Re: Question for all candidates: what mistake will you _not_ make?

[Ted Walther]

On Sat, Mar 04, 2006 at 02:13:42PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:

So, my question: please name anyth behaviour or act you've observed
with previous DPLs (naming the name of the respective DPL is not
required) that you think was a mistake, and which you will try not to
make during your term?


When I first joined Debian, there was a DPL who told all the Debian
Developers to "eat shit and die", then left the project in a huff.  He
was a dynamic, forceful leader with many great qualities and a likeable
personality.

I think he got frustrated from expecting too much out of the volunteers.
We are mostly volunteers here.  I expect greatness from everyone, but I
won't make the mistake of expecting people to do boring things for free.

Ted

--
 It's not true unless it makes you laugh,   
but you don't understand it until it makes you weep.


Eukleia: Ted Walther
Address: 5690 Pioneer Ave, Burnaby, BC  V5H2X6 (Canada)
Contact: 604-430-4973


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Re: Question for all candidates (3 word summary)

[Ted Walther]

On Sat, Mar 04, 2006 at 09:07:18AM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote:

* MJ Ray ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [060304 01:32]:

Jeroen van Wolffelaar
> On Thu, Mar 02, 2006 at 02:49:37PM +0100, Mike Hommey wrote:
> > If you had to summarize your platform with 3 keywords, what would
> > they be ?
> 
> Communication, communication, communication.


Would you prefer the notoriety of "education, education, education"
or the notoriety of "developers, developers, developers"?  If
elected, will you say the above in a silly way at debconf so someone
can splice you into a song?


As you might know, Jeroen prefers to sing at Debconf himself. :P


But can he sing like this? :-)

   http://www.bbspot.com/toys/video/ballmer/index.html

Ted

--
 It's not true unless it makes you laugh,   
but you don't understand it until it makes you weep.


Eukleia: Ted Walther
Address: 5690 Pioneer Ave, Burnaby, BC  V5H2X6 (Canada)
Contact: 604-430-4973


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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Lars Wirzenius]

su, 2006-03-05 kello 03:11 +0100, Enrico Zini kirjoitti:
> It would have been pointless to come out with such trivial reports.

I disagree. They let the project know that things are going on (or not
going on), and the DPL and Team are not just dormant, which was the
impression I, at least, had for much of the past year. Compare to daily
status mails from crontabs: if you don't get them, you can assume that
something went wrong.

And yes, a couple of times I did ask, although on IRC and not via
e-mail. Having to drag out information gets tiresome so I only did it a
couple of times.

-- 
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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Thijs Kinkhorst]

Hello Enrico,

> But there's more than that.  In the last year as part of the DPL Team,
> people have been criticising the last year for the lack of reports.  But
> I don't remember a single one sending in a mail like "Dear DPL[-Team],
> what happened last week?".
>
> It would have been a pleasure to answer such a question with something
> like "Hi, thanks for asking.  It was mainly reasoning about the Security
> Team, plus approving expenditure of $300 for flying person X to
> conference Y".

If that would have been a pleasure, I'm wondering why your team did not do
that.

I've sent just a couple of mails to leader in the past term, less than a
handfull. Of those, I have received exactly zero replies from the DPL, you
or the rest of the team.

Here are some suggestions for possible answers:
- Thanks for your mail, we're already doing this-and-that to address the
problem;
- Thanks for the input, but I disagree for this reason;
- Good to hear from you, but unfortunately this is currently not a priority;
- I'll consider that the next time such an issue comes along.

I find it very strange that the DPL(team) explicitly calls for all input,
then ignores that input, and then complains on -vote that they did not get
enough opportunity to tell what they were doing.


bye,
Thijs


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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Steve Langasek]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 09:49:29AM +0100, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote:
> Hello Enrico,

> > But there's more than that.  In the last year as part of the DPL Team,
> > people have been criticising the last year for the lack of reports.  But
> > I don't remember a single one sending in a mail like "Dear DPL[-Team],
> > what happened last week?".

> > It would have been a pleasure to answer such a question with something
> > like "Hi, thanks for asking.  It was mainly reasoning about the Security
> > Team, plus approving expenditure of $300 for flying person X to
> > conference Y".

> If that would have been a pleasure, I'm wondering why your team did not do
> that.

> I've sent just a couple of mails to leader in the past term, less than a
> handfull. Of those, I have received exactly zero replies from the DPL, you
> or the rest of the team.

Uh, for one thing, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" != "DPL Team".  It was Branden's
decision to not auto-forward the leader address  to the DPL team, so that
anyone could feel comfortable contacting leader@ about confidential matters;
the flipside is that responsiveness to that address was definitely
contingent on Branden's personal availability.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://www.debian.org/


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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 03:11:58AM +0100, Enrico Zini wrote:
> 
> But there's more than that.  In the last year as part of the DPL Team,
> people have been criticising the last year for the lack of reports.  But
> I don't remember a single one sending in a mail like "Dear DPL[-Team],
> what happened last week?".

There was no contact address for the DPL-team, or atleast none
that I know off, so it's rather hard to ask them.  The only
available address that I know of is [EMAIL PROTECTED]  And as
far as I know, there wasn't even an official list of who was in
the team.

I did mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] several times about the lack of DPL
reports and related questions and the first time this resulted in
mail to debian-devel-announce, and as far as I know, that was his
last DPL report.  After some other mails he said we should follow
what he's doing on planet.debian.org, which I disagreed with, and
said so.

I don't blame the DPL team for this, it's the DPL that in the end
is responsible for it.


Kurt


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Re: Code of conduct, question to all candidates

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 05:39:08PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 03, 2006 at 10:08:15PM +0100, Frank K?ster wrote:
> > And, do you think this code of conduct should be enforced?  How?
> 
> We already have a code of conduct for the lists that's not enforced;
> it says you can't swear, and that you shouldn't flame. And it's widely
> ignored, both because people don't think those expectations are either
> realistic or important, and because people who violate it not only don't
> get any rebuke over it, but get support for the violation.
> 
> Others [0] have already said that the mere existance of a code of conduct
> is excessively unpleasant, and, if I understand correctly, that they
> find /any/ sort of active enforcement as vile as I find having people
> be told they have "personality problems" just for participating in the
> project.

Since you're referring to me here (both directly and indirectly), allow
me to clarify.

First, I don't think the mere existance of a code of conduct is
excessively unpleasant. I just happen to think that you can't have two
people come up with a "random"[0] CoC and expect everyone to abide by
it; and, to top it all off, have important discussions be held under
that CoC when it's still in an experimental stage.

I was pretty weary of the DPL team idea last year as well, but
afterwards I have started to see things in a different light. Likewise,
I'm not against a CoC per se, but I do think that such a code should be
a guideline more than an explicit rule; there should be room for people
to occasionally lose their temper when they get angry with something --
especially on IRC, which, to me, often is a pressure vault of sorts; a
way to avoid me losing my temper on mailinglists.

Also, the claim that the current CoC on the Debian mailinglists is not
enforced is false. The number of times people have told other people
that they shouldn't Cc them on mails sent to lists "because they read
the list" and "because it's in the CoC" is pretty high. Unfortunately,
so is the number of times that such mails have sparked flames; in other
words, a) the CoC is not enforced consistently, b) having a CoC is no
guarantee to better cooperation, and c) a CoC should be written very
carefully, so as to create a document that talks about social things
only, and does not try to enforce stuff which people of different
cultures and backgrounds may have different ideas about.

Secondly, I believe the "personality problems" thing is about a quote of
mine on -private[1] where I said something about the correlation between
DD-ship and personality; I think you have misunderstood me there,
however. The claim was not that you need to have certain personality
problems to be a good Debian Developer; rather, that it takes a certain
personality type to be at all _interested_ in being a Debian
Developer---one that is not what most people think of when they think of
"normal" people.

[0] I'm sure you and Steve put in a lot of effort to create a fair CoC,
but it's just the two of you "against" the entire project -- i.e.,
you'll need to involve a lot more people 
[1] I don't have the time to go dig in the -private archives at this
point, but I'll hereby allow you to quote my mails to -private on
the subject if that helps your argument.

> I don't see a resolution to that -- you either have enforcement
> without any up front rules which doesn't seem terribly fair, or you have
> a code of conduct that offends people, or you let people be as vicious
> as they please, and discourage people who don't want to put up with that
> from being actively involved.

Or you have a CoC which is fair, which does not have any noise in it,
and which is enforced by the list as a whole, with no Niceness Police.

IME, once you have a Niceness Police, people either walk away from the
police or from discussing altogether; that way, you throw away the kid
with the bathwater.

[...]
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Second call for votes for the GFDL position statement

[Debian Project Secretary]

Hi,

We are now in the second and final week of this vote. At the
 time of writing, 174 people have voted, out of a potential 972.

manoj

 Voting period starts 00:00:01 UTC on Sunday,   26th February,  2006
 Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC on Saturday, 11th March,2006

The following ballot is for voting on a General Resolution to address
the Debian project's position on the GNU Free Documentation License.
The vote is being conducted in accordance with the policy delineated
in Section A, Standard Resolution Procedure, of the Debian
Constitution.

The details of the general resolution can be found at:
http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001

You may see the constitution at http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution.
For voting questions contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

HOW TO VOTE

First, read the full text of the GR and amendments. The ballot does
not claim to be complete rendition of the proposals, or even
accurately depict the spirit of each proposal.

Do not erase anything between the lines below and do not change the
choice names.

In the brackets next to your preferred choice, place a 1. Place a 2 in
the brackets next to your next choice. Continue till you reach your
last choice. Do not enter a number smaller than 1 or larger than 4.
You may skip numbers.  You may rank options equally (as long as all
choices X you make fall in the range 1<= X <= 4).

Make sure you have read the proposals in detail.

To vote "no, no matter what" rank "Further discussion" as more
desirable than the unacceptable choices, or You may rank the "Further
discussion" choice, and leave choices you consider unacceptable
blank. Unranked choices are considered equally the least desired
choices, and ranked below all ranked choices. (Note: if the Further
Discussion choice is unranked, then it is equal to all other unranked
choices, if any -- no special consideration is given to the Further
discussion choice by the voting software).

Then mail the ballot to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Don't worry about spacing of the columns or any quote characters
(">") that your reply inserts. NOTE: The vote must be GPG signed
(or PGP signed) with your key that is in the Debian keyring. 

- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
25a628e9-d88e-40b7-8e1c-888cff421ea5
[   ] Choice 1: GFDL-licensed works are unsuitable for main in all cases
[   ] Choice 2: GFDL-licensed works without unmodifiable sections are free
[   ] Choice 3: GFDL-licensed works are compatible with the DFSG [needs 3:1]
[   ] Choice 4: Further discussion
- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


--

The responses to a valid vote shall be signed by the vote key created
for this vote. The public key for the vote, signed by the Project
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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Enrico Zini]

Hi,

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 02:27:36AM +, Martin Michlmayr wrote:

> However, what you say in your message (if people had
> asked for status reports they would've received them) is blatantly
> wrong.  We did ask, and (usually) no good response was given.

this turns out to be interesting: we have two different perceptions of
what happened.  Bug.  Let's debug it.

My memory mainly has people complaining about lack of reports.  The
report thing has been sick and twisted, it went (as I see it) more or
less like this:

 - [Branden just elected] "I'll write regular reports!"
   (crowd applauds)

 - Two regular reports come out covering what is happening on the last
   moments of Sarge release, and Branden's making a recap of the status
   of things as he found them.
 
 - Sarge releases, and a month later comes the (delayed) third and last
   report.

After Sarge released, it was finally the time to go back at all the
overdue big changes that have been delayed to allow Sarge to come out.

Big issues started to come in, and frustration followed shortly
afterwards when it started to become clear that interaction with all the
parties involved was much more delicate and difficult than what one
would expect.

I just went back to the mail archive of that time and stopped reading
after a while because of anger rising: lots of good efforts have been
done, and the instant reaction to those was in various case absolutely
disappointing.  It's all stuff you can't put in a report: you just have
to swallow, be patient, keep insisting, try new things, "this is going
to be a long-term one".

This was the "lots of effort is being done, none of it can be put in a
report" phase.

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 10:44:17AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote:

> I disagree. They let the project know that things are going on (or not
> going on), and the DPL and Team are not just dormant, which was the
> impression I, at least, had for much of the past year. Compare to daily
> status mails from crontabs: if you don't get them, you can assume that
> something went wrong.

This is true, and looking at it from now it would indeed have been
much better than nothing.

But at that time things were like:

 X: haven't made a report in two months, we should make one.
 Y: what do we have?
 X: "lots of difficult talking with people" and "approved two bills"
 Y: if we make a 'last two months' report like that, everyone's gonna
shout "you haven't been doing *anything*!"
 X: but that isn't fair, we HAVE been doing things!
 Y: how do you argue that, without disclosing A, B and C?
 X: sucks.
 Y: sucks.

So we waited until we had something big to show.  And that's were we
found out that when something big happens, even if the DPL has been
putting lots of efforts in talking people into making it happen, they
never happen in the name of the DPL.  

Time passes, expectations raise, nothing to match them.  Rinse and
repeat.  Recipe for failure.

Personal suggestion to all candidates:

  make it clear from the beginning that people should't expect to find
  big stuff in your reports unless you start making summaries of what
  happened in the project.
  
  But that would be duplicating DWN.
  
  So make it clear from the beginning that people shouldn't expect to
  find big stuff in your reports, period.  That's likely to be the only
  way you'll be able to make a report at all.

Lars, your crontab mail example is enlightening: boring, but essential.


On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 02:27:36AM +, Martin Michlmayr wrote:

> Such questions were asked all the time but we didn't get any
> substantial answers.  Once it resulted in a wiki page being created
> listing what the DPL team has been up to, but that page was really
> embarrassing, listing only 3-4 minor things (a few more were added
> later, but still... not really a good summary).  Several times (after
> the failure of the Scud IRC meeting), people asked what Scud was
> actually up to and never got any response whatsoever.

Do you have links to them?  I'm not asking to question what you say, but
because I'd like to have a look at them again.

What's left in my memory is people asking for reports we couldn't make
or progress we couldn't disclose.  Lots of frustration, so I might have
just repressed those questions from my memory.


> The point is that people shouldn't have to *ask* for such reports.
> It's imho the responsibility of the DPL to send such reports without
> being prodded, and in fact, the current DPL explicitly stated in his
> platform that he would send such statements (but almost never did).

Right.  IMHO Branden had grand plans in the platform of announcing cool
stuff every month, and banged against the reality of cool stuff being
reported into DWN and the DPL being left with boring stuff.

The first reports of Branden were quite grand.  They culminated in the
Sarge release.  After that, there was nothing that could have matched,
and noone's been able to redesign the reports to cope with it.

In 

Re: Democracy in Debian

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 8 Feb 2006, Lionel Elie Mamane verbalised:

> On Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 08:47:10AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> On 8 Feb 2006, Lionel Elie Mamane said:
>>> On Tue, Feb 07, 2006 at 06:57:03PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 On 7 Feb 2006, Lionel Elie Mamane spake thusly:
>
> Should the situation arise with the current constitution, the
> secretary can use 7.1.4 to avoid impropriety
>
 Additionally, there are already means of doing an audit that
 can check any results after the fact;
>
>>> Only if the secretary hands over the ballots. Which I don't see
>>> him being forced to do by constitutional rule. I'm not intimate
>>> with all the commas of the constitution; can the secretary make a
>>> vote "secret ballot" like the DPL election?
>
>> Which only goes to show that you really do not understand
>> how Debian works. Are you not aware that vote have already been
>> audited before? That anyone with root on master already has access
>> to all ballots? That the DPL's can ask an audot to be poerformed
>> anyway?
>
> I didn't see such a specific DPL power in the constitution. Would it
> fall under the general phrasing of 5.1.4?

I would think so. That is a general catch all.

>> You think the Secretary hides ballots on machines not
>> accessible to the DSA?
>
> I don't think you currently do, nor that you ever did, nor that any
> of your predecessors did. But the constitution says:
>
> Votes are cast by email in a manner suitable to the Secretary.
>
> So if the Secretary deems it suitable to send them to an address out
> of control of DSA, what happens?

Then, if there is a question of auditing the vote, and if such
 an audit can't be conducted with any degree of assurance, the
 project, or the DPL, could determine that the voting was void, and
 set up a revote.


> There is a difference between what the constitution requires to
> happen and what happens in practice. People can do things _better_
> than required by the constitution and seem to do so.

If you want to make the constitution complete, and absolutely
 cover all possible corner cases (in advance of a reasonable
 probability of such cases actually occurring), then we need something
 like a the penal code of the US. An exhaustive and complete
 constitution, even if it were possible, would be too large to be
 useful in practice to meet changing needs of the project. In other
 words, it would lead to a rigid system, incapable of adapting and
 changing, and tedious to get familiar with.

>> I really think you need to familiarize yourself with the
>> constitution if you want to start talking about how the secretary
>> can hijack elections, and thus must be restrained.
>
> I thought about this a while ago (to decide whether the Debian
> system could be used in another context) and what I remember from my
> conclusions was:
>
> - Votes were ballots get revealed seem safe; one would have to break
>   the OpenPGP signature system to "hijack" them. This assumes that
>   "many" people can get access to the actual signed ballots.

Certainly true for all votes that have ever been held in
 Debian. 

> - The secretary acts as a trusted person for secret ballot
 > elections. Unless someone else sees the actual signed ballots
>  (which the constitution doesn't require), he can "stuff" the vote
>  with fake ballots of people that haven't voted at all (I presume
>  that people that didn't make the effort to vote are quite unlikely
>  to make the effort to check that they are not on the voter's list)
>  or are unlikely to check their entry in the tally sheet.

The constitution does not require everything needed to conduct
 a secure vote. The constitution does not require ballots to be signed
 either.

I personally feel that bloating the constitution to provide
 for a secure votes is, err, not the right thing to do.  If you find a
 major flaw in actual mechanisms, please bring forth your concerns to
 me, or the DPL.

manoj
-- 
We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing
them. Thucydides
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Re: GFDL position statement ballot invalid

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 28 Feb 2006, Oliver Elphick uttered the following:

> On Tue, 2006-02-28 at 18:36 +0100, Thomas Viehmann wrote:
>> Hi,
>>

> That is meant as a statement of fact, not a personal attack.  If
> something is listed as a constitutional change it will certainly
> bias against it those who dislike such changes.

>> Manoj was absolutely clear that he sees the drastic interpretation
>> change as a change to the DFSG and brought up the problem[1] and
>> explicitely encouraged Anton to pursue his goal by the means of
>> proposing a clarifying explicit amendment[2] on February 1st.
>>
>> Given that Anton's mail suggests that the Secretary's asessment of
>> the 3:1 supermajority requirement might be subject to a
>> challenge[3], it seems that the Secretary took a very prudent route
>> here.
>
> I'm sorry, but I think the current ballot is a mess.  If Amendment B
> is passed, we will supposedly have changed the DFSG or Social
> Contract, but the actual text of both will remain unchanged.

Umm, no. The position statement shall be published at the same
 time as the modified foundation documents (modified so that the
 position statement and the foundation documents are clearly in
 synch). The wording can be hashed out quite quickly, I think, since
 the position of the project would be quite clear then.

> The text of the amendment is not listed as a foundation document in
> itself.  If a future GR should propose to amend the text of the
> current amendment (once passed) will that also be an amendment of a
> fundamental document?  It won't be listed as one in the
> constitution.  This is not prudence but a recipe for chaos.


If the future amendment changes the meaning of the then
 clarified foundation documents, then the foundation documents would
 need to be modified to reflect the new position of the project.

> I don't object to Manoj's determining that this is a modification of
> a fundamental document, but I think he should then require the text
> of the amendment to be changed so as actually to accomplish what he
> deems it to be doing.

I had invited wording for such proposed changes to clarify the
 foundation documents. 


manoj
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Heads.
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Re: GFDL position statement ballot invalid

[Manoj Srivastava]

On 28 Feb 2006, Oliver Elphick outgrape:

> On Sat, 2006-02-25 at 17:21 -0600, Debian Project Secretary wrote: 
>
>> The following ballot is for voting on a General Resolution to
>> address the Debian project's position on the GNU Free Documentation
>> License.  The vote is being conducted in accordance with the policy
>> delineated in Section A, Standard Resolution Procedure, of the
>> Debian Constitution.
>
> Part of the description of choice 3 is
>
> Majority Requirement
> Amendment B requires a 3:1 majority, since it require
> modifications to the Social contract, or the DFSG, both
> foundation documents. 
>
> This makes no sense because the text of the modifications is not
> given.  How can it be said that an amendment is modifying either
> document if there is no text included to accomplish that?

I have made clear what the disconnect between the amendment
 and the actual text of the foundation document is, in my opinion. 

> If this option is adopted, what will the text of the change be?
> Note that this speaks of modification to the Social Contract OR the
> DFSG.  Which one is it?  If the Secretary cannot specify that, how
> can it be said that there is any modification at all?
>

While I have an opinion on this, I did not feel lile I should
 bind the project t what I think the changes should be. Once the
 amendment is adopted, the wording can be worked out to ensure that
 the position statement and the foundation documents are not
 contradictory -- for starters, include the GFDL as one of the
 accepted free documents in the SC, and clarify the DFSG stattement
 "Licence shall allow modifications" to reflect whatever it is that
 the proponents of the amendment thinks it says.

> If the Secretary's creative interpretation is allowed to stand, the
> proper description of what is happening can only be that this
> proposal adds a new foundation document.

I am not sure that follows.

> the ballot is incoherent and invalid because it claims that this
> proposal is modifying a foundation document while not specifying
> how it is doing so or the actual text of the change;

Incoherent? Incomplete, perhaps. But the amendment lays out
 what the foundation documents should be saying is free, and  at the
 very least must be clarified to say that clearly, so that people like
 me do not misunderstand the foundation documents.

> or
>
> the requirement of a supermajority for choice 3 is invalid.


manoj

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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Lars Wirzenius]

su, 2006-03-05 kello 14:20 +0100, Enrico Zini kirjoitti:
> On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 10:44:17AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> 
> > And yes, a couple of times I did ask, although on IRC and not via
> > e-mail. Having to drag out information gets tiresome so I only did it a
> > couple of times.
> 
> Did you get answers when you asked on IRC?

Not as far as I remember.

-- 
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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Lars Wirzenius]

su, 2006-03-05 kello 15:49 +0200, Lars Wirzenius kirjoitti:
> su, 2006-03-05 kello 14:20 +0100, Enrico Zini kirjoitti:
> > On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 10:44:17AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> > 
> > > And yes, a couple of times I did ask, although on IRC and not via
> > > e-mail. Having to drag out information gets tiresome so I only did it a
> > > couple of times.
> > 
> > Did you get answers when you asked on IRC?
> 
> Not as far as I remember.

To avoid misunderstandings: I asked (mostly, I think) from the DPL in
private messages, and he may well have been away (even if not marked as
such on IRC). I guess this is an example of a situation that would be
avoided if as much DPL-related communication would be in public, say,
via the BTS.

-- 
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Re: Questions to candidate Anthony Towns

[Josselin Mouette]

Le dimanche 05 mars 2006 à 17:19 +1000, Anthony Towns a écrit :
> >  2. Everyone has his own character. However, a representative has to
> > be cautious to avoid compromising the project as a whole. Were
> > you elected, would you make efforts to stop being contemptuous
> > in public communication, at least when acting as DPL?
> 
> When acting as DPL, certainly -- and I would hope the issue wouldn't
> come up in the first place. If you've got any examples of any of
> my communications signed of as "release manager" that you think are
> contemptuous I'd be interested in discussing them with you, to make sure
> I can avoid anything similar.

I didn't use to interact much with you when you were release manager,
but I remember sharing a general feeling of being treated as a
second-class citizen with some other developers. Contempt can't only
show up in the language, but also in the decisions themselves. As time
has passed, I'm afraid I can't come up with real examples, but the
feeling of a huge improvement when Steve took the job remains. Looking
at your mails to d-d-a, you seem to have improved in communicating, but
people like him also know how to listen to others - a very rare quality
I'd like to see in the DPL.

> As far as "contemptuous" is concerned, I don't really think singling
> me out like that is particularly fair. Our current DPL posted "Frank
> Carmickle and Marco Paganini must die" to d-d-a about six months
> before being elected, eg; and plenty of other people in the project act
> similarly. Personally, I do rate getting things done more important than
> being nice about it -- and I shouldn't think you'll find it hard to find
> examples where I'm not nice -- but it really does frustrate me when we
> can't have both.

Many developers can be rude and frank in their criticism, and the
current DPL's past behavior is a perfect example. However this isn't
necessarily correlated with contempt. Getting things done is one thing,
and being rude is sometimes a way to get things done, but ignoring other
developers' opinion in a decision process is another one.

> [snip]

Above all, I appreciate that you have answered honestly to these
questions. It proves that you are perfectly capable of being polite and
open when you want to.
-- 
 .''`.   Josselin Mouette/\./\
: :' :   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
`. `'[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Democracy in Debian

[Anthony Towns]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 07:26:34AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >> Which only goes to show that you really do not understand
> >> how Debian works. Are you not aware that vote have already been
> >> audited before? That anyone with root on master already has access
> >> to all ballots? That the DPL's can ask an audot to be poerformed
> >> anyway?
> > I didn't see such a specific DPL power in the constitution. Would it
> > fall under the general phrasing of 5.1.4?
> I would think so. That is a general catch all.

Really, for public votes, just about anyone could reasonably request
the information necessary to do an audit if they thought it was that
important -- it's only for DPL votes that there's any point keeping
any of the information secret. I guess the decryption key for encrypted
ballots would be of some issue, but that's about it.

I think we've only had one audit, which was of a DPL election. That
was done at the request of one of the candidates, via the DPL who won
the election; see [0], [1].

Cheers,
aj

[0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003/03/msg00023.html
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003/03/msg00026.html



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Re: Code of conduct, question to all candidates

[Anthony Towns]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 11:37:48AM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> Secondly, I believe the "personality problems" thing is about a quote of
> mine on -private[1] 

Actually it wasn't really a quote at all; if anyone cared I was going
to point at Ted/Jonathan's platform with remarks like "Most of us are
disfunctional in various ways." That claim might even be true; but I'd
rather recognise all the smart and dedicated people we have as such,
rather than calling them flawed or broken, even if they are.

> The claim was not that you need to have certain personality
> problems to be a good Debian Developer; rather, that it takes a certain
> personality type to be at all _interested_ in being a Debian
> Developer---one that is not what most people think of when they think of
> "normal" people.

You know, I might've said the same thing a year ago, but I think that's
actually really wrong. You have to explain it differently -- you can't
just say "free source makes programs easier to grok, and then you can
hack on it and make it shiny!!" but the principles there are actually
pretty universal: sharing, building better things, openness, cooperation,
friendly competition... You don't have to be remotely abnormal to like
those things.

Ubuntu's doing a really good job of promoting that; the shipit stuff, and
the related OpenCD stuff which is free software for Windows machines,
isn't just going to geeks but to regular people who don't know or
care about the difference between sed and perl regexps. And I don't
know how well they're actually doing, but they're at least trying to
build a user community of those people that contribute back to Ubuntu
-- whether in translations, or advocacy, or artwork or other stuff;
and there are real contributions to be had there. The Linux Australia
podcasts (http://la-pod.k-sit.com/) are an interesting example: James
Purser who started doing them is a real Linux geek, but his wife Karen
is now heavily involved too in rounding up the LUGs around the country
to see what's going on. Is she a Linux geek? She's actively contributing
and interested, but she's not a hacker in the traditional sense at all...

> [0] I'm sure you and Steve put in a lot of effort to create a fair CoC,
> but it's just the two of you "against" the entire project -- i.e.,
> you'll need to involve a lot more people 

Hey, if other people want to be involved, please go *right* ahead. The
-tech charter was developed with as much input as I could finangle at
the time; more's always good.

> IME, once you have a Niceness Police, people either walk away from the
> police or from discussing altogether; that way, you throw away the kid
> with the bathwater.

I should probably note I've had... not the opposite experience, but an
opposing one maybe; namely that without anyone being authoritative on
whether something's naughty, you get people arguing about it without
any resolution, with people then leaving due to the bickering about the
rules instead.

Cheers,
aj



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Re: DPL vote summaries 2006 (was: Re: Appeal to candidate questioners)

[David Schmitt]

Am Sonntag, 5. März 2006 01:24 wrote David Schmitt:
> I have put a first version online at
> http://debian.edv-bus.at/vote-2006/input.xml

There is now a pre-generated plain HTML version as

http://debian.edv-bus.at/vote-2006/questions.html

online. As well as a little Makefile. Kudos to Martin Schulze for pointing out 
this glaring omission.


Regards, David
-- 
- hallo... wie gehts heute?
- *hust* gut *rotz* *keuch*
- gott sei dank kommunizieren wir über ein septisches medium ;)
 -- Matthias Leeb, Uni f. angewandte Kunst, 2005-02-15

Re: What if you are not elected as DPL?

[Luk Claes]

Steve McIntyre wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 04, 2006 at 10:08:22AM +0100, Luk Claes wrote:
> 
>>Hi DPL candidates
>>
>>Would you also try to reach the goals mentioned in your platform if you
>>wouldn't be elected DPL?
>>
>>Please be specific if you think one of your goals can't be reached or
>>helped with without being a DPL or a member of the DPL team.
> 
> 
> Firstly, my stated goals from my platform:
> 
>  1 Communications within the project
>  2 Mailing lists and IRC
>  3 Training and NM
>  4 Openness within the project
>  5 Technical standards
>  6 Working effectively; asking for help
> 
> I believe most of these can be worked on by anyone, although some of
> them (1 and 2) could really do with high-level support if they're
> going to take off.

You didn't really answer my first question: Would you also try to reach
these goals if you're not elected DPL?

Cheers

Luk

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DPL reports [was: Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates]

[Kevin B. McCarty]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Hi Enrico,

I have some questions about what you've written regarding the DPL
reports.  Perhaps I am just being dense, but some of it seemed purposely
obscure.  This probably isn't really germane to debian-vote anymore, so
please follow up (if you like) to debian-project or debian-private as
you think best.

Enrico Zini wrote:

> After Sarge released, it was finally the time to go back at all the
> overdue big changes that have been delayed to allow Sarge to come out.
> 
> Big issues started to come in, and frustration followed shortly
> afterwards when it started to become clear that interaction with all the
> parties involved was much more delicate and difficult than what one
> would expect.

Which issues and which parties do you refer to?  Are these issues that
have been discussed on public mailing lists and/or debian-private?  Are
the parties in question Debian developers in specific positions?
Outside agencies?

> I just went back to the mail archive of that time and stopped reading
> after a while because of anger rising: lots of good efforts have been
> done, and the instant reaction to those was in various case absolutely
> disappointing.  It's all stuff you can't put in a report: you just have
> to swallow, be patient, keep insisting, try new things, "this is going
> to be a long-term one".
> 
> This was the "lots of effort is being done, none of it can be put in a
> report" phase.

I'm not sure that I understand the reasons why the efforts couldn't be
reported, at least to debian-private.  Are they one or more of the
following, and if so, which?

- - Already reported on by some other team (e.g. DWN)
- - Irrelevant to the vast majority of DDs
- - Would be necessary to reveal people's private personal information in
order to discuss them
- - Security embargos (possibly could still go to debian-private)
- - Not wanting to offend or interfere with negotiations with certain
outside agencies (ditto)
- - Not wanting to offend or cause problems for specific Debian developers
- - Not wanting to discuss efforts before they were likely to come to
fruition
- - Top-secret PATRIOT act gag orders (this is a joke, I hope)

>  X: haven't made a report in two months, we should make one.
>  Y: what do we have?
>  X: "lots of difficult talking with people" and "approved two bills"
>  Y: if we make a 'last two months' report like that, everyone's gonna
> shout "you haven't been doing *anything*!"
>  X: but that isn't fair, we HAVE been doing things!
>  Y: how do you argue that, without disclosing A, B and C?
>  X: sucks.
>  Y: sucks.

Again, why could A, B and C not be disclosed, at least to
debian-private, if they form a major part of the DPL's activities?

> Personal suggestion to all candidates:
> 
>   make it clear from the beginning that people should't expect to find
>   big stuff in your reports unless you start making summaries of what
>   happened in the project.
>   
>   But that would be duplicating DWN.
>   
>   So make it clear from the beginning that people shouldn't expect to
>   find big stuff in your reports, period.  That's likely to be the only
>   way you'll be able to make a report at all.
> 
> Lars, your crontab mail example is enlightening: boring, but essential.

I completely agree with Lars -- even if all the glamorous stuff has
already been reported by DWN, it's important to see regular DPL reports,
if only to indicate that the DPL is still working behind the scenes.
There are conferences, etc. that the DPL represents Debian at, right?
Surely not all of those are reported on by DWN.  And there is nothing
wrong in any case with a report that's a little redundant with other
sources of news.

>   DPL Report for last week
>   
> 
>   1. Security team
>   
> 
>   Did lots of reasoning about the Security Team.  Just like last week,
>   things are tricky, but this week someone came up with a better idea.
> 
>   2. Budget
>   -
> 
>   Approved expenditure of $300 for flying person X to represent Debian
>   in conference Y.  Thanks X for your outstanding work in this field,
>   please make a report when you're back.
> 
>   -- End of DPL report for last week --

I absolutely do not see anything wrong with such a report.  The only
reasonable complaint anyone could make about it would be the absence of
a clause after "things are tricky" starting with the word "because".
But this gets back to the issue of undisclosable things again.

I apologize for perhaps seeming to pry so much.  The very vague
statements you made about things that can't be disclosed really piqued
my curiosity.  If you can't or don't want to answer any of my questions,
I have no wish to cause you any more frustration -- feel free to
consider this email unsent and ignore it at will.  Don't worry, I'll
manage to live with the disappointment :-)

best regards,

- --
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Re: Questions about Ubuntu

[Andreas Schuldei]

* Raphael Hertzog <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-02-28 19:23:08]:

> here are some questions for all candidates. They are related to the
> Debian-Ubuntu cooperation. (If you're not a candidate and wish to give me
> your opinion on that subject, please do so by private mail or move the
> discussion elsewhere like debian-project)
> 
> 1/ What is your personal opinion about Ubuntu ?

Ubuntu is a very good product that fullfills a market demand that
Debian created by the release of Sarge, and the lack of an available 'just
works' system.
 
I took the opportunity to install Ubuntu yesterday with a friend who
wants to switch from Windows to Linux. It felt really slick and shiny
and I liked that.

Details like shipping a kernel and kernel header packages created with
a compiler that is not included on the CD (and therefore making it
impossible to compile additional wifi modules for that kernel without
net access) won't be encountered by many of their users. It left me
with a feeling of the distribution beeing created in a little too
short time frame.

Ubuntu is a huge success and is here to stay. Debian Developers
holding a grunch against Ubuntu should get that through their head and
should start thinking what *they* can do to make Debian the kick-ass
distro it can be. Debian needs to learn to re-integrate the
improvements from derived distributions and would get a long way just
doing that. On top of that there should not be a problem becoming
more innovative ourselfs - there are enough cool problems to
solve. Listening to our users would tell us which ones we should start
with.

> 2/ What explains in your opinion the bad feelings that some DD have
> against Ubuntu ?

I guess it is a mixture of envy where Ubuntu achives what Debian
should have done some time ago and underestimating Debian's greatness
and what our users value us for. Talking to sponsors gives me an unique
perspective in that regard, which gives me a feeling of "YES, we DO
rock!" from time to time. I like that a lot and it gives me personally
a good deal of self-esteem (as a Debian Developer) when thinking of Ubuntu.

> 3/ What changes do you wish concerning the Debian-Ubuntu collaboration ?

I hope that Debian Developers could stop seeing Ubuntu as a threat and
start to compete in a good free-software-way by taking the code and
improving it. 


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Re: Questions for all candidates: role models part two

[Andreas Schuldei]

* Clint Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-02 09:35:11]:

> In the context of the Debian community, do you feel that you are
> currently a good role model?

There are different roles in Debian. As a normal code writing or
packaging developer, I could do better. As someone furthering Debian,
both technically and socially, I feel I am doing well.
 
> To which aspects of your behavior should people aspire?

Transfering of competence, empowering of able people, integrity,
honesty, authenticity

> Which aspects of your behavior should people eschew?

I tend to be a perfectionist.

> How important is it to avoid being a hypocrite?

I belive in being authentic and therefore try to avoid hypocrocy.


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Re: What if you are not elected as DPL?

[Andreas Schuldei]

* Luk Claes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-04 10:08:22]:


> Would you also try to reach the goals mentioned in your platform if you
> wouldn't be elected DPL?

yes, as good as I could. Most changes I want to introduce are of
social and gradual nature (not binary) and are dependant on how much
attention people pay to me. DPLs tend to get a bonus of attention
which would help.
 
> Please be specific if you think one of your goals can't be reached
> or helped with without being a DPL or a member of the DPL team.

I know that when working with some core teams some people felt that me
being only in the DPL team and not being DPL myself was enough to
disregard some suggestions of mine or not take help I offered
seriously. I do hope that being elected DPL will make a difference in
those cases.



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Re: Question to all candidates about the NM process

[Andreas Schuldei]

* Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-04 13:06:37]:
> Though there are often threads about problems with it on our mailing
> lists, the NM process hasn't changed much in the last three or four
> years. What do you think about the most common problems (takes too
> long, is asking for too broad knowledge)?
> 
> Do you think that we need to change the NM checks?

Basically, we should let good people become Developers faster. I know that
one of the core problems is currently that there are not enough developers
involved with NM.  However, I don't have a ready recipipe how to resolve this.
As a DPL, I would help you (and the other involved people like the DAMs) as
good as I can to change anything that you consider worth changing.

My basic strategy as DPL is not to do micro-management myself, but to help
good people to do their job.


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Platform in three keywords (was: Question for all candidates)

[Andreas Schuldei]

* Mike Hommey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-02 14:49:37]:

> If you had to summarize your platform with 3 keywords, what would they be ?

- purpose-driven
- predictable
- warm and welcoming


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Re: Questions for candidate Jeroen van Wolffelaar

[Jeroen van Wolffelaar]

On Tue, Feb 28, 2006 at 10:06:34PM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> 1. As you are promoting the team leadership that has been in place
>since Branden's election, do you have explanations for the total
>absence of leadership during this time? What could you tell to
>convince us it's still worth a try?

I don't think your assessment that there was a total lack of leadership
is true. What you maybe mean is a lack of guidance; public leadership as
in a leader that leads the way, promotes his agenda with the project,
and motivates the DD's to follow. It is of course debatable what would
be good to have here.

Anyway, leadership needs to come from a leader. How the past year went,
isn't to my complete satisfaction. I find my platform and the things I
want to achieve important, and am determined to hold onto my campaign
promises. As such, the DPL team is only part of it, and should make it
easier for me to achieve my goals. I will treat the team as such,
I expect it to facilitate achieving those goals together. However, if
for some reason, the DPL team is actually counter-productive, I will not
hesitate to drop (part of) it. I think I can do that, because DPL team
members should be there to help achieve the goals I set, and if it
doesn't help, the individual members can of course still scratch
whatever itches they have their way -- but just as a normal DD can do.
What the DPL team do will be my responsibility, and I will take it
fully.

I really don't expect this to be needed, and think that together with a
number of helpful people, we can achieve more than that I could do
alone. I simply intend to take on the leadership part inside the DPL
team much more strongly.

> 2. You seem to consider the useless discussions on mailing lists an
>important issue. What real world problems do you think it leads
>to?

- A lot of time wasted across the board (also people who are normally
  doing really good work in Debian want to follow the lists to some
  extent, there might be important things in it).
- Inability to have technical issues that affect the whole project
  discussed productively with a useful result that can be implemented,
  with slower deployment of new techniques as a result. Instead, such
  discussion find place hidden away on some smaller list or IRC channel,
  thusly excluding part of the developers from discussing along.
- Preventing/discouraging people to join Debian when they don't feel
  Debian is a place for them, because all that seems to happen is a huge
  discussions with no end, and a significant lack of respect for fellow
  developers.
- Radicalisation, because extreme points of view are proclaimed the
  loudest, and this attracts people with extreme views.

> 3. Could you explain how a code of conduct for mailing lists would
>help reducing the number of posts that are merely useless,
>without being aggressive? Same question for the people who are
>killing discussion by always bringing up the same issues,
>without ever being aggressive.

Any code of conduct cannot really change Debian into a 'perfect' world
with no flames, no repetition, no useless posts. Maybe with Orwellian
efforts, it might, and we'll end up with "teletubby-type" of lists.

But we can do better than the current situation. In my opinion, there
needs to be some upper limit how far people can go. What that limit
should be exactly, is still to be worked out, but shouldn't be too low,
most people shouldn't need to bother about it. The upper limit should
only apply to the type of posts that can at times really degrade the
list quality badly.

For posts that don't cross the line, but still are unproductive, it's
better to use social pressure: kind private mails pointing out how one
is not being productive, etc. Some "best practices" document might help
this by explaining well, best practices (something based on the Debian
Community Guidelines is what I'm thinking of). But care should be taken
that this won't become another "Does this post really need to be
private" type of remark that causes more traffic itself than the traffic
it intends to reduce.

By not having aggressive and abusive posts, the atmosphere should be
much more friendly, and provide grounds for people to kindly hint others
if they are being unproductive. The goal is to ensure that technical
discussions prevail again our technical lists, without killing the type
of related discussions that are *also* important for the wellbeing of a
project like Debian.

> 4. As a member of the FTP team, do you have any explanations about
>the amd64 fiasco, and why we should vote for you despite that
>outstanding failure for a team you are part of?

I don't think it's a fiasco. At some point it became clear that there
really was no way to put amd64 in the archive before the Sarge release.
So it would be for etch.  I talked about this with Steve Langasek last
November, and based on the release schedule, I intended to put some
serious effort my

Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Frank Küster]

Martin Michlmayr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> However, what you say in your message (if people had
> asked for status reports they would've received them) is blatantly
> wrong.  We did ask, and (usually) no good response was given.

I also asked the DPL a question about backups of the development
machines (after the CVS corruption last year) and never got any answer.
At least one other person told me he had asked about the same, so this
would have deserved a public answer.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)

Re: Code of conduct, question to all candidates

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Mon, Mar 06, 2006 at 01:17:02AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 11:37:48AM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> > Secondly, I believe the "personality problems" thing is about a quote of
> > mine on -private[1] 
> 
> Actually it wasn't really a quote at all; if anyone cared I was going
> to point at Ted/Jonathan's platform with remarks like "Most of us are
> disfunctional in various ways."

Ah. Heh, okay then.

[...]
> > The claim was not that you need to have certain personality
> > problems to be a good Debian Developer; rather, that it takes a certain
> > personality type to be at all _interested_ in being a Debian
> > Developer---one that is not what most people think of when they think of
> > "normal" people.
> 
> You know, I might've said the same thing a year ago, but I think that's
> actually really wrong. You have to explain it differently -- you can't
> just say "free source makes programs easier to grok, and then you can
> hack on it and make it shiny!!" but the principles there are actually
> pretty universal: sharing, building better things, openness, cooperation,
> friendly competition... You don't have to be remotely abnormal to like
> those things.

Indeed, you don't. Which, therefore, isn't what I was talking about; I
was referring to Debian work specifically, rather than Free Software
work in general.

Anyway, since you apparently did _not_ refer to me in that context, the
point is moot, really; and in the interest of not cluttering -vote more
than it already is, I won't go into it any further. I don't feel all
that strong about it anyway, so there isn't much to discuss.

> > IME, once you have a Niceness Police, people either walk away from the
> > police or from discussing altogether; that way, you throw away the kid
> > with the bathwater.
> 
> I should probably note I've had... not the opposite experience, but an
> opposing one maybe; namely that without anyone being authoritative on
> whether something's naughty, you get people arguing about it without
> any resolution, with people then leaving due to the bickering about the
> rules instead.

That happens too; but as you've seen recently on Planet[0], having
someone be authoritative on whether something's naughty doesn't always
work, either.

[0]http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/why_im_not_on_debian-tech-2006-02-28-23-30.html
Yes, I read your reply too. IMHO, it doesn't change much; whatever
happened after Joey left isn't all that important, since he left because
he felt the rules were against him--which is precisely why I think such
rules are (or can be) problematic.

-- 
Fun will now commence
  -- Seven Of Nine, "Ashes to Ashes", stardate 53679.4


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Re: DPL reports [was: Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates]

[Enrico Zini]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 11:05:04AM -0500, Kevin B. McCarty wrote:

Hi Kevin.

> I'm not sure that I understand the reasons why the efforts couldn't be
> reported, at least to debian-private.  Are they one or more of the
> following, and if so, which?

Among your categories, the ones that most apply are:

 - Not wanting to offend or cause problems for specific Debian developers
 - Not wanting to discuss efforts before they were likely to come to fruition

in some cases, however, it went as far as "we had a hard time not to
start yelling out insults ourselves, go figure if this hits -private".

One of the big roles of the DPL seem to be to address that sort of
communication that people for some reason aren't carrying out on their
own, and that can't take place on a public (or semipublic) list because
lots of people are frustrated about the issues involved and would make a
somewhat hostile discussion environment.

Or the key people just wouldn't answer on -private for fear that people
would inflame, the discussion would turn out useless and their time
would be better spent on more practical work.


> I apologize for perhaps seeming to pry so much.  The very vague
> statements you made about things that can't be disclosed really piqued
> my curiosity.

No problem at all.  It sucks to have important discussions happening
behind the scenes, actually; besides being generally unfair, one also
loses a fair amount of peer support and contributions of good ideas.


Ciao,

Enrico

--
GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 18:48]:
> I also asked the DPL a question about backups of the development
> machines (after the CVS corruption last year) and never got any answer.

FWIW, there is a dedicated backup server now.  I don't know any
details though (nor why it was never announced).
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/


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Re: Question for all candidates: what mistake will you _not_ make?

[Andreas Schuldei]

* Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-04 14:13:42]:

> So, my question: please name any behaviour or act you've observed with
> previous DPLs (naming the name of the respective DPL is not required)
> that you think was a mistake, and which you will try not to make during
> your term?

I will not underestimate the time and efford that the office of DPL requires.



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Re: Question to all candidates about stable point releases

[Andreas Schuldei]

* Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-04 13:02:20]:
> Though Martin 'Joey' Schulze as stable release manager presents lists of
> packages that are accepted into the next stable point release on a
> regular basis, they normally are not released "roughly two months after
> the last update" (which is the official plan).
> 
> Do you know why this doesn't work as planned? What would you do to 
> make regular point releases possible?

I worked on this issue during the last year and tried to find out
what creates the holdups. As almost all hard problems it is a social
one: The point-release manager and the FTP-Masters have sub-optimal
working relationships.

The "quick" (yeah, right!) fix is to find people who can work well
with all involved parties and help with both working and talking. The
prefered solution would of course be to let the involved parties sort
out their working relationships. I will go for the quick fix first
since I feel that the underlying problems are beyond my powers to
solve.


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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Joey Hess]

Enrico Zini wrote:
> I just went back to the mail archive of that time and stopped reading
> after a while because of anger rising: lots of good efforts have been
> done, and the instant reaction to those was in various case absolutely
> disappointing.  It's all stuff you can't put in a report: you just have
> to swallow, be patient, keep insisting, try new things, "this is going
> to be a long-term one".

Would it be possible to illistrate this with a few examples?

>  X: but that isn't fair, we HAVE been doing things!
>  Y: how do you argue that, without disclosing A, B and C?
>  X: sucks.
>  Y: sucks.

So why is everything that the DPL is involved in so secretive
that they cannot disclose it to the project?

It seems that we have a DPL election period where all the candidates
try to be very open about where they want to take the project, followed
by a DPL term where everything happens in private. Why can the DPL only
effectively lead in private? Isn't there a big disconnect there? Anyone
else not like this at all?

> So we waited until we had something big to show.  And that's were we
> found out that when something big happens, even if the DPL has been
> putting lots of efforts in talking people into making it happen, they
> never happen in the name of the DPL.  

They would if it were clear that the DPL had led the project to this
happening, in public[1], surely?

-- 
see shy jo

[1] Which can after all, include debian-private.


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Re: Questions about Ubuntu

[David N. Welton]

Andreas Schuldei wrote:
> Debian needs to learn to re-integrate the
> improvements from derived distributions and would get a long way just
> doing that. On top of that there should not be a problem becoming
> more innovative ourselfs - there are enough cool problems to
> solve. Listening to our users would tell us which ones we should start
> with.

The reason Debian can't compete with Ubuntu for the Desktop/new to Linux
users is that Ubuntu makes choices where Debian won't or can't.  They
give you a default system that works well because they picked certain
things instead of others, instead of giving you the huge amount of
choice Debian gives you right out of the box.  The clever thing is that
that choice is still there if you want it...

-- 
David N. Welton
- http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Linux, Open Source Consulting
- http://www.dedasys.com/


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Re: Questions to candidate Anthony Towns

[Joey Hess]

(Please treat this question as if it were asked on debian-devel not
here.)

Anthony Towns wrote:
> I do think it would be interesting for the project to embrace the d-i beta
> releases and the testing-security support and turn those into regular
> "mini-releases", without many of the standards we expect of stable,
> but in a form that's still useful.

That's been a goal of mine for several years. What more do you feel we
should do on those beta releases to reach that? Note that they already
include a full set of CDs/DVDs that are tested to work approximatly as
well[1] as stable releases. One thing we don't do is branch and freeze the
archive, but the consequences of that seem smaller than might be expected.
Another thing we don't do right now is keep the DVDs and larger CDs
static as released, they continue being updated each week. Another thing
we omit is a set of release notes and an upgrade guide from past
releases.

As far as the testing security stuff, there is always room for
improvement but the number/severity of holes fixed in unstable but not
testing is generally swamped by both the number not fixed anywhere and
by the number (but not generally severity) of those not fixed in stable.

So is it just a matter of terminology, perception, and polish; or do you
see other major areas where we should improve?

-- 
see shy jo

[1] Or arguably better; unlike the first set of stable CDs ours have 
always worked. :-P


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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Frank Küster]

Martin Michlmayr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> * Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 18:48]:
>> I also asked the DPL a question about backups of the development
>> machines (after the CVS corruption last year) and never got any answer.
>
> FWIW, there is a dedicated backup server now.  I don't know any
> details though (nor why it was never announced).

So you also don't know what is backed up, and how often?

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)

Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 21:05]:
> > FWIW, there is a dedicated backup server now.  I don't know any
> > details though (nor why it was never announced).
> So you also don't know what is backed up, and how often?

No, I only know that there's a dedicated backup server and that it's
located at the University of Darmstadt (who're hosting the unofficial
AMD64 archive).
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/


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Questions for all canidates

[Benjamin Seidenberg]

If you were not running for DPL, which of the other candiates would you 
most likely vote for (or since you are running, rank as '2' on your 
ballot)? Why?


Which of the other canidate's platform statements do you agree with, and 
which do you not? If you are elected as DPL, do you think that you will 
try to implement any goals of the other candiates that weren't in your 
own platform?


Cheers,
Benjamin


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Re: Questions about Ubuntu

[Andreas Schuldei]

* David N. Welton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 20:41:55]:

> The reason Debian can't compete with Ubuntu for the Desktop/new to Linux
> users is that Ubuntu makes choices where Debian won't or can't.  They
> give you a default system that works well because they picked certain
> things instead of others, instead of giving you the huge amount of
> choice Debian gives you right out of the box.  The clever thing is that
> that choice is still there if you want it...

I dont think that that is a valid reason to stop trying. The
solution to this problem could be to allow special configuration
(e.g. in a seperate package) for groups of packages for tight
integration (e.g ldap + samba, afs + kerberos, hotplug/udev +
...). The problems to solve would be: How to phrase it for policy
to allow these configuration packages to (p)reconfigure other
packages, how to best reconfigure the packages (preseeding?
config rewriting with cfengine? ...), how to upgrade these
tighly preconfigured package groups, and certainly some more
which I miss right now. 

To implement this in a robust and clean way would allow
for all kinds of neat configureations for quick deployement and
would boost debian's usefullness for users enormously. 

"I want to install a virus and spam filtering greylisting secure
mailserver." 

aptitude install postfix-amavis-postgrey-spamassessin-config



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Questions for all candidates: the DPL as a creator of public opinion

[Fabian Fagerholm]

Hi,

The DPL is described as a representative of Debian to the general
public, and as a vision-definer inside the Debian Project. Also, the DPL
is given the responsibility of "building good relationships with other
organizations and companies". [0]

Currently, the FOSS world is facing major challenges that concern most
aspects of this community: core questions of value are in discussion
[1], the viability and sustainability of volunteer work is questioned
[2], and various attempts at making commercial profit and business
models are affecting the community [3] -- for better or for worse. All
these issues are much more visible and affects a larger amount of people
than ever before. Also, issues of freedom and openness are raised in
other fields besides computing [4].

Against this background, what is your opinion on the following:

 1. Is Debian affected by what happens in the FOSS world in general?
How? Please give examples if you can.
 2. Has the definition (written or implied) of freedom in Debian
changed over the years? How?
 3. Is the understanding of freedom in Debian up to date with regard
to the current state of the world? How does this show?
 4. Does Debian have a good relationship with well-known
organisations such as FSF, Creative Commons or ? Why/why not?
 5. As DPL, what would you rather work on in your vision-defining
capacity: defining a special Debian-freedom, or encouraging
Debian to embrace other definitions? Why and how?

Finally, please tell us as much as you want about what has led you
towards Debian and free software instead of non-free alternatives. Why
have you taken this path in life? Why is it important to you personally?

Thank you!


[0] http://www.debian.org/devel/leader
[1] For example, the GPLv3 process or the Debian GR on the GNU FDL.
[2] This been discussed in Debian for a long time: the release process,
the NM process, etc.
[3] Too many to list here, but two examples are Nokia's involvement and
Oracle's recent acquisition of Sleepycat.
[4] For example, Creative Commons have expanded the view to include all
forms of cultural expression, which includes works that can be
considered for inclusion in Debian.

-- 
Fabian Fagerholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


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Re: Questions for candidate Andreas Schuldei

[Andreas Schuldei]

* Josselin Mouette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 06:32:13]:

>  1. After the utter failure of the DPL team conducted by Branden
> Robinson to provide leadership, what makes you think the team
> you are proposing would do better?

I would try to avoid some flaws in last year's setup. It boils down to
making the team more self-sufficient and the DPL less of a single
point of failure. That would start with giving the whole team access
to the [EMAIL PROTECTED] mail without my manual interaction, officially
delegating tasks to the team members early and encouraging them to
act as responsible individuals in the team by asking advice from each
other and me. This will make sure the team works well even when I'm
not available.

Furthermore I would hope that I won't experience things that Branden
had to cope with during his term, like surgery on his wife and trouble
at work, which can be a great drain of time, energy and focus.

>  2. Could you explain the section 4 of your platform further? I
> understand what you would like to improve, but not how you would
> do it.

To start with, I would try to find out if the team in question (or the
single person doing the tesk) is aware of how it/(s)he is perceived by
others and if they are interested in improving that relationship. By
trying alone they will be able to improve the situation a lot. As a
second step I would try to find people (and encourage others to do the
same) who are friendly and enjoy interacting with other developers and
could fit into the teams that can profit from an increase of such
characteristics.


>  3. What criteria would you use to distribute resources to
> developers, and to ensure they would be spent in a productive
> way? 

I would like to use those resources to encourage the "purpose-driven"
teams and people. If a team comes up with a "we want to achive this
and that by meeting, since our users want foo", provide a good wiki
page and promise a report of the meeting afterwards, they would be
high on my list for support.

Other candidates are teams that need a face to face meeting to sort
out personal problems or struggle for some time already with a
specific problem as the relase/ftp-team did before the vancouver
meeting.

The problems and teams receiving attention and potentially recources
would be prioritized by the impact they have on Debian as a whole.


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Re: question for all candidates

[Andreas Schuldei]

* Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-02-27 12:18:55]:

> Two years ago, Branden Robinson talked about the issue of some tasks in
> the project that are neither delegated by the Project leader nor covered
> by the Constitution directly. [1] He referenced his platform from 2004
> last year (when he was elected), but it seems that nothing has happened
> since then.
> 
> So, to the question:
> Should we amend our constitution to reflect how Debian is structured in
> reality, or should the people doing these tasks now be recognized as
> delegates of the DPL? What will you do to clarify the situation?

I think the constitution is quite clear on what the DPL is allowed to
do and does not need amendment in this regard.

To me it does not make sense to delegate just for the sake of it. That
would feel bureaucratic to me and the project has already enough of
that. I would not go and delegate a d-i team, for example, since it
just works well anyway.

When important teams seem to be disfunctional or have a hard time to
find a structure that scales into the future I would however use my
powers of delegation to restructure the team from the outside. I would
only do that after I worked with the team to help it overcome it's
issues itself, however.

I followed both Martin Michelmayr's effords during his terms and
spend a lot of time in our DPL-team with some teams and would
like to continue this work as DPL to conclude it.


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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Martin Schulze]

Frank Küster wrote:
> > * Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-05 18:48]:
> >> I also asked the DPL a question about backups of the development
> >> machines (after the CVS corruption last year) and never got any answer.
> >
> > FWIW, there is a dedicated backup server now.  I don't know any
> > details though (nor why it was never announced).
> 
> So you also don't know what is backed up, and how often?

I've just looked in my archive and have to admit that I indeed
totally forgot to announce this service.  I guess one reason for
the missing announcement is that the machine broke down two weeks
after its installation and the "real" machine proposed for this task
hasn't arrived yet, so we had to go with a backup solution.

The missing announcement is totally my fault, so please don't blame
any DPL for this.  I'll craft a text later to be sent to d-d-a.

Regards,

Joey

-- 
Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.


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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven - questions to DPL candidates

[Sune Vuorela]

Hi!

Just a small question:

Do all of you have many spare hours in your current schedules? Or what
part of your debian work would get lower priorities if you get elected?

Or are you planning to toss out your TV, dump your girlfriend or hire a
garden keeper ?


If other of your debian work get a lower priority, how would you make
sure that those tasks get properly done ?





/Sune


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Re: Reflections about the questions for the candidates

[Frank Küster]

Martin Schulze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The missing announcement is totally my fault, so please don't blame
> any DPL for this.  

I don't think this is the point.  If the DPL had cared about the problem
and about transparency, he'd asked you how the service is running and
why it hasn't been announced yet; or he had assigned one of the DPL
team members to do that.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)

Re: Question for all candidates: what mistake will you _not_ make?

[Steve McIntyre]

On Sat, Mar 04, 2006 at 02:13:42PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
>Hi,
>
>During DPL campaigning, it seems "in" for candidates to propose all
>sorts of Great Things they will try to do once elected. While this is
>obviously all interesting information, it leaves out something that, I
>think, is also fairly important: the things you think previous DPLs have
>done wrongly, and that you intend to do differently.
>
>So, my question: please name anyth behaviour or act you've observed
>with previous DPLs (naming the name of the respective DPL is not
>required) that you think was a mistake, and which you will try not to
>make during your term?

One of the most important things for me is keeping people informed. In
the past, we have seen promises of regular communication that have not
been kept. That's one thing I will do my utmost to avoid.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.


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Re: What if you are not elected as DPL?

[Steve McIntyre]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 04:37:45PM +0100, Luk Claes wrote:
>Steve McIntyre wrote:
>> 
>> Firstly, my stated goals from my platform:
>> 
>>  1 Communications within the project
>>  2 Mailing lists and IRC
>>  3 Training and NM
>>  4 Openness within the project
>>  5 Technical standards
>>  6 Working effectively; asking for help
>> 
>> I believe most of these can be worked on by anyone, although some of
>> them (1 and 2) could really do with high-level support if they're
>> going to take off.
>
>You didn't really answer my first question: Would you also try to reach
>these goals if you're not elected DPL?

Oops, sorry!

Yes, I aim to work on these goals whether I'm elected or not.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"I can't ever sleep on planes ... call it irrational if you like, but I'm
 afraid I'll miss my stop" -- Vivek Dasmohapatra


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Re: Questions for all canidates

[Steve McIntyre]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 03:27:03PM -0500, Benjamin Seidenberg wrote:
>If you were not running for DPL, which of the other candiates would you 
>most likely vote for (or since you are running, rank as '2' on your 
>ballot)? Why?

Ouch, that's a nasty question! :-)

My own favourites of the other candidates are (currently) Jeroen and
AJ - see my rebuttal section when they're posted for more
information. I can't currently say for definite which _one_ of them
I'd prefer; I just don't know at the moment.

>Which of the other canidate's platform statements do you agree with, and 
>which do you not?

This is wandering off into rebuttals territory, so maybe it would be
better to return to the question later.

>If you are elected as DPL, do you think that you will try to
>implement any goals of the other candiates that weren't in your own
>platform?

To be honest, probably not directly. There's plenty work to be done
already without promising to do more. Helping and encouraging others
to work on those goals is more likely.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"I suspect most samba developers are already technically insane... Of
 course, since many of them are Australians, you can't tell." -- Linus Torvalds


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Re: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven - questions to DPL candidates

[Steve McIntyre]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 11:30:26PM +, Sune Vuorela wrote:
>Hi!

Hi Sune!

>Just a small question:
>
>Do all of you have many spare hours in your current schedules? Or what
>part of your debian work would get lower priorities if you get elected?
>
>Or are you planning to toss out your TV, dump your girlfriend or hire a
>garden keeper ?

I delayed announcing my intention to stand for DPL so that I could
negotiate an agreement with my current employer to free up more time
if needed. Both my alloted vacation days and unpaid leave are an
option as/when I might need to devote large chunks of time to DPL
work.

>If other of your debian work get a lower priority, how would you make
>sure that those tasks get properly done ?

I've already posted asking for help on my bigger packages. The highest
priority work I currently do for Debian is as a member of the CD team,
IMHO. There is scope for others to pick up some of the work I've been
doing, but I must admit that I'd expect there to be some (more)
slowdown in the development I've been planning for debian-cd.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Every time you use Tcl, God kills a kitten." -- Malcolm Ray


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Re: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven - questions to DPL candidates

[Ted Walther]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 11:30:26PM +, Sune Vuorela wrote:

Do all of you have many spare hours in your current schedules? Or what
part of your debian work would get lower priorities if you get elected?

Or are you planning to toss out your TV, dump your girlfriend or hire a
garden keeper ?

If other of your debian work get a lower priority, how would you make
sure that those tasks get properly done ?


My packages are fairly low maintenance.  They don't take up much of my
time.  DPL duties wouldn't interfere with them at all.

Ted

--
 It's not true unless it makes you laugh,   
but you don't understand it until it makes you weep.


Eukleia: Ted Walther
Address: 5690 Pioneer Ave, Burnaby, BC  V5H2X6 (Canada)
Contact: 604-430-4973


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Re: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven - questions to DPL candidates

[Ted Walther]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 11:30:26PM +, Sune Vuorela wrote:

Do all of you have many spare hours in your current schedules? Or what
part of your debian work would get lower priorities if you get elected?

Or are you planning to toss out your TV, dump your girlfriend or hire a
garden keeper ?

If other of your debian work get a lower priority, how would you make
sure that those tasks get properly done ?


My packages are fairly low maintenance.  They don't take up much of my
time.  DPL duties wouldn't interfere with them at all.

Ted

--
 It's not true unless it makes you laugh,   
but you don't understand it until it makes you weep.


Eukleia: Ted Walther
Address: 5690 Pioneer Ave, Burnaby, BC  V5H2X6 (Canada)
Contact: 604-430-4973


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Questions For Ted (Jonathan) Walther

[David Nusinow]

Hi Ted,
  In your platform you write the following:

   "After ten years, I am still using Debian as my developement, server,
   and multimedia desktop platform. It is the best Linux developers
   platform in the world. It is also an excellent server platform. Alas, I
   can't say that about the Desktop. When a close relative got frustrated
   with virii on her Windows boxes, I chose to put Ubuntu on it. I didn't
   have time to hunt down a dozen different install and netinst cdroms,
   which may or may not be current, and may or may not work. I didn't have
   time to spend days configuring audio, printing, and X windows, and the
   rest of the desktop for her. 

   Are we going to take that lying down? Is that where we want Debian to
   go?"

  My question to you is what have you done yourself to resolve these
issues? Have you contributed to the utnubu project? Have you worked on the
udev package at all which automatically configures audio and other drivers?
I'll note that you didn't contribute to the discover packages which have
been classically used in Debian for such issues. Have you helped with any
of the cups-related packages? I'll also note that you didn't help on the X
issues because I was the one managing that with the help of several others. 

  Furthermore, if you haven't lifted your head out of your own packages for
enough time to help with these issues, what do you plan to do to help with
them in the future? Do you plan to actively contribute and lead by example?
If so, in what areas and how? Or do you plan to simply delegate the
responsibility to others, thereby allowing yourself to take it lying down?

  Finally, where is it that you want Debian to go with respect to the
desktop-related issues? Do you feel that it's your responsibility to help
get us there whether you are elected DPL or not?

 - David Nusinow


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Re: Democracy in Debian

[Don Armstrong]

On Mon, 06 Mar 2006, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 07:26:34AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > >> Which only goes to show that you really do not understand
> > >> how Debian works. Are you not aware that vote have already been
> > >> audited before? That anyone with root on master already has access
> > >> to all ballots? That the DPL's can ask an audot to be poerformed
> > >> anyway?
> > > I didn't see such a specific DPL power in the constitution. Would it
> > > fall under the general phrasing of 5.1.4?
> > I would think so. That is a general catch all.
> 
> Really, for public votes, just about anyone could reasonably request
> the information necessary to do an audit if they thought it was that
> important -- it's only for DPL votes that there's any point keeping
> any of the information secret.

Indeed; in fact if this is really a big deal it may be useful to just
make the mailbox acessible[1] after the fact for the non-DPL
elections.

> I guess the decryption key for encrypted ballots would be of some
> issue, but that's about it.

Presumably the decryption key could be unlocked after the election and
placed alongside the balots; since it should expire and be revoked
after the completion of the vote, this shouldn't pose much of a
problem.


Don Armstrong

1: I'm always one for drowning budding conspiracy theorists in mounds
of data, though.
-- 
America was far better suited to be the World's Movie Star. The
world's tequila-addled pro-league bowler. The world's acerbic bi-polar
stand-up comedian. Anything but a somber and tedious nation of
socially responsible centurions.
 -- Bruce Sterling, _Distraction_ p122

http://www.donarmstrong.com  http://rzlab.ucr.edu


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