Question: Why do you [not] candidate?

2009-03-27 Thread Giacomo A. Catenazzi

Hello,

The question seems very simple: Why do you [not] candidate?,
but I'm looking more about:
- Why only two candidates ?
- Is it good for campaign and discussions?
- Why so low interest for DPL?

ciao
cate


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Re: Amendment: automatic expiry-on-failure, to Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions

2009-03-27 Thread MJ Ray
Frans Pop  wrote:
> MJ Ray wrote:
> > Replace clause c with "c) if a year has passed, starting from the
> > proposal of a general resolution, without any proposal receiving the
> > required number of seconds, then this resolution expires and the
> > required number of seconds returns to K."
>
> Although I understand where this is coming from, I have fairly strong 
> reservations about coding something like this in the constitution. For 
> one thing at some point we'd need yet another GR to revert the text to 
> its old form if the "experiment" were to fail.

I don't understand: the motivation for my amendments is to avoid
having yet another GR if the experiment were to fail... because if
the experiment fails, that means we don't have a viable GR process,
which means we're stuck and are responsible for running the project
aground.  I've been there, done that and want to avoid it here.

If the experiment succeeds (GR-2Q or whatever works fine), then it
needs another GR to make the increased seconding more permanent, but
that's as trivial as a GR can be.  The argument will be over and it'll
be a simple evidence-based decision IMO.

Hope that explains,
-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct


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Re: Amendment: automatic expiry-on-failure, to Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions

2009-03-27 Thread Wouter Verhelst
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 06:38:30PM +0100, Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 01:52:43PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 08:43:16AM +, MJ Ray wrote:
> > > AMENDMENT START
> > > 
> > > Replace "too small" with "thought to be too small, but there is a
> > > lack of evidence about the correct level".
> > > 
> > > Replace clause c with "c) if a year has passed, starting from the 
> > > proposal of a general resolution, without any proposal receiving the
> > > required number of seconds, then this resolution expires and the
> > > required number of seconds returns to K."
> > > 
> > > AMENDMENT END
> > 
> > Seconded.
> 
> What exactly are you seconding?  This is a proposal that modifies
> *3* of the other proposals.

Eh, not the way I read that. But, well, this amendment as applied to the
original proposal by Jorg.

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DPL 2009 election draft

2009-03-27 Thread Kurt Roeckx
Hi,

This is a draft for the 2009 DPL election ballot.

==
 Voting period starts  00:00:00 UTC on Sunday,   March 29th, 2009
 Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC on Saturday, April 11th, 2009

This vote is being conducted as required by the Debian Constitution.
You may see the constitution at http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution.
For voting questions contact secret...@debian.org.

The details of the candidate platforms can be found at:
http://www.debian.org/vote/2009/platforms/

HOW TO VOTE

First, read the full text of the platforms and rebuttals.

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 3.
You may skip numbers.  You may rank options equally (as long as all
choices X you make fall in the range 1 <= X <= 3).

Please read the platforms in detail.

To vote "no, no matter what" rank "None Of The Above" as more
desirable than the unacceptable choices, or you may rank the "None Of
The Above" 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 None Of
The Above choice is unranked, then it is equal to all other unranked
choices, if any -- no special consideration is given to the None Of
The Above choice by the voting software).

Then mail the ballot to: leader2...@vote.debian.org.
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.  You may, if you
wish, choose to send a signed, encrypted ballot. Devotee accepts mail
that either contains only an unmangled OpenPGP message (RFC 2440
compliant), or a PGP/MIME mail (RFC 3156 compliant).

- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
a9ccc78e-785a-4762-a24a-ca59fe9b2dfe
[   ] Choice 1: Stefano Zacchiroli
[   ] Choice 2: Steve McIntyre
[   ] Choice 3: None Of The Above
- - -=-=-=-=-=- 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
secretary, is appended below.

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Re: What will improve Debian most?

2009-03-27 Thread Anthony Towns
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 04:49:21PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Anthony Towns  writes:
> > Over the next twelve months, what single development/activity/project
> > is going to improve Debian's value the most? By how much? How will
> > you be involved?
> Maybe you meant to ask "what are you going to work on over the next twelve
> months that will improve Debian's value?"  Because the right answer to
> "what one thing is going to improve $FOO the most in the next twelve
> months," for pretty much any value of $FOO, is "ask us in twelve months
> and we'll tell you."

Well, there was that bonus question, which asked about the previous
twelve months, that I haven't seen any answers to. I'm not sure it's
actually any easier to answer, tbh.

Ultimately, I don't see any problem asking what people see as the biggest
forthcoming improvement for Debian though; sure it's impossible to say for
certain, and most people will pick something that's somewhere between the
second most important thing and the hundredth. But that's still useful
and interesting; and finding out what other people are focussing on in
preference to what you think is most important is interesting no matter
who ends up being right.

FWIW, I chose the focus ("what's important, how will you help" rather
than "what are you doing, why's that important") deliberately. Maybe the
best thing for Debian is something that you can't work on directly --
but it can still help to identify that thing, both so the people who
are working on it feel appreciated, and so people who could help if only
they were aware of the challenge become aware of it and do help.

> Personally, here's some things that I plan on working on over the next
> twelve months that I think will improve Debian's value:
> * [...]
> None of these are exponential and I don't care about percentages with any
> of them.  I'm okay with that.  I don't think those are useful measures,
> and I don't think exponential growth is a useful or interesting goal.

I thought about this some more, and wrote up some of those thoughts on my
blog at [0]. YMMV obviously.

I'd still be interested in seeing how much of an effect you think those
changes will have (and for whom), FWIW. 

It'd be nice to know what people's actual priorities are these days, in
some way that's independent from people pointing blindly at the social
contract at just repeating "our users and free software". Are Debian
developers mostly interested in doing things that help themselves? Other
developers? People who file bugs? People in their LUGs? How about Ubuntu
or Eee or Mi users? Desktop or server users? Embedded stuff? Upstream
developers? Something else entirely?

> One thousand people all improving the parts of Debian that they care about
> produces incredibly impressive results.

Yes, that's completely true. To double Debian's usefulness, 1000 people
only need to individually contribute a change that improves Debian's
usefulness by a little less than 0.07%. (1.000693387..^1000 = 2) If you
somehow had a thousand people that each increased Debian's value by an
appreciable amount, say just 1.5%, you'd get an overall 292,443,586%
improvement -- that's higher than Zimbabwe's annualised inflation rate
[1].

Which is to say, definitely, and I don't think that sense of things --
that a lot of people each contributing in small amounts adds up amazingly
-- is incompatible with making numerical estimates.

For comparison, my estimate of the value of a small speedup on m68k
was a 0.2% improvement, which is already quite a bit better than the
0.07% above.

If it turns out Debian's aiming for a thousand 0.07% improvements,
there's no point identifying which is the 0.071% improvement and which
is the 0.069% improvement; but getting an idea of the scale is still
useful. Personally, as was probably implicit in my examples, I think
there's at least a handful of 10% or better improvements that could
happen over the next year or two.

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 06:04:47PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> I should probably note here that it looked like Anthony had carefully
> phrased his question to apply to the entire project, not just the DPL
> candidates, and I replied in that context.  If it was intended as a DPL
> candidate question, er, never mind.  :)

It was something that I think DPL candidates ought to be able to provide
some interesting answers for; but I'm more interested in the question
(or its answer) than in how particular people happen to respond to it. In
other words, thanks for the answer. :)

Cheers,
aj

[0] http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2009/03/28/exponential-growth

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/09/zimbabwe



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