someone still refusing to change few things to improve useability on _small_ costs of mental consistency (remember x-session-manager story). Again, a moral condemnation grounded upon my disagreement with you on a technical issue. If you have that big a problem with my differing opinion, appeal the issue to the Technical Committee. -- G. Branden Robinson|People are equally horrified at Debian GNU/Linux |hearing the Christian religion [EMAIL PROTECTED] |doubted, and at seeing it http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |practiced. -- Samuel Butler pgp1yJC1zXw70.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: our users as one of our priorities
#include hallo.h * Branden Robinson [Thu, Feb 27 2003, 09:09:20AM]: On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 11:05:21AM +0100, Eduard Bloch wrote: Funny to hear it from someone still refusing to change few things to improve useability on _small_ costs of mental consistency (remember x-session-manager story). Again, a moral condemnation grounded upon my disagreement with you on a technical issue. That is not only about me - you did not listen to any other person showing you a way to change the current behaviour. If you have that big a problem with my differing opinion, appeal the issue to the Technical Committee. Heh? That is not really a technical issue, and you know it. Therefore I do not see a reason to bother Technical Committee with this question. Gruss/Regards, Eduard. -- Die dümmsten Hähne haben die dicksten Eier.
Debate
Saturday 22:00 UTC is too late for me. -- Moshe Zadka -- http://moshez.org/ Buffy: I don't like you hanging out with someone that... short. Riley: Yeah, a lot of young people nowadays are experimenting with shortness.
Re: DPL live debate (candidates, read this)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Martin Michlmayr) writes: * Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2003-02-26 11:43]: Saturday night would be best i think, UTC makes it hard for most people in europe (that would be 0100 on sunday morning, ending at 0200 or so). I'd prefer 2200 UTC as well, but I also mentioned because of Branden. In fact, I think Bdale is even more west... but if 2200 UTC is fine for him, I'd be happy (I'd prefer 2200 to anyway because I'd like to go to the beach after the IRC session :-) ). Anything during daylight hours on Saturday in the US Mountain timezone, which is currently -7 hours from UTC, is a problem for me due to family commitments. Bdale
Re: Questions for Bdale
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Raphael Hertzog) writes: First of all, you give 2 or 3 areas of focus, but what is that exactly ? ... A set of tasks that you'd like to highlight in the hope that more people will work on them ? That's pretty close. One of the roles of a leader is to help identify areas where additional attention or effort would help to advance our vision. Sometimes, a quiet suggestion or some encouragement to a person already working on something is enough. Sometimes broader attention by the project is required for a change to be successful, and I believe these three areas are all in this category. Concerning the flavors: even if it has not explicitely been said, with the growing numbers of subprojects it's self-evident that the notion of flavor is gaining momentum ... I suppose that you want to push that even more ? I'm with you, that's good for Debian. When I mentioned the concept of flavors of Debian during my recent trip to Linux Conf Australia, the idea captured people's imagination much more than it has in the past. This is partly because of the recent emergence of subprojects... but I also had strongly positive reactions for other reasons. Some people were worried about the sheer size of Debian overwhelming new users, and see flavors as a way to address that. Others are working on automating installations for specific server and/or thin-client applications, and see flavors as a way to describe what they're doing and make it available to others easily. Giving flavors a name, and talking about the idea in the context of advancing our vision for Debian's future, is part of what I think I can and should do as DPL. As the Debian project has grown and evolved, the early idea we had that Debian might be a base others build application-specific derived distributions on changed to one of Debian growing to encompass all the people, packages, and activities required to meet the needs of many application areas. I believe adding explicit support for flavors to our thinking and our infrastructure is a logical step in our evolution. But do you have some specific plans, ideas ? My platform is the first time I've given the concept of explicit support for flavors broad visibility. Anthony Towns indicated that he would investigate adding support for flavors to our archive management tools. Everyone I have talked to about the idea so far is enthusiastic about it, and so I'm hopeful that we can actually deliver a couple of flavors as part of our next stable release. Same question for the two other areas of focus, do you have specific ideas or plans ? I think I was fairly explicit about my goals for internationalization. I've talked on IRC with some of the people working on debian-installer, and they already intend to deliver improved support for native language installations. My goal in putting this in my platform is to help everyone see this as something I believe is important for the project as a whole. In the area of community, I expect to continue to try and meet more Debian developers, and to help promote events that bring members of the Debian community together. I have a number of ideas for improving communication that aren't fully formed yet, ranging from trying to lead by example with some sort of web log of the things I'm working on as leader that aren't worthy of some huge announcement, to asking for more explicit reports from teams and delegates within the project whose activities aren't well understood. Concerning the last year, how do you feel about the way you managed internal dissensions ? DAM and the NM is the most critical example that comes to my mind but I'm sure you have worked on several other problems. I don't know that we had many internal dissensions, but I certainly had a number of issues brought to my attention during the past year! In each case, the first step was to exercise due diligence by investigating what was really happening. Often, the problem was solved by pointing to documentation, forwarding to the right place to get help, or helping decipher what someone else had said that seemed confusing without sufficient context. In the cases where there seemed to be a real problem, I contacted the person or group responsible, communicated the issue, and worked with them to identify solutions. While I always attempted to follow up with whoever reported the initial issue, my preference is generally to ask the person or group responsible for a process to communicate what they did to the project at large. I think it's best for the project overall if the people actually doing the work report on it and get credit for their accomplishments directly. You mention the NM process specifically, and it was indeed one of the ones I investigated. There have been persistent concerns expressed about how well it works, most of which result from how some individual applicant was handled. I served briefly as an AM after the
Re: Questions for all candidates
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Raphael Hertzog) writes: 1. master.debian.org is still running potato. What do you think about that ? As long as we continue to support security updates for potato, I'm not concerned about it. 2. If you're regularly in contact with debian-admin or ftpmasters or some other important team, you will have faced rejection of ideas or requests, and if you criticize them because of that, you may get an answer like bingo, I'll never do anything for you in the upcoming year. What do you think about such an answer ? Actually, that hasn't been my experience at all. I've had our listmasters tell me there was a better way to do something than what I was asking for, I've done stupid things on debian.org machines that someone in the admin team had to come clean up, and I've uploaded packages that our ftpmasters bounced because I'd missed something in a license or done something else weird. I don't ever recall feeling that I had been treated worse than I deserved. 3. We'd better release : The first priority of our releases should always be quality, and not schedule. Having said that, I talked about release predictability last year in my platform, and after many conversations with many different people inside and outside the project in the last year, my personal opinion is that we should try to release a new stable version about once a year. 4. The DAM is : James Troup. I regret that I have not yet met James in person... but I talk to him fairly regularly on IRC and occasionally via email, and find him quite reasonable to discuss things with. He does an amazing amount of good work for Debian behind the scenes. Bdale
Re: A question for all candidates
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rune B. Broberg) writes: Only one person can 'win' this election, meaning we'll have 3 candidates remaining after this election. How will not getting elected affect your work within Debian, and the goals you stated in your platforms? I will continue to work for Debian regardless of how this election turns out. Since none of the other candidates presents a vision for how Debian should grow and evolve that conflicts with the ideas I presented, I hope these ideas will be carried forward by the project no matter who gets elected. Bdale
Re: our users as one of our priorities
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Oohara Yuuma) writes: can you tell me what Our Users in #4 of the social contract means? When the Social Contract was originally drafted, the title Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software was meant to strike a balance between meeting the needs of those who would use Debian and the idealism of the Free Software movement that we emerged from. The most concrete example of this balance is the existence of non-free. Since Debian is not a market-share-seeking organization, we don't care about people who don't use Debian, so it seems a tautology. While Debian cares more about quality and freedom than about seeking market share in the traditional, commercial sense... One of the many ways that members of the Debian community are rewarded for their efforts, and receive positive feedback that encourages them to continue to do things, is when the work they do is appreciated and used by others. Another way to look at this, which I think is more practical and helpful to Debian package maintainers on an average day, is to think about it in the context of how we package software. I often get asked for advice about how something should be packaged, and I almost always start by asking well, how do you expect it to be used? This reflects my underlying belief that it works for me isn't good enough, and we should try to deliver software that users (whether they are other members of the Debian community or kids in a classroom somewhere) find relevant and helpful. Bdale
Re: Questions for all candidates
Le Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 12:59:15PM -0700, Bdale Garbee écrivait: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Raphael Hertzog) writes: 1. master.debian.org is still running potato. What do you think about that ? As long as we continue to support security updates for potato, I'm not concerned about it. Unfortunately I am. Since the first day that the PTS web interface has been running, it runs on my own machine and the content is rsynced to master several times a day. A couple of features are also disabled because of that ... (cf the notice at the bottom of each page of the PTS) At the beginning, I kindly asked when master will be upgraded and nobody could give me an answer ... I asked several times in order to put some incentive and nothing changed. Then I proposed to recompile the required packages for potato so that they could get installed on master.debian.org and they declined this offer as well ... So basically I'm stuck. I don't want to blame anyone for this problem but I just want to show you that I reached the limit of what I could do and that I have absolutely no fallback solution. This is just a single case of a problem, maybe not enough to worry about but I can show you other examples which causes similar troubles : - you want to create a new subproject but the listmaster will take way too much time to create the list you need to go further - a cvs repository not created by debian-admin but you feel it's important to have this repository hosted on an official debian site (because it's for debian-edu for example) 2. If you're regularly in contact with debian-admin or ftpmasters or some other important team, you will have faced rejection of ideas or requests, and if you criticize them because of that, you may get an answer like bingo, I'll never do anything for you in the upcoming year. What do you think about such an answer ? Actually, that hasn't been my experience at all. You're really lucky. :-) I've had our listmasters tell me there was a better way to do something than what I was asking for, I've done stupid things on debian.org machines that someone in the admin team had to come clean up, and I've uploaded packages that our ftpmasters bounced because I'd missed something in a license or done something else weird. I don't ever recall feeling that I had been treated worse than I deserved. I've had debian-admin refusing to create me a CVS repository because it's too much work for them and I should better wait for the Debian Sourceforge (codenamed alioth.debian.org). And they have been refusing to create CVS repositories for several months because of that. I replied that creating a repository is a 10 minute work and that they should consider appoint new people if they can't take 10 minute for helping DebianEdu which needs this repository. And I said too much ... I was faced with an answer like I presented above. Of course, I'm used to those answers now and I know that I can still count on everyone for other requests but the fact is that you can't always be sure of what you can expect from the people who are in charge of some important tasks. They'll happily take 10 minutes to install you the required packages for helping you to setup the PTS but they won't take 10 minutes to create a CVS repository. In fact, I can understand that but I can't approve the way it is done. It's not the time that is problematic, it's the fact that installing yet another cvs repository is boring and they already decided to never create any new CVS repository and to remove this burden from their shoulder by using SF/Debian. Ok, that's fine, but please then they should tell it to everyone ... and stop telling to people that 10 minutes is too much work for them who are spending many hours each week. They're just frustrating people with such answers ... Okay, that has not much to do with the election, but this is a real concern ... I tried to expand to the general case based on my personal experience. Feel free to comment on it if you think that you can add some more perspective to the problem that I exposed. I have the feeling that the leader should be concerned by those cases where volunteers are unintentionnaly blocked in their contribution to Debian. I regret that I have not yet met James in person... but I talk to him fairly regularly on IRC and occasionally via email, and find him quite reasonable to discuss things with. He does an amazing amount of good work for Debian behind the scenes. And yet he would never advertise his work. Don't you feel that you should tell everyone what he's doing so that people stop ranting about him ? And so that people know a bit better how the DAM really works and so on ... Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog -+- http://www.ouaza.com Formation Linux et logiciel libre : http://www.logidee.com
Re: Questions for all candidates
#include hallo.h * Raphael Hertzog [Thu, Feb 27 2003, 10:04:08PM]: I've had debian-admin refusing to create me a CVS repository because it's too much work for them and I should better wait for the Debian Sourceforge (codenamed alioth.debian.org). And they have been refusing to create CVS repositories for several months because of that. I replied that creating a repository is a 10 minute work and that they should consider appoint new people if they can't take 10 minute for helping DebianEdu which needs this repository. And I said too much ... I was faced with an answer like I presented above. Same here - when I asked to have for the debian-desktop repository - the answer was that the new repository server will be set up, soon, and having all repositories there is A MUST, we have to wait for it, it will be ready soon. Wiggy is working on it. Everyone pointed to Wiggy and Wiggy ignored my mails, and my complaints about broken logics (that you describe above) either landed in /dev/null or with comments like that logics is okay and I should fix mine. Well, how should we make any progress with a such attitude of some core admins? Gruss/Regards, Eduard. -- Röhrt's im Haus mit viel Getucker, ist es wohl ein Nadeldrucker.
