Questions for the candidates
Two topics for the candidates' consideration and discussion. First: The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. Presumably this means our primary focus should be on putting together great free software and getting it out to users. Of the candidates platforms, the only one that mentioned any changes to the distribution itself was Gergely's [0]. If the Project Leader is the public face of the project, is the person to whom developers look for an example, shouldn't the leader's primary focus also be on technical improvements? If so, why do your platforms instead focus on process issues? If not, how do you propose that Debian developers remain focussed on creating a free operating system if you're going to be focussed on different goals (such as how to be nice to each other)? As Gergely was the only candidate to address any technical issues directly, can you provide those of us who think technical issues are by far Debian's prime concern any reason to vote for anyone other than him? Second: Martin and Branden both identify problems with communication: Furthermore, there is some frustration among some developers that the core teams are not as transparent as they should be, and that their inner workings are not documented very well. There have also been problems with communication. -- Martin We need improvements to our processes. ... All too often, I see discussions of these matters devolve into yelling about two alternatives: person X is holding us back from progress vs. things are working just fine, and your complaints don't do any good. -- Branden Of the technical issues that aren't being communicated about well enough, Branden says In my opinion, and on balance, we do an adequate job on these points. and Martin says While progress is being made, much remains to be done. Ignoring the communication and timliness issues, do you think there are any significant problems in the execution of the tasks under discussion? Do you think, for example, that any new-maintainers who have been accepted should have been rejected, or vice-versa? Have any people applied to join some of the teams in question and been rejected, whom you think should have been accepted, or vice-versa? On balance, do you think any of the teams are doing any of these jobs inadequately? In each case, if so, which and why? Ignoring the communication issue, do you think any of the relevant tasks are being done too slowly? For example, do you think the new maintainer applicants who have been rejected should have been rejected sooner? Or do you think NEW packages for the archive should be processed quicker? If you think any of these tasks are not being done in a timely enough manner, how would you compare the effect of these delays to other work that takes time, such as development of our installer, or major stable releases, or packaging new versions of X, or fixing release critical bugs? By what criteria would you distinguish the tasks above that the project needs to focus on speeding up, and the ones which are already acceptable -- given that improving them all would obviously be a win. For those tasks that the project should focus on speeding up, how do you propose that this be achieved? Why has it not been achieved already? Given that Debian is developed by volunteers, and presuming you're not able to fix everything yourself, how do you propose to get other people to do what's needed, given they haven't already wanted to do it? On the communication issue, presuming you were elected unanimously because everyone agreed with your plans and worked to put them into effect to the best of their abilities, what would the project look like, ideally? Would there be more communication than there is at present? From whom, in what forums, and what activities would be covered? Should there be nothing's changed announcements made, or should that be implied by a lack of updates on tracking pages? Which announcements should be made on -announce, -devel-announce, -devel/-project/-user, -apache/-dpkg/-gtk-gnome/-perl/-qt-kde/etc? Which should be blogged on debian planet? Should any just be mentioned in passing on irc, or in a discussion thread on a list without being announced more widely than a CVS log or a package changelog otherwise? Should there be more discussions about developments? How do you think people with stupid ideas should be dealt with? Should they be ignored outright, or have it explained to them once and too bad if they didn't follow, should it be explained to them until they're convinced? If they aren't convinced, but are also unpersuasive in promoting their desired outcome, what should be done? Do you believe that developers should be (or are) equally willing to have a dialogue with people who provide criticism consisting of suggestions of alternatives, discussion of tradeoffs that can and should be made and helpful bits of code, or people who
Re: Questions for the candidates
Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] Do you believe that developers should be (or are) equally willing to have a dialogue with people who provide criticism consisting of suggestions of alternatives, discussion of tradeoffs that can and should be made and helpful bits of code, or people who accompany their complaints with comments like This FUCKING SUCKS! The maintainer must be incompetent or on crack and requests for dismissal or replacement rather than useful assistance? If you want to make a point, that's fine, but please don't abuse debian-vote and Questions for the candidates for this, that just wastes everybody's time. These are no reasonable questions. -- Falk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:43:29AM +0100, Falk Hueffner wrote: Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Do you believe that developers should be (or are) equally willing to have a dialogue with people who provide criticism consisting of suggestions of alternatives, discussion of tradeoffs that can and should be made and helpful bits of code, or people who accompany their complaints with comments like This FUCKING SUCKS! The maintainer must be incompetent or on crack and requests for dismissal or replacement rather than useful assistance? If you want to make a point, that's fine, but please don't abuse debian-vote and Questions for the candidates for this, that just wastes everybody's time. These are no reasonable questions. That's only one question quoted there. Are you saying you think all of the others are unreasonable too, or just that one? I think it's reasonable, and I'd certainly like to know the project's position on it. I'd certainly thought I'd seen people expecting being equally informative and communicative with people no matter how much they'd irritated you. I can't say that sort of response particularly encourages me to be communicative, though. I don't particularly want to waste everybody's time just because I think something's important. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could. http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: That's only one question quoted there. Are you saying you think all of the others are unreasonable too, or just that one? I answered this in another mail. I think it's reasonable, and I'd certainly like to know the project's position on it. Do you really think a useful and productive discussion could come from a candidate trying to answer this question? I don't. I would be pretty annoyed if I was to answer them. I can't say that sort of response particularly encourages me to be communicative, though. I don't particularly want to waste everybody's time just because I think something's important. Then raise these issues in a sensible way. -- Falk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
* Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 20:11]: First: The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. Presumably this means our primary focus should be on putting together great free software and getting it out to users. That's right; this is the vision I share and the goal I'm working towards. If the Project Leader is the public face of the project, is the person to whom developers look for an example, shouldn't the leader's primary focus also be on technical improvements? If so, why do your platforms instead focus on process issues? There is evidence that a high quality product requires high quality processes ... If not, how do you propose that Debian developers remain focussed on creating a free operating system if you're going to be focussed on different goals (such as how to be nice to each other)? ... I am focused on creating a free operating system. Creating a free operating system requires more than pure development. For example, you also need a good infrastructure (such as an ftp archive). There are many ways to contribute to a free operating system other than strictly through development (translations would be another example, or usability studies). As I argued in my platform, my contribution is to coordinate different efforts in Debian. You can see me as the glue which keeps all the developers working together. I'm proud to be working together with some really smart free software developers, and my main task is to ensure that they can carry out their work. As Gergely was the only candidate to address any technical issues directly, can you provide those of us who think technical issues are by far Debian's prime concern any reason to vote for anyone other than him? I think technical issues are important, and I am involved in technical decisions as well. In my work, I stay in contact with many developers and give them advice, both on technical issues themselves and on how to implement technical things. Ignoring the communication and timliness issues, do you think there are any significant problems in the execution of the tasks under discussion? Do you think, for example, that any new-maintainers who have been accepted should have been rejected, or vice-versa? Have any people applied to join some of the teams in question and been rejected, whom you think should have been accepted, or vice-versa? On balance, do you think any of the teams are doing any of these jobs inadequately? In each case, if so, which and why? I mentioned the security team in my platform as one example. I think they are doing an _excellent_ job, but I am also aware that they are quite overworked and that they could help additional man power. As to offers being rejected: I think if this happens it is largely due to bad communication or approaching people the wrong way. In your mail, you mention the example of saying This FUCKING SUCKS! The maintainer must be incompetent or on crack. From my experience, this approach usually does not work. Similarly, if an offer to help is phrases poorly, it probably won't get accepted. I see it as my task to advice people on how to get involved in various work (either package maintenance, core teams or core projects, such as debian-installer). I know many people in Debian and how they work, and so I can approach them in the way which works for them and tell other people who to approach them. Ignoring the communication issue, do you think any of the relevant tasks are being done too slowly? For example, do you think the new maintainer applicants who have been rejected should have been rejected sooner? Or do you think NEW packages for the archive should be processed quicker? NEW packages are usually processed within 2 weeks, and I'm quite happy with this. The first applicant who got rejected should have been earlier, but it took a long time to get the procedures right; again, this was the first formal DAM rejection and it's important to formalize the process. So while it would have been good to have done the rejection earlier, I think it was important to take the time to get it right. The few other rejections which have happened since then were all done in an adequate timeframe. For those interested in this topic, I have written a pretty thorough analysis about rejections at http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/debian-devel-200402/msg01369.html If you think any of these tasks are not being done in a timely enough manner, how would you compare the effect of these delays to other work that takes time, such as development of our installer, or major stable releases, or packaging new versions of X, or fixing release critical bugs? By what criteria would you distinguish the tasks above that the project needs to focus on speeding up, and the ones which are already acceptable -- given that improving them all would obviously be a win. I think there are many
Re: Questions for the candidates
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 12:44]: I, as DPL, am willing to listen to them because there concerns might be valid. However, I don't think that most people will listen to a mail which basically says YOU SUCK. Again, I think communication is important, and this applies to everyone. We have to help people express what they really mean, in a manner which other people can understand and don't find offending. There's one thing I'd like to add, something we regularly do in programming, but what we sometimes seem to forget in communication: Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send. -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Questions to candidates
Hi, this morning I wrote in private to the DPL candidates but tbm asked me to foreward my questions to debian-vote which I'm doing hereby ... Here are my questions: 1. My concern is to propagate Custom Debian Distributions because I think we should set a stronger focus to the end user. I see Debian as a missing link between upstream developers and end users and Custom Debian distributions are a good way to care for end users. What are your plans according to Custom Debian Distributions? 2. Recently we had some flamewars about concentration of power for some people inside Debian. While I'm much more relaxed than many others and save my time for work instead of fighting flame wars I have one certain question here. How do you see the role of James Troup in the project? While I think that he did a great job in terms of finding technical solutions he absolutely fails in communication with people. This starts with the fact that he is known to actively maintain a quite long killfile (accompanied with the ability to ignore requests of people) and ends with the inability to accept critics to his person. While I have no personal problems to cope with those people I noticed that this behaviour of a person who is doing not only one important job for the project does harm to the Debian project in general. I had several private discussions with outsiders. For instance one opinion was that the persion would not apply as New Maintainer as long as James Troup is ruling Debian. (Please note: I do not think that James Troup is really ruling Debian - I was just quoting.) So what are your plans to enhance communication with people on important positions in Debian and how do you think that important jobs might be split onto different shoulders? 3. Do you think Debian should continue to support non-free? 4. Does your normal live allow sparsing time for Debian leadership which seems to include much additional work (perhaps you will not be able to continue on working on your packages) and does your current employer accept your intention. A. Meta-question: Do you know that your jpb as a Debian leader has the consequence to travel in several countries all over the world which might lead to the situation that some countries handle you like a criminal by taking your finger prints? I personally would not like to be handled like a criminal and thus I did not accepted the invitation to a conference in Texas. Thanks for supporting Debian by volunteering for leadership Andreas. PS: I have read the plans of each candidate and know that some of my questions are answered indirectly in some statements but I wanted to ask these question to each of you in the same manner. I do not mind if you answer any of these question via a link to a certain paragraph of your statements. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 01:31:19PM +0100, Falk Hueffner wrote: Do you really think a useful and productive discussion could come from a candidate trying to answer this question? I don't. I would be pretty annoyed if I was to answer them. I don't think this is a reasonable question, and I disagree with the point I think you're trying to make. On the other hand, I think the questions you're talking about were reasonable, if a bit verbose. I hope the candidates address at least some of them. Finally, if you don't want to answer those questions, I don't see any reason why you should. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't think this is a reasonable question, and I disagree with the point I think you're trying to make. On the other hand, I think the questions you're talking about were reasonable, if a bit verbose. I hope the candidates address at least some of them. Seems I have still not made myself clear. I am not objecting to asking about the issues mentioned. I am not objecting to abybody answering them. I am objecting to abusing a questionnaire as a platorm for a rant. -- Falk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
On 02 Mar 2004 13:31:19 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Do you really think a useful and productive discussion could come from a candidate trying to answer this question? I don't. I would be pretty annoyed if I was to answer them. But you are not the candidate. They ought to be able to handle, at the very least, questions posed to them on the mailing list, without needing to be defended by you. Then raise these issues in a sensible way. I do not think that you have the corner on the sensible way of raising questions. I would encourage people who have questions to bring them forth on this mailing list; and the candidates are free not to respond to questions that they do not wish to respond to. manoj -- Incompetents often hire able assistants. -- Douglas Evelyn Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
On 02 Mar 2004 11:43:29 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] Do you believe that developers should be (or are) equally willing to have a dialogue with people who provide criticism consisting of suggestions of alternatives, discussion of tradeoffs that can and should be made and helpful bits of code, or people who accompany their complaints with comments like This FUCKING SUCKS! The maintainer must be incompetent or on crack and requests for dismissal or replacement rather than useful assistance? If you want to make a point, that's fine, but please don't abuse debian-vote and Questions for the candidates for this, that just wastes everybody's time. These are no reasonable questions. Please unsubscribe from debian-vote if you do not wish to hear the opinions of the candidates on politically charged issues as well as ordinary technical issues. You certainly have not gained moderator rights on this mailing list; so please refrain from attempting to so. The question above does seem germane, since it refers to in passing to an incident that drowned the signal on a development list of the project with non-technical noise; hearing the candidates views on how these issues are to be resolved would show their modus operandi in handling similar incidents in the future. manoj -- FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #3 MIRACLE ON 42ND STREET: Santa Claus, in the off season, follows his heart's desire and tries to make it big on Broadway. Santa sings and dances his way into your heart. Debian Project Secretary [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://vote.debian.org/ 1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 02 Mar 2004 13:31:19 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Do you really think a useful and productive discussion could come from a candidate trying to answer this question? I don't. I would be pretty annoyed if I was to answer them. But you are not the candidate. They ought to be able to handle, at the very least, questions posed to them on the mailing list, without needing to be defended by you. I would encourage people who have questions to bring them forth on this mailing list; and the candidates are free not to respond to questions that they do not wish to respond to. If you insist, I'll repeat it for you: I am not objecting to asking about the issues mentioned. I am not objecting to abybody answering them. I am objecting to abusing a questionnaire as a platorm for a rant. -- Falk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
Debian Project Secretary [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 02 Mar 2004 11:43:29 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Please unsubscribe from debian-vote if you do not wish to hear the opinions of the candidates on politically charged issues as well as ordinary technical issues. I have no problem with that content. I dislike reading rants, though. You certainly have not gained moderator rights on this mailing list; so please refrain from attempting to so. Huh? In which way have I attempted to gain moderator rights? The question above does seem germane, since it refers to in passing to an incident that drowned the signal on a development list of the project with non-technical noise; hearing the candidates views on how these issues are to be resolved would show their modus operandi in handling similar incidents in the future. I did not object to hearing their opinion. -- Falk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions to candidates
* Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 15:20]: this morning I wrote in private to the DPL candidates but tbm asked me to foreward my questions to debian-vote which I'm doing hereby Yes, I think it's important to share these answers with everyone who is interested. 1. My concern is to propagate Custom Debian Distributions because I think we should set a stronger focus to the end user. I see Debian as a missing link between upstream developers and end users and Custom Debian distributions are a good way to care for end users. What are your plans according to Custom Debian Distributions? I partly cover this in my section External/internal - Debian based Distributions. I see two developments: sub-projects in Debian with a special focus, and projects outside of Debian based on our system. I think that both developments are very good and beneficial, and show the success of Debian. As DPL, I intend to work with Debian sub-projects to make sure that they can achieve their goals, and that they are not isolated in the project. Also, as described in my platform, I think Debian can profit to a great extend from Debian based distributions, and I intend to work with them to make sure that their work gets integrated into Debian. Ideally, they would join Debian and lead their project as a Debian sub-project. This is why I mentioned this point as external/internal rather than just external -- I think everyone will benefit from getting them closer to Debian. As to your statement about Debian being the missing link between upstream developers and end users. I fully agree with this. I think Debian provides a great service to the community, e.g. by forwarding bug reports to upstream, compiling and testing upstream software on many architectures, etc. I am also excited to see a growing number of upstream authors directly getting involved in Debian! 2. Recently we had some flamewars about concentration of power for some people inside Debian. [...] How do you see the role of James Troup in the project? I think James is an excellent contributor to the project. I know him personally, and I can assure you that he is not on a power trip. He performs so many tasks in the project and holds key positions simply because of the amount of work he puts into Debian, and because there are often no other volunteers with the time or knowledge. Most people are not aware of this, but after the compromise James stayed up until 4am-5am or even longer every night, and even took off a day of work to work on the restoration of our services. I'd like to see such a devotion to Debian from more people! In any case, I am fully aware that there are complaints about James ... While I think that he did a great job in terms of finding technical solutions he absolutely fails in communication with people. ... he does not _absolutely_ fail to communicate with people; there is a large number of people who communicate with him without any problems. For example, I'm in contact with him on an almost daily basis. However, it's true that his communication can be improved, and that there are some problems. However, I think the problems are much smaller than they appear to outsiders. Usually, you don't notice when something works as expected. You only notice when it suddenly breaks. So if 95% of communication with James works well, we will never hear about it. But we hear about the 5% which fails. In any case, what can be done to improve communication? I think one important step to take, and one I've been working on and which I emphasize in my platform, is to assist James with his tasks. In many cases, he is not unwilling to communicate but is simply too busy to respond to everyone. If he would respond to everyone, he would not get the important tasks he performs done. I think the situation can be improved if more people assist James in his tasks. Finding people for core teams is quite complicated (see my platform), but this is what I will work on, and have been working on. For example, another ftpmaster was added to help with NEW processing, and this certainly helped. Myself, I respond to questions about the NM process. There is also a second person responding to keyring requests. So, the first step will be to clearly identify where help is needed (not just in the teams James is involved, but in general), and to find people who can provide assistance. This is a delicate task, and requires people's skills. (When talking about evolution, there is this metaphor that it's not possible to put the parts of an aeroplane in a box, shake it and hope an aeroplane comes out; it's the same with people - you cannot expect to put some random people together and hope they'll be a good team. You have to select the right people, and the team has to form evolutionary/naturally.) This starts with the fact that he is known to actively maintain a quite long killfile For personal mail - not for role accounts. So what
Re: Questions to candidates
Foreword: Do NOT take my answers seriously. I'm trying to make people laugh. Here are my questions: 1. My concern is to propagate Custom Debian Distributions because I think we should set a stronger focus to the end user. I see Debian as a missing link between upstream developers and end users and Custom Debian distributions are a good way to care for end users. What are your plans according to Custom Debian Distributions? Easy one. As seen on debian-devel@ recently, Progeny (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) has this Componentized Linux idea. Which is all nice and good, and should help custom distros all right. So, the plans are set straight already. However, this would involve changing our release process, which obviously involves the release manager, adding support for them into dpkg and apt and possibly other tools. While the DPLs job is not to code them, but management, my plan is to organise s3kr1t meetings with random people, thus annoy the hell out of the people who should do the job, so after a time, they get so upset, that they code the support in a day or two, just to make my efforts worthless, and then point and laugh at me. 2. Recently we had some flamewars about concentration of power for some people inside Debian. While I'm much more relaxed than many others and save my time for work instead of fighting flame wars I have one certain question here. How do you see the role of James Troup in the project? James is a good guy, and he we should thank $DEITY we have him. We should not say bad things about him, because he controls the black halicopters, so shhh While I think that he did a great job in terms of finding technical solutions he absolutely fails in communication with people. This starts with the fact that he is known to actively maintain a quite long killfile (accompanied with the ability to ignore requests of people) and ends with the inability to accept critics to his person. While I have no personal problems to cope with those people I noticed that this behaviour of a person who is doing not only one important job for the project does harm to the Debian project in general. I had several private discussions with outsiders. For instance one opinion was that the persion would not apply as New Maintainer as long as James Troup is ruling Debian. (Please note: I do not think that James Troup is really ruling Debian - I was just quoting.) If that person does not have a skin hard enough to bear James, he shouldn't come near Debian at all! There's MUCH worse than James awaiting him... (just make him report an upstream bug against a random gnome package maintained by Marillat) Besides, James is nowhere near ruling Debian. My overweight tamagotchi is, obviously. So what are your plans to enhance communication with people on important positions in Debian and how do you think that important jobs might be split onto different shoulders? To enhance communication, especially between people who have problems talking with each other, we should utilise proxy-persons, who receive all their mails between the two problematic persons, and rewrod them in a way so that it pleases the other one. This way, slowly they learn how to co-operate well, and the proxy person can find another two victims. 3. Do you think Debian should continue to support non-free? No. Non-free should die a horrible death. If it were up to me, I'd delete it even from the archives, and erase even the memory of it from people's minds. A. Meta-question: Do you know that your jpb as a Debian leader has the consequence to travel in several countries all over the world which might lead to the situation that some countries handle you like a criminal by taking your finger prints? I personally would not like to be handled like a criminal and thus I did not accepted the invitation to a conference in Texas. I have no problems travelling around the world, provided I can sail in my beloved ship, the Black Pearl.. Oh, and the countries I sail to must accept, that I am the mighty pirate, Gergelybrush Nagywood, the one who killed the ghost pirate LeSCO! Oh, fame and fortune, and the beatufil caribbean! Oops, sorry. Got carried away. Since I'm still studying, and being a poor little hungarian student (note to self: insert paypal account info here), I am unable to to travel a lot. However, other countries are free to invide Hungary, and bring all the conferences here so I can attend. Thanks for supporting Debian by volunteering for leadership If my nomination is to be considered worthy support for Debian, we are in reeeal touble! ;) -- Gergelybrush Nagywood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
On 02 Mar 2004 17:53:14 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
I am not objecting to asking about the issues mentioned. I am not
objecting to abybody answering them. I am objecting to abusing a
questionnaire as a platorm for a rant.
A DD can ask a question that they feel passionately about. If
the candidates feel it is a rant, I would like to see how they would
deal with rants. Why can't the candidates handle rants on their own?
Indeed, at least one candidate has handled that email, and given us
his take on the issues raised. Why would you want to prevent that?
manoj
--
Date: 28 Mar 90 21:35:44 GMT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Randal
Schwartz) ($_=Just another Perl hacker,); 0 while s#.# do {print
$;} #e,s/^1//;
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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Re: Questions for the candidates
On 02 Mar 2004 17:55:08 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Debian Project Secretary [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 02 Mar 2004 11:43:29 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Please unsubscribe from debian-vote if you do not wish to hear the opinions of the candidates on politically charged issues as well as ordinary technical issues. I have no problem with that content. I dislike reading rants, though. debian-vote is not a required mailing list for developers. You certainly have not gained moderator rights on this mailing list; so please refrain from attempting to so. Huh? In which way have I attempted to gain moderator rights? Some one asked a question. It did not fit your criteria fro what a question should be. You told the person posing the question that the mail was inappropriate, and told them not to waste peoples time. In the words of US politics, this produces a chilling effect and suppresses questions that do not meet the critria of the person telling people to go away and reformulate or shut up. Please let the candidates deal with the questions, even uncomfortable ones (within bounds of normal debian mailing list traffic, which that question certainly was). manoj -- A man of great immorality is like a creeper, suffocating the tree it is on. He does to himself just what an enemy would wish him. 162 Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have no problem with that content. I dislike reading rants, though. Actually, I would like to hear how the candidates deal with a rant. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions to candidates
On Wed, 2004-03-03 at 04:12, Martin Michlmayr wrote: * Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 15:20]: 3. Do you think Debian should continue to support non-free? No. Debian is about creating a operating system with free software, and I don't think we should be in the business of distributing non-free software. I think we should focus on what we do best (create and integrate free software), and this would also get us closer to other players in the community, such as the FSF. What about Debian distributing documentation - do you see it as software, do you see all documentation (eg. philosophical) as software? Eg. GFDL documentation? RFCs? ta zen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions to candidates
Zenaan Harkness [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What about Debian distributing documentation - do you see it as software, do you see all documentation (eg. philosophical) as software? Eg. GFDL documentation? RFCs? Another thing that would be useful to add to all questions of this type is something along the lines of and as DPL, do you think you can do anything about it, or plan to? to hear whether the candidates plan to do anything either personally or as DPL about any particular issue. -- David N. Welton Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/ Personal: http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/ Free Software: http://www.dedasys.com/freesoftware/ Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions to candidates
What about Debian distributing documentation - do you see it as software, do you see all documentation (eg. philosophical) as software? Eg. GFDL documentation? RFCs? Another thing that would be useful to add to all questions of this type is something along the lines of and as DPL, do you think you can do anything about it, or plan to? to hear whether the candidates plan to do anything either personally or as DPL about any particular issue. I will answer that question here. I would like to think about documentation as if it were software, so that I can share and tweak it to my liking. Especially if it is technical documentation, from which I can lift examples from, and build them into my own programs. With this pattern, the documentation needs to be software license friendly (in my case, GPL compatible), which for example, the GDFL is not, and as far as I remember, the RFCs aren't either. As DPL, one does not really have a way to change the situation though. As a distribution, we can move all such documentation to non-free, and let the users flame the upstream authors for not having the documentation at hand. However, that probably wouldn't work out too well. So, instead of this, I intend to finally release my new branch of tama which I've been hacking on for quite a few years (well, actually only two), which is skinnable, themeable, and can work as a frontend to megahal. We just need an RMS skin and theme, feed some of his speeches to megahal, then persuade it that the GFDL is bad, and then we have a nice RMS replacement. Then, we hire a few Bad Guys, and replace the real RMS with my tama thingy, and bingo! It relicenses all GDFL stuff under the GPL or a compatible license, and problems are gone! -- Gergely `Master Tama Breeder' Nagy -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions to candidates
* Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 20:31]: Well thanks for the clarification. I just want to make sure that this BTW, there's something else I wanted to clarify. Something asked me about this in private, and I thought I'd answer her as well. Basically the question is whether I am trying to assimilate all Debian based projects into Debian and whether this is a good idea. I realize my platform might not have been clear about this. I am not trying to merge all Debian based projects into Debian - not if it doesn't make sense to do so. In some cases, it makes sense to merge work into Debian; but I realize that a certain autonomy give those projects flexibility which is important. For example, it gives them the freedom to do released independent from our release cycle. So I'd like to clarify: I intend to work together with other projects as close as possible; and if it makes sense, then effort should be combined and merged. However, I realize that this is not possible in all cases, and that those projects benefit from their autonomy. Trick question: Do you plan to do this step before or after moving documentation with non-free licenses to non-free. ;-) My plan is to get the license changed so the documentation is free according to our rules. See my other posting in this thread. -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions to candidates
* David N. Welton [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 22:51]: Another thing that would be useful to add to all questions of this type is something along the lines of and as DPL, do you think you can do anything about it, or plan to? to hear whether the candidates plan to do anything either personally or as DPL about any particular issue. I absolutely think we can and should try to do something about this. In fact, in the case of the GFDL, I had various discussions with Bradley Kuhn (Vice-President of the FSF) and later helped creating a committee which discusses these issues with the FSF. There were some conference calls and one meeting IRL, and we are currently waiting for the FSF to post an update - everything has unfortunately been delayed because RMS broke his arm a while ago. However, Don Armstrong and Mako Hill (who represent Debian in this matter) are in close with Eben Moglen, the FSF lawyer. In general, I think that Debian has the responsibility to approach other people if their software or documentation license is non-free and to explain why this is bad (Of course, it is their right to create software or licenses which don't comply with out DFSG, but we should at least point out why we think it is important for software to be free according to the DFSG). My approach with regards to the GFDL is outlined in detail in http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2003/debian-project-200310/msg00117.html and some thoughts about being more proactive with regards to non-free license can be found in http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200402/msg00117.html (plus follow-ups). -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Just a single Question for the Candidates
As a female hacker/geek/DD I find myself more and more concerned about the gender ratio in the Debian Developer/User comunity. How can we say make a Universal OS when it's do scarcely related to half the population of the world... I think we all agree we want to see more women involved in or using Debian. I would be very interested in knowing what's is each candidate's plan or ideas on this subject, how to get more women involved, and what (in their opinion) would be the benefits. I hope I am not firing a big flame war here. This is not what I intend. I just want to hear (read) what kind of tama Gergely Nagy has in mind :-) Thanks for the input. -- All the pictures have all been washed in black. Tattooed everything. .''`. All the love gone bad turned my world to black. Tattooed all I see. : :' : All that I am. All I'll be. -- Perl Jam - Ten - 5 - Black -- `. `' Proudly running Debian GNU/Linux (Sid 2.4.20 Ext3) `- www.amayita.com www.malapecora.com www.chicasduras.com Listening to Pearl Jam - Ten - 3 - Alive -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Just a single Question for the Candidates
On Wed, 2004-03-03 at 11:12, Amaya wrote: As a female hacker/geek/DD I find myself more and more concerned about the gender ratio in the Debian Developer/User comunity. How can we say make a Universal OS when it's do scarcely related to half the population of the world... I think we all agree we want to see more women involved in or using Debian. Not a candidate but... I don't see Debian as primarily, significantly, or anything like exclusive with respect to gender. Quite the opposite. Perhaps there is room for advocacy in that regard though, but I tend to think it's the old adage show us the code - doesn't matter whether you're male, female, whatever, if you're interested, and can hack good code, Debian wants you! (There's probably some punch line about show us the women, but I can't think of it...) So, welcome, take heart, and viva la female hackers! cheers zenaan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Just a single Question for the Candidates
* Amaya [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-03 01:12]: As a female hacker/geek/DD I find myself more and more concerned about the gender ratio in the Debian Developer/User community. How can we say make a Universal OS when it's do scarcely related to half the population of the world... I think we all agree we want to see more women involved in or using Debian. At the Open Source World Conference in Spain two weeks ago, someone from the audience asked the same question. I said that it would certainly be good to get more women involved in Debian and free software, but I don't really have a good solution how this can be achieved. Furthermore, I showed the map of Debian developers, http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc, and pointed out that it's not just women who are under-represented in Debian. There are, for example, many parts of the world who don't have many Debian developers (especially Asia and Africa). As a matter of fact, I was surprised at the large number of women attending the conference. The percentage of women at the conference in Spain was much higher than what you'd see at a conference in Germany or the UK. (I also pointed out that our most active female developer is from Spain; they were quite happy to hear that ;). Someone (I think it was Bdale) said that IT in India had a much larger percentage of women than in western countries. I have heard similar things about Malaysia. Also, someone claimed that the percentage of women in free software is even lower than in computer science/IT in general, but it was not clear why this is the case. I would be very interested in knowing what's is each candidate's plan or ideas on this subject, how to get more women involved, and what (in their opinion) would be the benefits. I think it's good to get more women involved, just like I think it would be good to get more people from other countries, etc, involved. However, I also think we should make sure that we are not encouraging a certain group to join Debian just because they are under-represented. Joining Debian should be based on merit, and we should not forget that ideal. So if there are technically excellent women who want to contribute to Debian, great! (But the same goes for anyone else.) One thing I can assure is that our New Maintainer process is blind to gender/sex, nationality, religion, etc - only factors which make a difference in whether or not somebody can be a successful contributor to Debian are taken into account. Back to your question on how to get women involved: I think it's a fine line between promoting women to get involved and having more diversity, and getting women involved in Debian simply for the sake of them being women. I fear that it might be misperceived if I, as a male, would actively search for women joining Debian. I think that you (Amaya) can do a much better job at that, and I encourage your recent efforts. For those who don't know, Amaya approached me recently because she would like to organize a meeting between female developers or prospective developers at DebConf. I gave her a listing of the female (prospective) developers I know of. Amaya also looked at the Debian communities on Orkut, and since then has sent one prospective developer my way, and I had a discussion with her. I'm happy to talk to prospective female developers and to give advice, but then again, I'm happy to do the same for anyone else. In summary, I think getting more women and more under-represented folks involved is a good thing, but it should be done on technical merit. Finally, to answer your question fully, I think that women could help us with communication in the project. -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions to candidates
* Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 20:31]: something works as expected. You only notice when it suddenly breaks. So if 95% of communication with James works well, we will never hear about it. But we hear about the 5% which fails. Damn users ... this is always the same. ;-) Well, I don't want to play it down. If there is a problem, it has to be fixed, no matter if it's 1% or 5%. It's also not just users, but developers as well. However, one disturbing trend I have seen is that FUD is increasingly common. It seems to be in to rant about various things, even if it has no factual basis. In many cases, I see very uninformed postings. This is a real problem because people are no longer available to distinguish between real problems and mere rants. Due to this, there is a growing number of developers and users who feel that Debian is falling apart, while it fact most things are working pretty well. We have to do something against this, otherwise more and more people will get frustrated (also see my answer to AJ's mail, especially the end). My approach to this is to give _factual_ information (one example for this would be my posting about the status of buildds, but there are many similar postings from me; for one, see http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/debian-devel-200402/msg00463.html). Finally, I believe that complaints like person X cannot communicate or X sucks or whatever are not very helpful (Andreas, I'm not accusing you of doing so with your question; I'm talking in general, based on what I see on -devel and other lists, and I think your questioon is based on this as well). I try to identify exactly what the problem is and then to tackle it. -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 08:11:16PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Two topics for the candidates' consideration and discussion. First: The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. Presumably this means our primary focus should be on putting together great free software and getting it out to users. Of the candidates platforms, the only one that mentioned any changes to the distribution itself was Gergely's [0]. If the Project Leader is the public face of the project, is the person to whom developers look for an example, shouldn't the leader's primary focus also be on technical improvements? The Project Leader's focus should be on whatever the project needs most. I think we're fairly sophisticated at managing the technical content of the distribution. That is, while there's certainly a lot of work that needs to be done for us to have a high-quality sarge release -- as you're not doubt personally and painfully aware -- we're pretty good at knowing and communicating what that work is. We have a highly-developed (custom-written, even) Bug Tracking System, and interfaces like packages.qa.debian.org for getting all kinds of good information about where a technical aspect of the distribution is at. Our interfaces to non-technical and infrastructural knowledge are *significantly* less developed. In many cases, as I observed in my platform, people have to ask humans to get the information they seek. They often cannot honestly be told to go look at some webpage and get enlightened that way. If so, why do your platforms instead focus on process issues? As noted above, I focus on process issues because that's where I perceive us as being most deficient. If not, how do you propose that Debian developers remain focussed on creating a free operating system if you're going to be focussed on different goals (such as how to be nice to each other)? How do we remain focussed on creating a free operating system when most of us have bills to pay, loved ones to care for (or at least keep in touch with), and/or exams to study for? I think you're positing a false dilemma. That creating a technically excellent distribution of 100% Free Software is our primary goal, and raison d'être, doesn't mean that every activity not in obvious and direct service of that goal isn't worthless. I think by improving process infrastructure, we can make support positions within the project more comprehensible and appealing to fresh volunteers (not necessarily developers who have just passed NM, either -- maybe old-timers whose interests have changed as well). That will both directly serve my goal of reducing the level of friction within the project (as one doesn't have to pester people for answers to questions that have been asked a dozen times today) but indirectly as well, because I expect some of those volunteers could actually perform those infastructural taks, distributing our workload more evenly, and getting support work done faster. As Gergely was the only candidate to address any technical issues directly, can you provide those of us who think technical issues are by far Debian's prime concern any reason to vote for anyone other than him? Sure. Imagine Debian as simply a collection of bits sitting on a box somewhere. No Project machines. No mailing lists. No BTS. No keyring. No master archive. No mirrors. How easy would it be to pursue our purpose then? You tell me -- are issues other than technical ones important at all? Second: Martin and Branden both identify problems with communication: [...] Of the technical issues that aren't being communicated about well enough, Branden says In my opinion, and on balance, we do an adequate job on these points. and Martin says While progress is being made, much remains to be done. I think you're exaggerating the contrast between our statements -- note the next paragraph after the one you quoted: Good is good, but we can be better. Adequacy is adequate, but we should strive for excellence.[1] Ignoring the communication and timliness issues, do you think there are any significant problems in the execution of the tasks under discussion? Do you think, for example, that any new-maintainers who have been accepted should have been rejected, or vice-versa? Have any people applied to join some of the teams in question and been rejected, whom you think should have been accepted, or vice-versa? On balance, do you think any of the teams are doing any of these jobs inadequately? In each case, if so, which and why? I'm not willing to point an accusing finger of inadequacy at any of these, nor to single out some particular decision and deride it -- especially since, as the Constitution notes, if the decision were taken by a delegate, the delegate cannot be dismissed by the DPL for making it[2]. One of the reasons I'm setting up a RequestTracker instance is to see if it can help us to
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:16PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: I think you're positing a false dilemma. That creating a technically excellent distribution of 100% Free Software is our primary goal, and raison d'être, doesn't mean that every activity not in obvious and direct service of that goal isn't worthless. Err, s/isn't/is/. Sorry 'bout that. -- G. Branden Robinson|I must confess to being surprised Debian GNU/Linux |by the magnitude of incompatibility [EMAIL PROTECTED] |with such a minor version bump. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |-- Manoj Srivastava signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 08:11:16PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Of the technical issues that aren't being communicated about well enough, Branden says In my opinion, and on balance, we do an adequate job on these points. and Martin says While progress is being made, much remains to be done. I think you're exaggerating the contrast between our statements -- Hrm, you're right. I was trying to find some quotes that indicated you both thought that, technically, things were acceptable as they are; Martin's comment doesn't quite indicate that out of context. The quotes were meant to indicate you were of a similar mind on that issue. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could. http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Who do you think should be subscribed to -devel, and what sort of discussions do you think should make up the majority of the traffic? If reality doesn't match those desires, what, if anything, will you do to change that? I'm going to have to refer you to my platform again here.[5][6] [5] http://people.debian.org/~branden/dpl/campaign/2004/platform.xhtml#s3p1 [6] http://people.debian.org/~branden/dpl/campaign/2004/platform.xhtml#s3p2 I can't see anything there that mentions the -devel list. Can you explain what creating a request tracker, or working with delegates implies for the audience and content of -devel in any more detail? Do you mean that you hope your request tracker will eventually replace the mailing lists completely? Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could. http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: As is probably obvious, I have a tendency to answer questions that interest me, whether they were intended rhetorically or not. First: The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. [...] Imagine Debian as simply a collection of bits sitting on a box somewhere. No Project machines. No mailing lists. No BTS. No keyring. No master archive. No mirrors. How easy would it be to pursue our purpose then? The alternative extreme would be to imagine we had a bunch of project machines, a bunch of mailing lists, a state of the art BTS, a keyring, tonnes of donated project machines, a mirror network, dozens of machines setup to do automatic building and testing of packages every day... but no actual software we can give users to install. I'd think the former hypothetical project would be far more useful to potential users, and have better achieved our goals than the latter. Certainly it's fairly easy to go from a good collection of bits to a viable and useful distribution: Knoppix has done so, for example. Equally certainly, getting the bits in the first place is non-trivial. You tell me -- are issues other than technical ones important at all? I'd've thought it was obvious that I find issues other than those that directly affect users important; I have and do spend a bunch of time working on those sorts of issues, after all. But I think it's especially important for people who do do that to remember that the important job isn't working on the processes, it's working on packages. It's so important because, I believe, we have to ensure that all the time and energy we spend working on process stuff pays off in improving our operating system more than if we'd just worked around the bad processes, and hacked on code. Especially given that all the candidates seem devoted to working on process issues rather than our operating system itself, it's important to me to know whether they share that recognition. Unfortunately, just asking doesn't work, since it's traditional for candidates up for election to recognise every concern that's put before them as enormously important, whether that will actually mean anything later or not. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could. http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 02:52:33PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Who do you think should be subscribed to -devel, and what sort of discussions do you think should make up the majority of the traffic? If reality doesn't match those desires, what, if anything, will you do to change that? I'm going to have to refer you to my platform again here.[5][6] [5] http://people.debian.org/~branden/dpl/campaign/2004/platform.xhtml#s3p1 [6] http://people.debian.org/~branden/dpl/campaign/2004/platform.xhtml#s3p2 I can't see anything there that mentions the -devel list. Can you explain what creating a request tracker, or working with delegates implies for the audience and content of -devel in any more detail? Do you mean that you hope your request tracker will eventually replace the mailing lists completely? Sorry; I didn't type everything my brain was thinking there. I'll atone by responding at much greater length. :) I don't have a problem with the current charter of debian-devel: Discussion about technical development topics.[1] And as far as I'm concerned, the open subscription policy isn't a problem, either. I think people sometimes feel compelled to send an off-charter message to a high volume mailing list because the correct forums don't seem to work. To use one example, take the recent message authored by Ingo Juergensmann (but signed and posted by a developer) to debian-devel-announce).[2] Without straying too far off the subject -- I absolutely positively do not want to rehash the gigantic threads on debian-devel spawned by that message -- I posit that this was the action of some one who was frustrated beyond all reason. We can assert that trust was violated, the charter abused, and the content of the message inappropriately personal -- I can grant all that, and probably not just for the sake of the argument. But I think we're being insufficiently responsible to our mission to produce the finest 100% Free operating system we can if we fail to take a step back and ask why this happened. Mr. Juergensmann was not some random guy off the street who came in and blitzed us. He was a known quantity to the project, someone with whom we have had a multi-year association. What causes people to freak out like this? My answer isn't Ingo Juergensmann is a loser. Nor is it James Troup is a loser. My answer is we probably had a failure of process. Indeed, that's just about the only conclusion I *can* reach if I don't want to prejudge either Mr. Juergensmann or Mr. Troup -- because I don't have a full command of the facts of the situation even after reading so much mail about it my eyes glazed over. Ideally, I would see it as my charter as DPL to developer forums and mechanisms for getting these sort of concerns addressed before they fester up and boil over into the kind of reaction we saw (not just on Mr. Juergensmann's part, but in reaction *to* him). Is there really nothing we could do -- those of us who are neither Ingo nor James -- to have helped prevent emotions from running this high? Isn't it at least plausible that there are actions we could have taken to have brought about an amicable settlement without this explosion, even if it was two people having to agree to disagree? That's a question I'm something interested in, and that's where I'm trying to go with those two sections in my platform. One my .signature quotes says, There's something wrong if you're always right. (Glasow's Law) Similarly I think there's someting wrong if we permit ourselves to act as if someone has gone insane, especially if we have evidence to the contrary. Being accurate in our assessments of misconduct does not excuse willful ignorance of why that misconduct took place -- not if we're trying to build a harmonious society. Was that a better answer? [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/ [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/debian-devel-announce-200402/msg8.html -- G. Branden Robinson|If you wish to strive for peace of Debian GNU/Linux |soul, then believe; if you wish to [EMAIL PROTECTED] |be a devotee of truth, then http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |inquire. -- Friedrich Nietzsche signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Questions for candidates -- Debian's Organizational Structure
Hi, Which of the groups/people on [1] do you consider delegates? Why or why not? Would you change this? Do you believe the Tech Committee is effective in its role for the project? Cheers, Pasc [1]: http://www.debian.org/intro/organization -- Pascal Hakim+61 4 0341 1672 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 03:17:55PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: As is probably obvious, I have a tendency to answer questions that interest me, whether they were intended rhetorically or not. I seldom ask purely rhetorical questions. [...] Imagine Debian as simply a collection of bits sitting on a box somewhere. No Project machines. No mailing lists. No BTS. No keyring. No master archive. No mirrors. How easy would it be to pursue our purpose then? The alternative extreme would be to imagine we had a bunch of project machines, a bunch of mailing lists, a state of the art BTS, a keyring, tonnes of donated project machines, a mirror network, dozens of machines setup to do automatic building and testing of packages every day... but no actual software we can give users to install. I'd think the former hypothetical project would be far more useful to potential users, and have better achieved our goals than the latter. Certainly it's fairly easy to go from a good collection of bits to a viable and useful distribution: Knoppix has done so, for example. Equally certainly, getting the bits in the first place is non-trivial. Sure. But if one wants to do anything more than a small, one-off project -- and one is not determined to be a one-man show -- one is going to need some sort of infrastructure to support it. Otherwise, one's project plan is almost literally a joke: 1) Collect underpants. 2) ??? 3) Profit! You tell me -- are issues other than technical ones important at all? I'd've thought it was obvious that I find issues other than those that directly affect users important; I have and do spend a bunch of time working on those sorts of issues, after all. But I think it's especially important for people who do do that to remember that the important job isn't working on the processes, it's working on packages. It's so important because, I believe, we have to ensure that all the time and energy we spend working on process stuff pays off in improving our operating system more than if we'd just worked around the bad processes, and hacked on code. Especially given that all the candidates seem devoted to working on process issues rather than our operating system itself, it's important to me to know whether they share that recognition. Unfortunately, just asking doesn't work, since it's traditional for candidates up for election to recognise every concern that's put before them as enormously important, whether that will actually mean anything later or not. Well, according to the vote page for this election[1], we have 908 developers. Of those, 3 self-nominated for Debian Project Leader. That's about 0.3% of the developer population. This statistic does not suggest to me that we are not drowning in people who are so obsessed with rectifying process issues that they ignore all else, even assuming that accurately describes the candidates. I believe that if we can substantially correct our process problems: 1) Technically capable developers will be comfortable devoting a greater proportion of their Debian time to technical matters; and 2) the Debian Project will appear (and be) a more smoothly-operating organization that attracts more technically savvy people to it, who then drive us to greater heights of achievement in service of our goal -- the best possible 100% Free system we can make. [1] http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_001 -- G. Branden Robinson| Debian GNU/Linux |Yeah, that's what Jesus would do. [EMAIL PROTECTED] |Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions to candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 03:20:16PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote: Here are my questions: 1. My concern is to propagate Custom Debian Distributions because I think we should set a stronger focus to the end user. I see Debian as a missing link between upstream developers and end users and Custom Debian distributions are a good way to care for end users. I strongly agree with your premise. In my view, trying to make Debian main all things to all people is to misunderstand the universal OS goal. It's awfully damn hard to be all things to all people, after all. Instead, I see Debian operating systems as being fully-capable platforms that can *also* serve as a foundation for more specific tasks. What are your plans according to Custom Debian Distributions? I guess I'd have to defer to the Hippocratic Oath: First of all, do no harm. Custom distributions can (and probably will) grow in all sorts of directions whether we want them to or not. But we'll all be better off if we encourage diversity and appreciate their power to bring Debian to new audiences. Furthermore, if we want to take a selfish tack for a moment, if we maintain a high level of cooperation with custom distos based on Debian, they're more likely to listen to us when we ask something of them. I'm think mostly of technical issues here, but the principle could be applied more broadly. 2. Recently we had some flamewars about concentration of power for some people inside Debian. While I'm much more relaxed than many others and save my time for work instead of fighting flame wars I have one certain question here. How do you see the role of James Troup in the project? I'm not sure I can give you the kind of answer you're looking for. If elected DPL, I would promptly get in touch with every member of our core infrastructure team. The first questions I'd ask of any of these people would be: 1) What can I do to help you do your job better? 2) What do you perceive your role in the project to be? The next thing I'd do would be to communicate the answers I received to the rest of the project (except for anything that was expressed to me in confidence, of course). It blows my mind that no previous DPL has done this. In the unlikely event that a person in the project absolutely refused to deal with me as DPL, then I would communicate that fact to the developers as well. But to be honest I don't think there's anyone in the project who would do this. If there is, I don't think I've met or corresponded with them yet. There are few people on our organization list[1] and there are very few I can't recall having communicated with in the past. Of the ones I can't recall having communicated with, none of them has ever been the subject of a flamewar, to my knowledge. :) While I think that he did a great job in terms of finding technical solutions he absolutely fails in communication with people. This is too broad a statement. I've communicated perfectly cordially and efficiently with James many times. So have many others. Anyone who posits that Debian has a cabal probably would say James is in it, and they'd have to grant that he must communicate successfully with the other members of that august body -- unless there are exciting tales of schism and betrayal within the cabal that we mere mortals have not been privy to. :) On a more serious note, it's safe to say that there are certainly people who have had trouble communicating with James in the past. There have been people who had trouble communicating with Martin Michlmayr, too. There have been people who had trouble communicating with me. Some of the criticism of James -- and other people with special responsibilities in the project -- that I have seen, from my non-omniscient viewpoint, *has* been misinformed. In large That's what the first two parts of each of the Why I Am Running and What I Will Do sections of my platform are designed to address. I want to break this zero-sum-game mindset where people are locked in battle with each other, and develop alternative mechanisms for resolving these issues. This starts with the fact that he is known to actively maintain a quite long killfile (accompanied with the ability to ignore requests of people) Two points here: 1) anybody in Debian can ignore pretty much any request from anyone, and the Constitution[2] explicitly authorizes us to do so 2) I can't blame a person for killfiling someone, if a person mailing them is good at pushing a person's buttons. It's emotionally draining to have to defend yourself all the time. Where 2) becomes a problem is when private mail is the preferred means of communicating with someone in their official capacity. As DPL, I'd like to fix that. I think we should decouple people's personal mail addresses from their roles just as machines are[3]. That, of course, does mean that we need teams for just
Re: Questions to candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 05:12:44PM +, Martin Michlmayr wrote: 3. Do you think Debian should continue to support non-free? No. Debian is about creating a operating system with free software, and I don't think we should be in the business of distributing non-free software. I think we should focus on what we do best (create and integrate free software), and this would also get us closer to other players in the community, such as the FSF. Having said this, I don't think the current non-free removal vote is being done correctly. If we decide to remove non-free, we have to provide a good upgrade plan for our users. Thus, I think we should *first* move non-free to something like non-free.org, encourage people to use new APT sources list while at the same time supporting the old APT lines (i.e. still keeping it on Debian mirrors) for a while. I knew *somebody* was going to bite this one. It has proven to be difficult to impossible to get people to do any real work towards doing things in this obvious way. Taken as a given that everybody either wants to keep non-free or to remove it (near enough to accurate), I'll introduce this tautology: The work to provide an upgrade plan for non-free users must be performed by either or both of these groups: (a) Those who wish to see non-free removed (b) Those who wish to see non-free kept Group (a) does not want to do this work because they want to have nothing to do with non-free. Group (b) does not want to do this work because they want non-free to be in Debian, not external to it. (Again, imperfect characterisation, but close enough) We find (found) ourselves at an impasse, where no actual work can get done. The work of maintaining non-free outside of Debian *needs* to be done by those who want to keep non-free in Debian. But they aren't going to do it while non-free is in Debian. My solution was a simple one. We decide to remove non-free, then anybody who cares enough to keep it can arrange for it to be supported outside of Debian, and then we remove it. The GR proposal was written with this goal in mind. Note the absence of time constraints; these are deliberate. It means precisely what it says, and it conspicuously does not say non-free shall immediately be removed from the Debian archive. It was *very* carefully worded over a period of about two weeks. Once the people who want to maintain non-free have a reason to see it done outside of Debian, I would be surprised if it took longer than a week for servers to be procured and the basic mail/accounts/keyring/BTS/archive stuff to be set up. Most of it (everything but the archive) can be done in under a day, given the hardware. That's assuming anybody really cares enough to do it - it's possible that nobody does, and non-free will die (not implausible, looking at the list of things still in non-free). In this scenario, it deserves to die. I do not believe it is realistic to expect any of this to happen without a decision to remove non-free taking place. I do not believe there is any way that people who would rather scrap non-free to see that happen (even in the way you describe) other than voting for this proposal, or waiting for all the packages in non-free to be removed via attrition as they become unmaintained. I find nothing in the proposal that conflicts with your desired sequence of events. And I've said all this before. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: OT: Progeny Linux
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 08:47:35PM +0100, David N. Welton wrote: Gergely Nagy [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Easy one. As seen on debian-devel@ recently, Progeny (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) has this Componentized Linux idea. Which is all nice and good, and should help custom distros all right. So, the plans are set straight already. I saw Ian's online journal as linked by LWN, but can anyone point me to something more specific? It sounds very vaporwareish to me, but maybe there is some substance to it that I'm missing. Links to -devel discussions are ok. Does this help?: http://platform.progeny.com/componentized-linux/ -- G. Branden Robinson| The noble soul has reverence for Debian GNU/Linux | itself. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Friedrich Nietzsche http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions to candidates
On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 08:24:11AM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote: On Wed, 2004-03-03 at 04:12, Martin Michlmayr wrote: * Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 15:20]: 3. Do you think Debian should continue to support non-free? No. Debian is about creating a operating system with free software, and I don't think we should be in the business of distributing non-free software. I think we should focus on what we do best (create and integrate free software), and this would also get us closer to other players in the community, such as the FSF. What about Debian distributing documentation - do you see it as software, do you see all documentation (eg. philosophical) as software? I've expressed my thoughts on this extensively on debian-legal over the past 3 years or so. Basically, yes. Bits are bits. Copyrightable sequences of bits must satisfy the DFSG to be allowed in Debian main. That's how I interpret clause 1 of the Social Contract. That's what 100% Free means to me. -- G. Branden Robinson|Any man who does not realize that Debian GNU/Linux |he is half an animal is only half a [EMAIL PROTECTED] |man. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |-- Thornton Wilder signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions to candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 10:51:18PM +0100, David N. Welton wrote: Zenaan Harkness [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What about Debian distributing documentation - do you see it as software, do you see all documentation (eg. philosophical) as software? Eg. GFDL documentation? RFCs? Another thing that would be useful to add to all questions of this type is something along the lines of and as DPL, do you think you can do anything about it, or plan to? to hear whether the candidates plan to do anything either personally or as DPL about any particular issue. I'm satisfied with our efforts to rectify the problems with the GNU FDL, even if I'm a little disappointed in the speed with which the FSF is moving on this. However, I'm sympathetic to RMS having been injured, and I'm sympathetic to Eben Moglen having to work overtime to counter the outrageous FUD and untruths being spewed by SCO and its shadowy partners. -- G. Branden Robinson| If atheism is a religion, then Debian GNU/Linux | health is a disease. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Clark Adams http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: OT: Progeny Linux
David N. Welton wrote: Easy one. As seen on debian-devel@ recently, Progeny (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) has this Componentized Linux idea. Which is all nice and good, and should help custom distros all right. So, the plans are set straight already. I saw Ian's online journal as linked by LWN, but can anyone point me to something more specific? It sounds very vaporwareish to me, but maybe there is some substance to it that I'm missing. Links to -devel discussions are ok. Matt Black added http://platform.progeny.com/componentized-linux/ to DWN which seems to contain more information. Here's Ians weblog: http://platform.progeny.com/weblogs/05.html Regards, Joey -- Testing? What's that? If it compiles, it is good, if it boots up, it is perfect. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions to candidates
Zenaan Harkness wrote: No. Debian is about creating a operating system with free software, and I don't think we should be in the business of distributing non-free software. I think we should focus on what we do best (create and integrate free software), and this would also get us closer to other players in the community, such as the FSF. What about Debian distributing documentation - do you see it as software, do you see all documentation (eg. philosophical) as software? Eg. GFDL documentation? RFCs? *cough* POSIX manpages? Regards, Joey -- Testing? What's that? If it compiles, it is good, if it boots up, it is perfect. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Questions for the candidates
Two topics for the candidates' consideration and discussion. First: The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. Presumably this means our primary focus should be on putting together great free software and getting it out to users. Of the candidates platforms, the only one that mentioned any changes to the distribution itself was Gergely's [0]. If the Project Leader is the public face of the project, is the person to whom developers look for an example, shouldn't the leader's primary focus also be on technical improvements? If so, why do your platforms instead focus on process issues? If not, how do you propose that Debian developers remain focussed on creating a free operating system if you're going to be focussed on different goals (such as how to be nice to each other)? As Gergely was the only candidate to address any technical issues directly, can you provide those of us who think technical issues are by far Debian's prime concern any reason to vote for anyone other than him? Second: Martin and Branden both identify problems with communication: Furthermore, there is some frustration among some developers that the core teams are not as transparent as they should be, and that their inner workings are not documented very well. There have also been problems with communication. -- Martin We need improvements to our processes. ... All too often, I see discussions of these matters devolve into yelling about two alternatives: person X is holding us back from progress vs. things are working just fine, and your complaints don't do any good. -- Branden Of the technical issues that aren't being communicated about well enough, Branden says In my opinion, and on balance, we do an adequate job on these points. and Martin says While progress is being made, much remains to be done. Ignoring the communication and timliness issues, do you think there are any significant problems in the execution of the tasks under discussion? Do you think, for example, that any new-maintainers who have been accepted should have been rejected, or vice-versa? Have any people applied to join some of the teams in question and been rejected, whom you think should have been accepted, or vice-versa? On balance, do you think any of the teams are doing any of these jobs inadequately? In each case, if so, which and why? Ignoring the communication issue, do you think any of the relevant tasks are being done too slowly? For example, do you think the new maintainer applicants who have been rejected should have been rejected sooner? Or do you think NEW packages for the archive should be processed quicker? If you think any of these tasks are not being done in a timely enough manner, how would you compare the effect of these delays to other work that takes time, such as development of our installer, or major stable releases, or packaging new versions of X, or fixing release critical bugs? By what criteria would you distinguish the tasks above that the project needs to focus on speeding up, and the ones which are already acceptable -- given that improving them all would obviously be a win. For those tasks that the project should focus on speeding up, how do you propose that this be achieved? Why has it not been achieved already? Given that Debian is developed by volunteers, and presuming you're not able to fix everything yourself, how do you propose to get other people to do what's needed, given they haven't already wanted to do it? On the communication issue, presuming you were elected unanimously because everyone agreed with your plans and worked to put them into effect to the best of their abilities, what would the project look like, ideally? Would there be more communication than there is at present? From whom, in what forums, and what activities would be covered? Should there be nothing's changed announcements made, or should that be implied by a lack of updates on tracking pages? Which announcements should be made on -announce, -devel-announce, -devel/-project/-user, -apache/-dpkg/-gtk-gnome/-perl/-qt-kde/etc? Which should be blogged on debian planet? Should any just be mentioned in passing on irc, or in a discussion thread on a list without being announced more widely than a CVS log or a package changelog otherwise? Should there be more discussions about developments? How do you think people with stupid ideas should be dealt with? Should they be ignored outright, or have it explained to them once and too bad if they didn't follow, should it be explained to them until they're convinced? If they aren't convinced, but are also unpersuasive in promoting their desired outcome, what should be done? Do you believe that developers should be (or are) equally willing to have a dialogue with people who provide criticism consisting of suggestions of alternatives, discussion of tradeoffs that can and should be made and helpful bits of code, or people who
Re: Questions for the candidates
Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: [...] Do you believe that developers should be (or are) equally willing to have a dialogue with people who provide criticism consisting of suggestions of alternatives, discussion of tradeoffs that can and should be made and helpful bits of code, or people who accompany their complaints with comments like This FUCKING SUCKS! The maintainer must be incompetent or on crack and requests for dismissal or replacement rather than useful assistance? If you want to make a point, that's fine, but please don't abuse debian-vote and Questions for the candidates for this, that just wastes everybody's time. These are no reasonable questions. -- Falk
Re: reasonable questions? was: Questions for the candidates
Anand Kumria [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:43:29AM +0100, Falk Hueffner wrote: Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: [...] Do you believe that developers should be (or are) equally willing to have a dialogue with people who provide criticism consisting of suggestions of alternatives, discussion of tradeoffs that can and should be made and helpful bits of code, or people who accompany their complaints with comments like This FUCKING SUCKS! The maintainer must be incompetent or on crack and requests for dismissal or replacement rather than useful assistance? If you want to make a point, that's fine, but please don't abuse debian-vote and Questions for the candidates for this, that just wastes everybody's time. These are no reasonable questions. Perhaps in your opinion. But I found a number of those questions to be one I would have wanted answered myself -- either in debian-vote or via irc/email. Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly. Certainly a few of the questions are reasonable, however most of them are clearly only trying to make a point (like the one above). I didn't mean to imply that the issues mentioned aren't worth discussing. -- Falk
reasonable questions? was: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:43:29AM +0100, Falk Hueffner wrote: Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: [...] Do you believe that developers should be (or are) equally willing to have a dialogue with people who provide criticism consisting of suggestions of alternatives, discussion of tradeoffs that can and should be made and helpful bits of code, or people who accompany their complaints with comments like This FUCKING SUCKS! The maintainer must be incompetent or on crack and requests for dismissal or replacement rather than useful assistance? If you want to make a point, that's fine, but please don't abuse debian-vote and Questions for the candidates for this, that just wastes everybody's time. These are no reasonable questions. Perhaps in your opinion. But I found a number of those questions to be one I would have wanted answered myself -- either in debian-vote or via irc/email. If you have a list of 'reasonable' questions why not just ask them? Anand -- `` We are shaped by our thoughts, we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves. '' -- Buddha, The Dhammapada
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:43:29AM +0100, Falk Hueffner wrote: Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: Do you believe that developers should be (or are) equally willing to have a dialogue with people who provide criticism consisting of suggestions of alternatives, discussion of tradeoffs that can and should be made and helpful bits of code, or people who accompany their complaints with comments like This FUCKING SUCKS! The maintainer must be incompetent or on crack and requests for dismissal or replacement rather than useful assistance? If you want to make a point, that's fine, but please don't abuse debian-vote and Questions for the candidates for this, that just wastes everybody's time. These are no reasonable questions. That's only one question quoted there. Are you saying you think all of the others are unreasonable too, or just that one? I think it's reasonable, and I'd certainly like to know the project's position on it. I'd certainly thought I'd seen people expecting being equally informative and communicative with people no matter how much they'd irritated you. I can't say that sort of response particularly encourages me to be communicative, though. I don't particularly want to waste everybody's time just because I think something's important. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could. http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: That's only one question quoted there. Are you saying you think all of the others are unreasonable too, or just that one? I answered this in another mail. I think it's reasonable, and I'd certainly like to know the project's position on it. Do you really think a useful and productive discussion could come from a candidate trying to answer this question? I don't. I would be pretty annoyed if I was to answer them. I can't say that sort of response particularly encourages me to be communicative, though. I don't particularly want to waste everybody's time just because I think something's important. Then raise these issues in a sensible way. -- Falk
Re: Questions for the candidates
* Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au [2004-03-02 20:11]: First: The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. Presumably this means our primary focus should be on putting together great free software and getting it out to users. That's right; this is the vision I share and the goal I'm working towards. If the Project Leader is the public face of the project, is the person to whom developers look for an example, shouldn't the leader's primary focus also be on technical improvements? If so, why do your platforms instead focus on process issues? There is evidence that a high quality product requires high quality processes ... If not, how do you propose that Debian developers remain focussed on creating a free operating system if you're going to be focussed on different goals (such as how to be nice to each other)? ... I am focused on creating a free operating system. Creating a free operating system requires more than pure development. For example, you also need a good infrastructure (such as an ftp archive). There are many ways to contribute to a free operating system other than strictly through development (translations would be another example, or usability studies). As I argued in my platform, my contribution is to coordinate different efforts in Debian. You can see me as the glue which keeps all the developers working together. I'm proud to be working together with some really smart free software developers, and my main task is to ensure that they can carry out their work. As Gergely was the only candidate to address any technical issues directly, can you provide those of us who think technical issues are by far Debian's prime concern any reason to vote for anyone other than him? I think technical issues are important, and I am involved in technical decisions as well. In my work, I stay in contact with many developers and give them advice, both on technical issues themselves and on how to implement technical things. Ignoring the communication and timliness issues, do you think there are any significant problems in the execution of the tasks under discussion? Do you think, for example, that any new-maintainers who have been accepted should have been rejected, or vice-versa? Have any people applied to join some of the teams in question and been rejected, whom you think should have been accepted, or vice-versa? On balance, do you think any of the teams are doing any of these jobs inadequately? In each case, if so, which and why? I mentioned the security team in my platform as one example. I think they are doing an _excellent_ job, but I am also aware that they are quite overworked and that they could help additional man power. As to offers being rejected: I think if this happens it is largely due to bad communication or approaching people the wrong way. In your mail, you mention the example of saying This FUCKING SUCKS! The maintainer must be incompetent or on crack. From my experience, this approach usually does not work. Similarly, if an offer to help is phrases poorly, it probably won't get accepted. I see it as my task to advice people on how to get involved in various work (either package maintenance, core teams or core projects, such as debian-installer). I know many people in Debian and how they work, and so I can approach them in the way which works for them and tell other people who to approach them. Ignoring the communication issue, do you think any of the relevant tasks are being done too slowly? For example, do you think the new maintainer applicants who have been rejected should have been rejected sooner? Or do you think NEW packages for the archive should be processed quicker? NEW packages are usually processed within 2 weeks, and I'm quite happy with this. The first applicant who got rejected should have been earlier, but it took a long time to get the procedures right; again, this was the first formal DAM rejection and it's important to formalize the process. So while it would have been good to have done the rejection earlier, I think it was important to take the time to get it right. The few other rejections which have happened since then were all done in an adequate timeframe. For those interested in this topic, I have written a pretty thorough analysis about rejections at http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/debian-devel-200402/msg01369.html If you think any of these tasks are not being done in a timely enough manner, how would you compare the effect of these delays to other work that takes time, such as development of our installer, or major stable releases, or packaging new versions of X, or fixing release critical bugs? By what criteria would you distinguish the tasks above that the project needs to focus on speeding up, and the ones which are already acceptable -- given that improving them all would obviously be a win. I think there are many
Re: Questions for the candidates
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 12:44]: I, as DPL, am willing to listen to them because there concerns might be valid. However, I don't think that most people will listen to a mail which basically says YOU SUCK. Again, I think communication is important, and this applies to everyone. We have to help people express what they really mean, in a manner which other people can understand and don't find offending. There's one thing I'd like to add, something we regularly do in programming, but what we sometimes seem to forget in communication: Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send. -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 01:31:19PM +0100, Falk Hueffner wrote: Do you really think a useful and productive discussion could come from a candidate trying to answer this question? I don't. I would be pretty annoyed if I was to answer them. I don't think this is a reasonable question, and I disagree with the point I think you're trying to make. On the other hand, I think the questions you're talking about were reasonable, if a bit verbose. I hope the candidates address at least some of them. Finally, if you don't want to answer those questions, I don't see any reason why you should. -- Raul
Re: Questions for the candidates
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't think this is a reasonable question, and I disagree with the point I think you're trying to make. On the other hand, I think the questions you're talking about were reasonable, if a bit verbose. I hope the candidates address at least some of them. Seems I have still not made myself clear. I am not objecting to asking about the issues mentioned. I am not objecting to abybody answering them. I am objecting to abusing a questionnaire as a platorm for a rant. -- Falk
Re: Questions for the candidates
On 02 Mar 2004 13:31:19 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Do you really think a useful and productive discussion could come from a candidate trying to answer this question? I don't. I would be pretty annoyed if I was to answer them. But you are not the candidate. They ought to be able to handle, at the very least, questions posed to them on the mailing list, without needing to be defended by you. Then raise these issues in a sensible way. I do not think that you have the corner on the sensible way of raising questions. I would encourage people who have questions to bring them forth on this mailing list; and the candidates are free not to respond to questions that they do not wish to respond to. manoj -- Incompetents often hire able assistants. -- Douglas Evelyn Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
Re: Questions for the candidates
On 02 Mar 2004 11:43:29 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: [...] Do you believe that developers should be (or are) equally willing to have a dialogue with people who provide criticism consisting of suggestions of alternatives, discussion of tradeoffs that can and should be made and helpful bits of code, or people who accompany their complaints with comments like This FUCKING SUCKS! The maintainer must be incompetent or on crack and requests for dismissal or replacement rather than useful assistance? If you want to make a point, that's fine, but please don't abuse debian-vote and Questions for the candidates for this, that just wastes everybody's time. These are no reasonable questions. Please unsubscribe from debian-vote if you do not wish to hear the opinions of the candidates on politically charged issues as well as ordinary technical issues. You certainly have not gained moderator rights on this mailing list; so please refrain from attempting to so. The question above does seem germane, since it refers to in passing to an incident that drowned the signal on a development list of the project with non-technical noise; hearing the candidates views on how these issues are to be resolved would show their modus operandi in handling similar incidents in the future. manoj -- FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #3 MIRACLE ON 42ND STREET: Santa Claus, in the off season, follows his heart's desire and tries to make it big on Broadway. Santa sings and dances his way into your heart. Debian Project Secretary [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://vote.debian.org/ 1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C pgpCeGrGrL9df.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 02 Mar 2004 13:31:19 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Do you really think a useful and productive discussion could come from a candidate trying to answer this question? I don't. I would be pretty annoyed if I was to answer them. But you are not the candidate. They ought to be able to handle, at the very least, questions posed to them on the mailing list, without needing to be defended by you. I would encourage people who have questions to bring them forth on this mailing list; and the candidates are free not to respond to questions that they do not wish to respond to. If you insist, I'll repeat it for you: I am not objecting to asking about the issues mentioned. I am not objecting to abybody answering them. I am objecting to abusing a questionnaire as a platorm for a rant. -- Falk
Re: Questions for the candidates
Debian Project Secretary [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 02 Mar 2004 11:43:29 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Please unsubscribe from debian-vote if you do not wish to hear the opinions of the candidates on politically charged issues as well as ordinary technical issues. I have no problem with that content. I dislike reading rants, though. You certainly have not gained moderator rights on this mailing list; so please refrain from attempting to so. Huh? In which way have I attempted to gain moderator rights? The question above does seem germane, since it refers to in passing to an incident that drowned the signal on a development list of the project with non-technical noise; hearing the candidates views on how these issues are to be resolved would show their modus operandi in handling similar incidents in the future. I did not object to hearing their opinion. -- Falk
Re: Questions to candidates
* Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 15:20]: this morning I wrote in private to the DPL candidates but tbm asked me to foreward my questions to debian-vote which I'm doing hereby Yes, I think it's important to share these answers with everyone who is interested. 1. My concern is to propagate Custom Debian Distributions because I think we should set a stronger focus to the end user. I see Debian as a missing link between upstream developers and end users and Custom Debian distributions are a good way to care for end users. What are your plans according to Custom Debian Distributions? I partly cover this in my section External/internal - Debian based Distributions. I see two developments: sub-projects in Debian with a special focus, and projects outside of Debian based on our system. I think that both developments are very good and beneficial, and show the success of Debian. As DPL, I intend to work with Debian sub-projects to make sure that they can achieve their goals, and that they are not isolated in the project. Also, as described in my platform, I think Debian can profit to a great extend from Debian based distributions, and I intend to work with them to make sure that their work gets integrated into Debian. Ideally, they would join Debian and lead their project as a Debian sub-project. This is why I mentioned this point as external/internal rather than just external -- I think everyone will benefit from getting them closer to Debian. As to your statement about Debian being the missing link between upstream developers and end users. I fully agree with this. I think Debian provides a great service to the community, e.g. by forwarding bug reports to upstream, compiling and testing upstream software on many architectures, etc. I am also excited to see a growing number of upstream authors directly getting involved in Debian! 2. Recently we had some flamewars about concentration of power for some people inside Debian. [...] How do you see the role of James Troup in the project? I think James is an excellent contributor to the project. I know him personally, and I can assure you that he is not on a power trip. He performs so many tasks in the project and holds key positions simply because of the amount of work he puts into Debian, and because there are often no other volunteers with the time or knowledge. Most people are not aware of this, but after the compromise James stayed up until 4am-5am or even longer every night, and even took off a day of work to work on the restoration of our services. I'd like to see such a devotion to Debian from more people! In any case, I am fully aware that there are complaints about James ... While I think that he did a great job in terms of finding technical solutions he absolutely fails in communication with people. ... he does not _absolutely_ fail to communicate with people; there is a large number of people who communicate with him without any problems. For example, I'm in contact with him on an almost daily basis. However, it's true that his communication can be improved, and that there are some problems. However, I think the problems are much smaller than they appear to outsiders. Usually, you don't notice when something works as expected. You only notice when it suddenly breaks. So if 95% of communication with James works well, we will never hear about it. But we hear about the 5% which fails. In any case, what can be done to improve communication? I think one important step to take, and one I've been working on and which I emphasize in my platform, is to assist James with his tasks. In many cases, he is not unwilling to communicate but is simply too busy to respond to everyone. If he would respond to everyone, he would not get the important tasks he performs done. I think the situation can be improved if more people assist James in his tasks. Finding people for core teams is quite complicated (see my platform), but this is what I will work on, and have been working on. For example, another ftpmaster was added to help with NEW processing, and this certainly helped. Myself, I respond to questions about the NM process. There is also a second person responding to keyring requests. So, the first step will be to clearly identify where help is needed (not just in the teams James is involved, but in general), and to find people who can provide assistance. This is a delicate task, and requires people's skills. (When talking about evolution, there is this metaphor that it's not possible to put the parts of an aeroplane in a box, shake it and hope an aeroplane comes out; it's the same with people - you cannot expect to put some random people together and hope they'll be a good team. You have to select the right people, and the team has to form evolutionary/naturally.) This starts with the fact that he is known to actively maintain a quite long killfile For personal mail - not for role accounts. So what
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Re: Questions to candidates
Foreword: Do NOT take my answers seriously. I'm trying to make people laugh. Here are my questions: 1. My concern is to propagate Custom Debian Distributions because I think we should set a stronger focus to the end user. I see Debian as a missing link between upstream developers and end users and Custom Debian distributions are a good way to care for end users. What are your plans according to Custom Debian Distributions? Easy one. As seen on debian-devel@ recently, Progeny (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) has this Componentized Linux idea. Which is all nice and good, and should help custom distros all right. So, the plans are set straight already. However, this would involve changing our release process, which obviously involves the release manager, adding support for them into dpkg and apt and possibly other tools. While the DPLs job is not to code them, but management, my plan is to organise s3kr1t meetings with random people, thus annoy the hell out of the people who should do the job, so after a time, they get so upset, that they code the support in a day or two, just to make my efforts worthless, and then point and laugh at me. 2. Recently we had some flamewars about concentration of power for some people inside Debian. While I'm much more relaxed than many others and save my time for work instead of fighting flame wars I have one certain question here. How do you see the role of James Troup in the project? James is a good guy, and he we should thank $DEITY we have him. We should not say bad things about him, because he controls the black halicopters, so shhh While I think that he did a great job in terms of finding technical solutions he absolutely fails in communication with people. This starts with the fact that he is known to actively maintain a quite long killfile (accompanied with the ability to ignore requests of people) and ends with the inability to accept critics to his person. While I have no personal problems to cope with those people I noticed that this behaviour of a person who is doing not only one important job for the project does harm to the Debian project in general. I had several private discussions with outsiders. For instance one opinion was that the persion would not apply as New Maintainer as long as James Troup is ruling Debian. (Please note: I do not think that James Troup is really ruling Debian - I was just quoting.) If that person does not have a skin hard enough to bear James, he shouldn't come near Debian at all! There's MUCH worse than James awaiting him... (just make him report an upstream bug against a random gnome package maintained by Marillat) Besides, James is nowhere near ruling Debian. My overweight tamagotchi is, obviously. So what are your plans to enhance communication with people on important positions in Debian and how do you think that important jobs might be split onto different shoulders? To enhance communication, especially between people who have problems talking with each other, we should utilise proxy-persons, who receive all their mails between the two problematic persons, and rewrod them in a way so that it pleases the other one. This way, slowly they learn how to co-operate well, and the proxy person can find another two victims. 3. Do you think Debian should continue to support non-free? No. Non-free should die a horrible death. If it were up to me, I'd delete it even from the archives, and erase even the memory of it from people's minds. A. Meta-question: Do you know that your jpb as a Debian leader has the consequence to travel in several countries all over the world which might lead to the situation that some countries handle you like a criminal by taking your finger prints? I personally would not like to be handled like a criminal and thus I did not accepted the invitation to a conference in Texas. I have no problems travelling around the world, provided I can sail in my beloved ship, the Black Pearl.. Oh, and the countries I sail to must accept, that I am the mighty pirate, Gergelybrush Nagywood, the one who killed the ghost pirate LeSCO! Oh, fame and fortune, and the beatufil caribbean! Oops, sorry. Got carried away. Since I'm still studying, and being a poor little hungarian student (note to self: insert paypal account info here), I am unable to to travel a lot. However, other countries are free to invide Hungary, and bring all the conferences here so I can attend. Thanks for supporting Debian by volunteering for leadership If my nomination is to be considered worthy support for Debian, we are in reeeal touble! ;) -- Gergelybrush Nagywood
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 05:39:48PM +0100, Falk Hueffner wrote: Seems I have still not made myself clear. I am not objecting to asking about the issues mentioned. I am not objecting to abybody answering them. And I disapprove of you objecting to candidates answering those questions. I am objecting to abusing a questionnaire as a platorm for a rant. But your kind of ranting is ok? This tangent is stupid. -- Raul
Re: Questions for the candidates
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 05:39:48PM +0100, Falk Hueffner wrote: Seems I have still not made myself clear. I am not objecting to asking about the issues mentioned. I am not objecting to abybody answering them. And I disapprove of you objecting to candidates answering those questions. I don't think it makes sense continuing this discussion if you don't read what I write. -- Falk
OT: Progeny Linux
Gergely Nagy [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Easy one. As seen on debian-devel@ recently, Progeny (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) has this Componentized Linux idea. Which is all nice and good, and should help custom distros all right. So, the plans are set straight already. I saw Ian's online journal as linked by LWN, but can anyone point me to something more specific? It sounds very vaporwareish to me, but maybe there is some substance to it that I'm missing. Links to -devel discussions are ok. Thanks, -- David N. Welton Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/ Personal: http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/ Free Software: http://www.dedasys.com/freesoftware/ Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/
Re: Questions for the candidates
On 02 Mar 2004 17:53:14 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
I am not objecting to asking about the issues mentioned. I am not
objecting to abybody answering them. I am objecting to abusing a
questionnaire as a platorm for a rant.
A DD can ask a question that they feel passionately about. If
the candidates feel it is a rant, I would like to see how they would
deal with rants. Why can't the candidates handle rants on their own?
Indeed, at least one candidate has handled that email, and given us
his take on the issues raised. Why would you want to prevent that?
manoj
--
Date: 28 Mar 90 21:35:44 GMT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Randal
Schwartz) ($_=Just another Perl hacker,); 0 while s#.# do {print
$;} #e,s/^1//;
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
Re: Questions for the candidates
On 02 Mar 2004 17:55:08 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Debian Project Secretary [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 02 Mar 2004 11:43:29 +0100, Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Please unsubscribe from debian-vote if you do not wish to hear the opinions of the candidates on politically charged issues as well as ordinary technical issues. I have no problem with that content. I dislike reading rants, though. debian-vote is not a required mailing list for developers. You certainly have not gained moderator rights on this mailing list; so please refrain from attempting to so. Huh? In which way have I attempted to gain moderator rights? Some one asked a question. It did not fit your criteria fro what a question should be. You told the person posing the question that the mail was inappropriate, and told them not to waste peoples time. In the words of US politics, this produces a chilling effect and suppresses questions that do not meet the critria of the person telling people to go away and reformulate or shut up. Please let the candidates deal with the questions, even uncomfortable ones (within bounds of normal debian mailing list traffic, which that question certainly was). manoj -- A man of great immorality is like a creeper, suffocating the tree it is on. He does to himself just what an enemy would wish him. 162 Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
Re: Questions for the candidates
Falk Hueffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have no problem with that content. I dislike reading rants, though. Actually, I would like to hear how the candidates deal with a rant.
Re: Questions to candidates
On Tue, 2 Mar 2004, Martin Michlmayr wrote: I think James is an excellent contributor to the project. I know him personally, and I can assure you that he is not on a power trip. He ... Well thanks for the clarification. I just want to make sure that this explanation is given to _everyone_ (not only to me) who might have doubt. My question was rather a concern to make sure to outsiders can see that Debian has no hidden secrets but can discuss his problems open. something works as expected. You only notice when it suddenly breaks. So if 95% of communication with James works well, we will never hear about it. But we hear about the 5% which fails. Damn users ... this is always the same. ;-) Having said this, I don't think the current non-free removal vote is being done correctly. If we decide to remove non-free, we have to provide a good upgrade plan for our users. Thus, I think we should *first* move non-free to something like non-free.org, encourage people to use new APT sources list while at the same time supporting the old APT lines (i.e. still keeping it on Debian mirrors) for a while. Trick question: Do you plan to do this step before or after moving documentation with non-free licenses to non-free. ;-) While I don't like these practices, I don't consider them off-putting enough not to visit a country if there's a good reason to go there. However, this has to be decided on a case by case basis. As far as I know, EU citizens also don't have to get their finger prints recorded. While this is intended by the law I know that the practice might differ from case to case - but this is very off-topic here. That's why I named it Meta-Question and I do not really expected an answer. BTW, Brandon might come into the same trouble when entering Debconf 4 ... Kind regards Andreas.
Re: Questions to candidates
On Wed, 2004-03-03 at 04:12, Martin Michlmayr wrote: * Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 15:20]: 3. Do you think Debian should continue to support non-free? No. Debian is about creating a operating system with free software, and I don't think we should be in the business of distributing non-free software. I think we should focus on what we do best (create and integrate free software), and this would also get us closer to other players in the community, such as the FSF. What about Debian distributing documentation - do you see it as software, do you see all documentation (eg. philosophical) as software? Eg. GFDL documentation? RFCs? ta zen
Re: Questions to candidates
Zenaan Harkness [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What about Debian distributing documentation - do you see it as software, do you see all documentation (eg. philosophical) as software? Eg. GFDL documentation? RFCs? Another thing that would be useful to add to all questions of this type is something along the lines of and as DPL, do you think you can do anything about it, or plan to? to hear whether the candidates plan to do anything either personally or as DPL about any particular issue. -- David N. Welton Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/ Personal: http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/ Free Software: http://www.dedasys.com/freesoftware/ Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/
Re: Questions to candidates
What about Debian distributing documentation - do you see it as software, do you see all documentation (eg. philosophical) as software? Eg. GFDL documentation? RFCs? Another thing that would be useful to add to all questions of this type is something along the lines of and as DPL, do you think you can do anything about it, or plan to? to hear whether the candidates plan to do anything either personally or as DPL about any particular issue. I will answer that question here. I would like to think about documentation as if it were software, so that I can share and tweak it to my liking. Especially if it is technical documentation, from which I can lift examples from, and build them into my own programs. With this pattern, the documentation needs to be software license friendly (in my case, GPL compatible), which for example, the GDFL is not, and as far as I remember, the RFCs aren't either. As DPL, one does not really have a way to change the situation though. As a distribution, we can move all such documentation to non-free, and let the users flame the upstream authors for not having the documentation at hand. However, that probably wouldn't work out too well. So, instead of this, I intend to finally release my new branch of tama which I've been hacking on for quite a few years (well, actually only two), which is skinnable, themeable, and can work as a frontend to megahal. We just need an RMS skin and theme, feed some of his speeches to megahal, then persuade it that the GFDL is bad, and then we have a nice RMS replacement. Then, we hire a few Bad Guys, and replace the real RMS with my tama thingy, and bingo! It relicenses all GDFL stuff under the GPL or a compatible license, and problems are gone! -- Gergely `Master Tama Breeder' Nagy
Re: Questions to candidates
* Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 20:31]: Well thanks for the clarification. I just want to make sure that this BTW, there's something else I wanted to clarify. Something asked me about this in private, and I thought I'd answer her as well. Basically the question is whether I am trying to assimilate all Debian based projects into Debian and whether this is a good idea. I realize my platform might not have been clear about this. I am not trying to merge all Debian based projects into Debian - not if it doesn't make sense to do so. In some cases, it makes sense to merge work into Debian; but I realize that a certain autonomy give those projects flexibility which is important. For example, it gives them the freedom to do released independent from our release cycle. So I'd like to clarify: I intend to work together with other projects as close as possible; and if it makes sense, then effort should be combined and merged. However, I realize that this is not possible in all cases, and that those projects benefit from their autonomy. Trick question: Do you plan to do this step before or after moving documentation with non-free licenses to non-free. ;-) My plan is to get the license changed so the documentation is free according to our rules. See my other posting in this thread. -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions to candidates
* David N. Welton [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 22:51]: Another thing that would be useful to add to all questions of this type is something along the lines of and as DPL, do you think you can do anything about it, or plan to? to hear whether the candidates plan to do anything either personally or as DPL about any particular issue. I absolutely think we can and should try to do something about this. In fact, in the case of the GFDL, I had various discussions with Bradley Kuhn (Vice-President of the FSF) and later helped creating a committee which discusses these issues with the FSF. There were some conference calls and one meeting IRL, and we are currently waiting for the FSF to post an update - everything has unfortunately been delayed because RMS broke his arm a while ago. However, Don Armstrong and Mako Hill (who represent Debian in this matter) are in close with Eben Moglen, the FSF lawyer. In general, I think that Debian has the responsibility to approach other people if their software or documentation license is non-free and to explain why this is bad (Of course, it is their right to create software or licenses which don't comply with out DFSG, but we should at least point out why we think it is important for software to be free according to the DFSG). My approach with regards to the GFDL is outlined in detail in http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2003/debian-project-200310/msg00117.html and some thoughts about being more proactive with regards to non-free license can be found in http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200402/msg00117.html (plus follow-ups). -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Just a single Question for the Candidates
As a female hacker/geek/DD I find myself more and more concerned about the gender ratio in the Debian Developer/User comunity. How can we say make a Universal OS when it's do scarcely related to half the population of the world... I think we all agree we want to see more women involved in or using Debian. I would be very interested in knowing what's is each candidate's plan or ideas on this subject, how to get more women involved, and what (in their opinion) would be the benefits. I hope I am not firing a big flame war here. This is not what I intend. I just want to hear (read) what kind of tama Gergely Nagy has in mind :-) Thanks for the input. -- All the pictures have all been washed in black. Tattooed everything. .''`. All the love gone bad turned my world to black. Tattooed all I see. : :' : All that I am. All I'll be. -- Perl Jam - Ten - 5 - Black -- `. `' Proudly running Debian GNU/Linux (Sid 2.4.20 Ext3) `- www.amayita.com www.malapecora.com www.chicasduras.com Listening to Pearl Jam - Ten - 3 - Alive
Re: Questions to candidates
* Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-02 20:31]: something works as expected. You only notice when it suddenly breaks. So if 95% of communication with James works well, we will never hear about it. But we hear about the 5% which fails. Damn users ... this is always the same. ;-) Well, I don't want to play it down. If there is a problem, it has to be fixed, no matter if it's 1% or 5%. It's also not just users, but developers as well. However, one disturbing trend I have seen is that FUD is increasingly common. It seems to be in to rant about various things, even if it has no factual basis. In many cases, I see very uninformed postings. This is a real problem because people are no longer available to distinguish between real problems and mere rants. Due to this, there is a growing number of developers and users who feel that Debian is falling apart, while it fact most things are working pretty well. We have to do something against this, otherwise more and more people will get frustrated (also see my answer to AJ's mail, especially the end). My approach to this is to give _factual_ information (one example for this would be my posting about the status of buildds, but there are many similar postings from me; for one, see http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/debian-devel-200402/msg00463.html). Finally, I believe that complaints like person X cannot communicate or X sucks or whatever are not very helpful (Andreas, I'm not accusing you of doing so with your question; I'm talking in general, based on what I see on -devel and other lists, and I think your questioon is based on this as well). I try to identify exactly what the problem is and then to tackle it. -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 08:11:16PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Two topics for the candidates' consideration and discussion. First: The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. Presumably this means our primary focus should be on putting together great free software and getting it out to users. Of the candidates platforms, the only one that mentioned any changes to the distribution itself was Gergely's [0]. If the Project Leader is the public face of the project, is the person to whom developers look for an example, shouldn't the leader's primary focus also be on technical improvements? The Project Leader's focus should be on whatever the project needs most. I think we're fairly sophisticated at managing the technical content of the distribution. That is, while there's certainly a lot of work that needs to be done for us to have a high-quality sarge release -- as you're not doubt personally and painfully aware -- we're pretty good at knowing and communicating what that work is. We have a highly-developed (custom-written, even) Bug Tracking System, and interfaces like packages.qa.debian.org for getting all kinds of good information about where a technical aspect of the distribution is at. Our interfaces to non-technical and infrastructural knowledge are *significantly* less developed. In many cases, as I observed in my platform, people have to ask humans to get the information they seek. They often cannot honestly be told to go look at some webpage and get enlightened that way. If so, why do your platforms instead focus on process issues? As noted above, I focus on process issues because that's where I perceive us as being most deficient. If not, how do you propose that Debian developers remain focussed on creating a free operating system if you're going to be focussed on different goals (such as how to be nice to each other)? How do we remain focussed on creating a free operating system when most of us have bills to pay, loved ones to care for (or at least keep in touch with), and/or exams to study for? I think you're positing a false dilemma. That creating a technically excellent distribution of 100% Free Software is our primary goal, and raison d'être, doesn't mean that every activity not in obvious and direct service of that goal isn't worthless. I think by improving process infrastructure, we can make support positions within the project more comprehensible and appealing to fresh volunteers (not necessarily developers who have just passed NM, either -- maybe old-timers whose interests have changed as well). That will both directly serve my goal of reducing the level of friction within the project (as one doesn't have to pester people for answers to questions that have been asked a dozen times today) but indirectly as well, because I expect some of those volunteers could actually perform those infastructural taks, distributing our workload more evenly, and getting support work done faster. As Gergely was the only candidate to address any technical issues directly, can you provide those of us who think technical issues are by far Debian's prime concern any reason to vote for anyone other than him? Sure. Imagine Debian as simply a collection of bits sitting on a box somewhere. No Project machines. No mailing lists. No BTS. No keyring. No master archive. No mirrors. How easy would it be to pursue our purpose then? You tell me -- are issues other than technical ones important at all? Second: Martin and Branden both identify problems with communication: [...] Of the technical issues that aren't being communicated about well enough, Branden says In my opinion, and on balance, we do an adequate job on these points. and Martin says While progress is being made, much remains to be done. I think you're exaggerating the contrast between our statements -- note the next paragraph after the one you quoted: Good is good, but we can be better. Adequacy is adequate, but we should strive for excellence.[1] Ignoring the communication and timliness issues, do you think there are any significant problems in the execution of the tasks under discussion? Do you think, for example, that any new-maintainers who have been accepted should have been rejected, or vice-versa? Have any people applied to join some of the teams in question and been rejected, whom you think should have been accepted, or vice-versa? On balance, do you think any of the teams are doing any of these jobs inadequately? In each case, if so, which and why? I'm not willing to point an accusing finger of inadequacy at any of these, nor to single out some particular decision and deride it -- especially since, as the Constitution notes, if the decision were taken by a delegate, the delegate cannot be dismissed by the DPL for making it[2]. One of the reasons I'm setting up a RequestTracker instance is to see if it can help us to
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:16PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: I think you're positing a false dilemma. That creating a technically excellent distribution of 100% Free Software is our primary goal, and raison d'être, doesn't mean that every activity not in obvious and direct service of that goal isn't worthless. Err, s/isn't/is/. Sorry 'bout that. -- G. Branden Robinson|I must confess to being surprised Debian GNU/Linux |by the magnitude of incompatibility [EMAIL PROTECTED] |with such a minor version bump. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |-- Manoj Srivastava signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 08:11:16PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Of the technical issues that aren't being communicated about well enough, Branden says In my opinion, and on balance, we do an adequate job on these points. and Martin says While progress is being made, much remains to be done. I think you're exaggerating the contrast between our statements -- Hrm, you're right. I was trying to find some quotes that indicated you both thought that, technically, things were acceptable as they are; Martin's comment doesn't quite indicate that out of context. The quotes were meant to indicate you were of a similar mind on that issue. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could. http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Who do you think should be subscribed to -devel, and what sort of discussions do you think should make up the majority of the traffic? If reality doesn't match those desires, what, if anything, will you do to change that? I'm going to have to refer you to my platform again here.[5][6] [5] http://people.debian.org/~branden/dpl/campaign/2004/platform.xhtml#s3p1 [6] http://people.debian.org/~branden/dpl/campaign/2004/platform.xhtml#s3p2 I can't see anything there that mentions the -devel list. Can you explain what creating a request tracker, or working with delegates implies for the audience and content of -devel in any more detail? Do you mean that you hope your request tracker will eventually replace the mailing lists completely? Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could. http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: As is probably obvious, I have a tendency to answer questions that interest me, whether they were intended rhetorically or not. First: The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. [...] Imagine Debian as simply a collection of bits sitting on a box somewhere. No Project machines. No mailing lists. No BTS. No keyring. No master archive. No mirrors. How easy would it be to pursue our purpose then? The alternative extreme would be to imagine we had a bunch of project machines, a bunch of mailing lists, a state of the art BTS, a keyring, tonnes of donated project machines, a mirror network, dozens of machines setup to do automatic building and testing of packages every day... but no actual software we can give users to install. I'd think the former hypothetical project would be far more useful to potential users, and have better achieved our goals than the latter. Certainly it's fairly easy to go from a good collection of bits to a viable and useful distribution: Knoppix has done so, for example. Equally certainly, getting the bits in the first place is non-trivial. You tell me -- are issues other than technical ones important at all? I'd've thought it was obvious that I find issues other than those that directly affect users important; I have and do spend a bunch of time working on those sorts of issues, after all. But I think it's especially important for people who do do that to remember that the important job isn't working on the processes, it's working on packages. It's so important because, I believe, we have to ensure that all the time and energy we spend working on process stuff pays off in improving our operating system more than if we'd just worked around the bad processes, and hacked on code. Especially given that all the candidates seem devoted to working on process issues rather than our operating system itself, it's important to me to know whether they share that recognition. Unfortunately, just asking doesn't work, since it's traditional for candidates up for election to recognise every concern that's put before them as enormously important, whether that will actually mean anything later or not. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/ I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could. http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questions for the candidates
On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 02:52:33PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Who do you think should be subscribed to -devel, and what sort of discussions do you think should make up the majority of the traffic? If reality doesn't match those desires, what, if anything, will you do to change that? I'm going to have to refer you to my platform again here.[5][6] [5] http://people.debian.org/~branden/dpl/campaign/2004/platform.xhtml#s3p1 [6] http://people.debian.org/~branden/dpl/campaign/2004/platform.xhtml#s3p2 I can't see anything there that mentions the -devel list. Can you explain what creating a request tracker, or working with delegates implies for the audience and content of -devel in any more detail? Do you mean that you hope your request tracker will eventually replace the mailing lists completely? Sorry; I didn't type everything my brain was thinking there. I'll atone by responding at much greater length. :) I don't have a problem with the current charter of debian-devel: Discussion about technical development topics.[1] And as far as I'm concerned, the open subscription policy isn't a problem, either. I think people sometimes feel compelled to send an off-charter message to a high volume mailing list because the correct forums don't seem to work. To use one example, take the recent message authored by Ingo Juergensmann (but signed and posted by a developer) to debian-devel-announce).[2] Without straying too far off the subject -- I absolutely positively do not want to rehash the gigantic threads on debian-devel spawned by that message -- I posit that this was the action of some one who was frustrated beyond all reason. We can assert that trust was violated, the charter abused, and the content of the message inappropriately personal -- I can grant all that, and probably not just for the sake of the argument. But I think we're being insufficiently responsible to our mission to produce the finest 100% Free operating system we can if we fail to take a step back and ask why this happened. Mr. Juergensmann was not some random guy off the street who came in and blitzed us. He was a known quantity to the project, someone with whom we have had a multi-year association. What causes people to freak out like this? My answer isn't Ingo Juergensmann is a loser. Nor is it James Troup is a loser. My answer is we probably had a failure of process. Indeed, that's just about the only conclusion I *can* reach if I don't want to prejudge either Mr. Juergensmann or Mr. Troup -- because I don't have a full command of the facts of the situation even after reading so much mail about it my eyes glazed over. Ideally, I would see it as my charter as DPL to developer forums and mechanisms for getting these sort of concerns addressed before they fester up and boil over into the kind of reaction we saw (not just on Mr. Juergensmann's part, but in reaction *to* him). Is there really nothing we could do -- those of us who are neither Ingo nor James -- to have helped prevent emotions from running this high? Isn't it at least plausible that there are actions we could have taken to have brought about an amicable settlement without this explosion, even if it was two people having to agree to disagree? That's a question I'm something interested in, and that's where I'm trying to go with those two sections in my platform. One my .signature quotes says, There's something wrong if you're always right. (Glasow's Law) Similarly I think there's someting wrong if we permit ourselves to act as if someone has gone insane, especially if we have evidence to the contrary. Being accurate in our assessments of misconduct does not excuse willful ignorance of why that misconduct took place -- not if we're trying to build a harmonious society. Was that a better answer? [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/ [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/debian-devel-announce-200402/msg8.html -- G. Branden Robinson|If you wish to strive for peace of Debian GNU/Linux |soul, then believe; if you wish to [EMAIL PROTECTED] |be a devotee of truth, then http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |inquire. -- Friedrich Nietzsche signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Questions for candidates -- Debian's Organizational Structure
Hi, Which of the groups/people on [1] do you consider delegates? Why or why not? Would you change this? Do you believe the Tech Committee is effective in its role for the project? Cheers, Pasc [1]: http://www.debian.org/intro/organization -- Pascal Hakim+61 4 0341 1672
