Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
Le Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 08:18:00AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog a écrit : Imagine a DD contacts you, she wants to setup an infrastructure to finance Debian related projects (i.e. paying people to enable them to work on the projects that they'd like to do for Debian) but she wants to avoid the main mistakes made during Dunc-Tank; in her project: - everybody can propose projects to be financed - the projects to be financed are selected by the Debian developers and by the donors - eligible projects can only concern new developements and not recurring tasks Hi Raphaël, I see two separate processes in the infrastructure that you describe above: - A meeting point where project proposers can find potential sponsors. - An endorsment system where the Debian project supports project that meet some criteria. I wonder if there are already existing platforms where projects can be proposed for funding. The Google Summer of Code is a very special example, but there may be more generalist ones. Why not simply use them instead of setting up a new infrastructure? Then for the endorsement, I would propose to nominate delegates after discussion on debian-project, if we find volunteers to deal with the requests for official blessings. What I like in your proposal is that the projects will need a donor, as opposed to directly use Debian money. I think that showing the capacity of finding a donor is an important filter before engaging a contractual relationship with people to deliver software developments. Also it is important to decide the person and the price at the same time as proposing the project, and leave to the donor the decision whether the price is reasonable. For an global project like Debian, it is a very difficult problem to solve, as one hour of development has radically different costs around the world… Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100313083648.ge11...@kunpuu.plessy.org
Re: Question to all the candidates: time
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 2:56 AM, Paul Wise p...@debian.org wrote: #include stdtimequestion.h How much time do you currently devote to Debian? How will that amount of time change for the DPL term? How will you balance your DPL time and time for other Debian activities. Currently, I'm devoting only a small portion of my free time to Debian, a daily hour keeping updated with mailing-lists, news, and the like and some bug fixing here and there, also a little mentoring towards local contributors. All in all, it doesn't amount to too many hours. This is because after the organization of DebConf8 I needed to reduce the hours spent on Debian in order to keep sanity, so I haven't been as active or involved as I was before. However, I'm ready now to start devoting much more time towards Debian, regardless of the result of the election. If I'm not elected, I'll be working hard during the next months towards bug finding/fixing for squeeze. If I'm elected I guess that I won't have time for that, since practically all my free time would have to go to being DPL. At least, that's what I hear from former DPLs: just replying to lea...@d.o eats up most of the DPL's time. -- Besos, Marga -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e8bbf0361003130720se9b9a8cu95d139248bd63...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 4:18 AM, Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org wrote: Imagine a DD contacts you, she wants to setup an infrastructure to finance Debian related projects (i.e. paying people to enable them to work on the projects that they'd like to do for Debian) but she wants to avoid the main mistakes made during Dunc-Tank; in her project: - everybody can propose projects to be financed - the projects to be financed are selected by the Debian developers and by the donors - eligible projects can only concern new developements and not recurring tasks This sounds quite similar to how the GSoC is done. The main problem in this scenario is actually finding the sponsors to pay for the developers, and then control that the projects get done as expected. What advice would you give her? What other pitfalls from Dunc-Tank must she pay attention to? We have already participated in a number of GSoCs (four, if I'm not mistaken), and it hasn't issued any social problems like Dunc Tank did. So, if there were to be other sponsors willing to pay for a similar thing, it's not likely that there would be a bad reaction towards it. However, if it's seen as a Debian thing, instead of an external thing like GSoC is, then it might lead to some resentment from the side of the people that don't get any money for their work. Do you have concrete suggestions for her on how it should be working? The main issue would be that the whole process should be very transparent. When money plays a role, it's very important that everybody knows what kind of money we are talking about, what the responsibilities of the people receiving the money are, and how the whole thing actually benefits Debian. Would you encourage her to go forward or would you try to convince her to forget this idea? I don't like it too much, so I would definitely not encourage it. I'd tell them to discuss this idea (with more details) on debian-project and see what the general opinion of the project is, and only decide to go forward with it or not after that. -- Besos, Marga -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e8bbf0361003130735y1a002efav2737b59c8025f...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Question to all Candidates: 2IC
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 12:55:38PM +0700, Paul Wise wrote:
I wonder if the questions period of the DPL elections would be more
productive if platforms were published beforehand?
FWIW, my platform is ready, if someone want to have a look before the
official publishing just ask me me, otherwise I believe the secretary
will publish all of them on Monday.
As a suggestion for future elections, this problem is easily solvable:
it is enough to request that platforms get sent to the secretary within
the candidacy time frame, to validate the self-nomination. That way we
would be able to use at best the campaigning period (even though I don't
think a couple of days of delay make _such_ a difference ...).
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
Hi, thanks for your answers! On Sat, 13 Mar 2010, Margarita Manterola wrote: On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 4:18 AM, Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org wrote: Imagine a DD contacts you, she wants to setup an infrastructure to finance Debian related projects (i.e. paying people to enable them to work on the projects that they'd like to do for Debian) but she wants to avoid the main mistakes made during Dunc-Tank; in her project: - everybody can propose projects to be financed - the projects to be financed are selected by the Debian developers and by the donors - eligible projects can only concern new developements and not recurring tasks This sounds quite similar to how the GSoC is done. The main problem in this scenario is actually finding the sponsors to pay for the developers, and then control that the projects get done as expected. Indeed, in GSoC, there's a mentor that takes a preliminary decision about the outcome (successful or not) of the project and reports are produced. Google then decides alone if he follows or not the decision of the mentor. How could that be transposed in the Debian case? Would a DD acting as external supervisor be enough? Or de we need a second layer review like Google does in the GSoC? However, if it's seen as a Debian thing, instead of an external thing like GSoC is, then it might lead to some resentment from the side of the people that don't get any money for their work. How can you avoid this? If you request donations for a specific purpose (projects improving Debian), how can you avoid being seen as a Debian thing? Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100313165233.gb10...@rivendell
Re: Question to all the candidates: time
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 12:56:17PM +0700, Paul Wise wrote:
#include stdtimequestion.h
Eh :-)
How much time do you currently devote to Debian? How will that amount
of time change for the DPL term? How will you balance your DPL time
and time for other Debian activities.
In the last few years, I've been able to devote quite some time to
Debian (as I believe it's evident from how much I've bothered planet.d.o
readers with my RCBW posts and the like). I'm not really sure I can
quantify it, but gun-pointed I'd say it is something like from 1 to 2
hours a day + 2 to 4 hours a week-end. Such time is currently scattered
among my various Debian activities (RCBW, OCaml package maintenance,
routine PTS maintenance and other QA tasks, python-debian/devscripts
hacking, ... in decreasing order of relevance +, of course, following
several mailing lists, including -devel).
I'm currently able to devote such (much) time to Debian mainly because
of luck: I work as a researched in a research project on FOSS
distributions [1] and inside the project contributing to Debian is a
respected activity. Soon I'll join a research center specifically
targeted at research on and round FOSS topics [2] and I don't see that
changing. Additionally, my boss is quite FOSS-sensitive and I've
discussed with him the potential scenario of my election. In that case,
I'll be allowed to take extra time for DPL tasks. Again, it is hard to
evaluate, but it can be something like 1 day/week for DPL tasks + trips
to conferences and the like.
Additionally, if elected, I will divert all my current Debian activity
to DPL activities. I've carefully evaluated the impact of my temporary
departure from my current Debian tasks, and I'm not worried they will
remain significantly unattended. I won't bother you with details (unless
you really want), but in most cases I'm part of active teams, what
remains out are just a handful of packages which will get orphaned or at
least RFH-ed.
Cheers.
[1] http://www.mancoosi.org
[2] http://www.cirill.org
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Question to all Candidates: 2IC
On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 05:10:25PM +0100, Michael Banck wrote:
FWIW, I think a 2IC is much more effective for outside-leaning
communication, i.e. filtering and/or answering leader@ mail (which
apparently can be overwhelming) and such, not for communication with
other project members or teams.
So, in fact, that's not that clear to me. I mean, the last of 2IC has
been Luk with Steve in the current term. In his platform Steve called
Luk an assistant DPL without detailing how tasks were split. To my
reading that means that tasks are effectively shared with no specific
partitioning. Accordingly, AJ when he first created the 2IC role [1],
established it as sharing the responsibilities of the DPL.
Your vision of the 2IC is much more reasonable, but I believe I will not
personally need it, if elected. For mail triaging I'm using since a
couple of years a work-flow GTD-like/inbox-zero and mails usually don't
linger that much in my INBOX, at least they do not linger there because
I don't have time to triage them. I'm confident I could triage way more
mail than what I receive now (but please don't play the game of trying
that on purpose :-))
Dealing with them is of course a different matter, but if you were
thinking about the overwhelming amount time of writing responses once a
decision has been taken, well, that can be either done by the DPL alone
or delegated on a case-by-case basis to appropriate teams like
-publicity, -press, or to new blood willing to help in that respect.
Cheers.
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/04/msg00015.html
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 08:18:00AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
Imagine a DD contacts you, she wants to setup an infrastructure to finance
Debian related projects (i.e. paying people to enable them to work on the
projects that they'd like to do for Debian) but she wants to avoid the
main mistakes made during Dunc-Tank; in her project:
First a few general thoughts of mine on the topic DDs/DMs getting paid
to do Debian work, then some answers to your more specific questions.
The fact that not all DDs are equal in terms of how/if they get paid for
their Debian work is, well, a fact. Personally, my work contract does
not mention Debian at all, but I'm nevertheless doing some Debian
activities during my work time and that is accepted, if not encouraged.
Some DDs are able to pursue specific Debian projects due to bounties
they put on the projects (both AJ and Raphael have similar initiatives
on their homepages, even though I don't know how much they are
successful in terms of customers). Some others work for companies
which heavily use specific packages and they are therefore paid to
maintain such packages in Debian.
There is nothing wrong with that. While all the above scenarios create
disparities, that's just life: as more and more the IT market gets
interested in FOSS, the more and more we will have people paid to work
on FOSS, and Debian is part of that. We cannot stop that.
Still, Debian is a peculiar distribution also because it is a volunteer
project, not explicitly run or supported (e.g. in its infrastructure) by
any single/specific company. That is a value: we should protect it, we
should *advertise* it (i.e. state clearly that in Debian money do not
drive decisions!), and we should never become *dependent* on specific
founding schemes.
According to this view of mine, the scenario created by the DD
contacting the DPL about such a proposition is dangerous, mainly because
it is a DD which is proposing it, leading to a potential conflict of
interest.
What advice would you give her?
I would advice her, as a DD, to refrain from organizing that.
A bit of history. IIRC, the Dunc-Tank affair has gone through two
consequent problems. The first one was the proposal to use Debian money
to pay DDs. That proposal was taken back, since it was obvious that most
DDs were against. Then, the proposal was still pursued, now by
externalizing fund raising. Still, on the board of the organizers of the
(now) external activity, there were several DDs, including the DPL
himself. That was enough of a reason for unhappiness shared by a lot of
project members.
I've personally learned a lesson from the experience: explicit founding
of Debian activity should be *disjoint* from the project, both in terms
of where the money come from, and in terms of who are the people
organizing the machinery.
(For full disclosure and as an additional note: back then in Dunc-Tank I
was not against external founding. However, the fact that it was
_still_ that much controversial and flame-prone is enough of a reason,
for me as potential DPL, to discourage any DDs/DMs for attempting it
again. The benefits of the founding can be totally overtaken by the
disadvantages of troubles created in the community.)
So, given that my main perplexities come from the fact that a DD is
involved in organizing all this, you can imagine I wouldn't mind: a
company doing that (which is already the case for Google with GSoC), a
non-DD/DM doing that, or even a DD/DM retiring from the project *to* do
that.
What other pitfalls from Dunc-Tank must she pay attention to?
She should pay attention to the fact that she is a DD. According to my
vision, that would then become a blocker to go forward.
Do you have concrete suggestions for her on how it should be working?
Would you encourage her to go forward or would you try to convince her to
forget this idea?
In the end, it turns out I've already answered to these above :-)
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 07:01:21PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: So, given that my main perplexities come from the fact that a DD is involved in organizing all this, you can imagine I wouldn't mind: a company doing that (which is already the case for Google with GSoC), a non-DD/DM doing that, or even a DD/DM retiring from the project *to* do that. Replying here, but that could well have gone in another sub-thread: Note that GSoc is supposed to sponsor students to do some development work, preferably with the purpose of getting these people involved in a project they weren't involved in to begin with. Considering this, I think there are good reasons GSoC didn't get the flames that DuncTank had. Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100313181141.ga12...@glandium.org
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
Raphael, On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 17:52:33 +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Sat, 13 Mar 2010, Margarita Manterola wrote: However, if it's seen as a Debian thing, instead of an external thing like GSoC is, then it might lead to some resentment from the side of the people that don't get any money for their work. How can you avoid this? If you request donations for a specific purpose (projects improving Debian), how can you avoid being seen as a Debian thing? Compare Random Joe Developer is soliciting funding for his debian work vs Debian is soliciting funding for Random Joe Developer's debian work. The former is fine IMO, has no risk of being seen as a Debian thing, and can be done without involving the DPL or anyone besides Random Joe. Why do you think Debian as a project, or the DPL, should be involved in this? Cheers, Julien signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 05:11, Mike Hommey m...@glandium.org wrote: Note that GSoc is supposed to sponsor students to do some development work, preferably with the purpose of getting these people involved in a project they weren't involved in to begin with. That's not, per se, accurate. From the GSoC FAQ: Many of our past participants had never participated in an open-source project before GSoC; others used the GSoC stipend as an opportunity to concentrate fully on their existing open source coding activities over the summer. Many of our 'graduates' have later become program mentors. -- http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/faqs#what_is Google only funds students, and only funds development work, but apart from that, exactly what's worked on and what the aim is is left up to the project. Considering this, I think there are good reasons GSoC didn't get the flames that DuncTank had. Probably the major reason is just that Google remain much more interested in avoiding flame wars than I was with dunc-tank. For instance when someone criticises Google for GSoC, people will come to its defence, even when the criticism's legitimate; nobody's made much effort to do that for dunc-tank, including me, including when it was running. There's a number of features in that vein in general: the money is fixed as are the overall terms so there's simply no room for debate, a lot of it's done in forum that are only open to people who are already participating, people who do generate controversy and arguments about it tend to not be invited to participate again next year, and there are plenty of free and open source projects involved so there's a fair bit of social proof that it doesn't screw up projects. Similar things apply in Debian -- the people who get to judge the applications are the ones who've signed up to be potential mentors, and hence have already indicated they approve of the overall idea at least in principle. A major factor in avoiding the arguments, in my opinion, is also that GSoC is restricted to students. That means a bunch of Debian contributors naturally can't apply, which in some sense avoids the sense of unfairness that many people who are doing good work aren't getting funded equivalently -- of course they aren't, they're not students. It also avoids the concern that some people will end up getting jobs via GSoC -- people generally only get to be students for a few years, after which they can't keep being part of GSoC. To some extent it also avoids the problem of differentiating the people who decide who should get paid and who gets paid (you don't want people deciding to pay themselves, generally) -- if you're a student you apply for funding, if you're not, you're a mentor; and Google adds a specific rule that you can't be a mentor and apply for funding to do away with the occassional edge case. But all that aside, GSoC still gets some flames on Debian lists; see the thread on -devel from about this time last year, eg: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/04/msg00424.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/04/msg00431.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/04/msg00441.html Out of free and open source projects, Debian isn't the most amenable to funding and corporate sponsorship. There are (demonstrably) ways to manage that though, and if you're interested in stress-testing funding ideas, well, it's a particularly good supplier of stress in this area. ;) As far as DPLness is concerned, I (as DPL) was an GSoC admin in the first year Debian participated in GSoC, and I think it would've been difficult for Debian to join without at least the DPL's support via a prompt delegation so that someone was authorised to register the project with Google and setup mentors and so forth. (I'm pretty sure the lack of a quick response was what meant we missed out in participating in the first year Google ran GSoC; that both would've required a very quick response though, and it's possible letting other projects try these things first and only adopting things proven to work is a good idea anyway) Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns a...@erisian.com.au -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87b3a4191003131439j3ec57c0cqe3ca706547678...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Question to all Candidates: 2IC
On Sat, 13 Mar 2010, Margarita Manterola wrote: There are a bunch listed in my yet-to-be-published platform. But just to give an example from the previous mail, I'd like to have a page with rankings of people reporting and fixing bugs, in order to give some nice Debian merchandise to the ones that help the most, but I don't think I'd have the time to organize the whole thing myself. This is actually something that I've been meaning to get to for quite a while; if there is someone who is interested in working on this and/or helping me to get it whipped up into shape, I'd appreciate the help. [I had asked Steve about this in Argentina, and he was supportive, but unfortunatly I haven't done anything more about it since then.] Don Armstrong -- This message brought to you by weapons of mass destruction related program activities, and the letter G. http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100314021850.gu20...@volo.donarmstrong.com
Question to all Candidate: In ten years...
Hello =) Please finish In ten years I'd like Debian --Dima -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/86ecb3c71003131835uaa3e0f7q5708cabdf99c7...@mail.gmail.com
Question to all Candidates: Heated discussions
Hello =) Sometimes technical Debian discussions (mailing lists, bug reports, blog posts, etc.) become personal flame-wars. Do you think current frequency/amount of heated discussions is acceptable for the Debian project? What would you do to reduce those? --Dima. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/86ecb3c71003131840j23d35b0au5c5c265019c99...@mail.gmail.com
Question to all the candidates: communication
Dear candidates, Debian has a lot of project communications media; lists, forums, IRC, planet, bts, RT. There are also a lot of external communications media covering Debian; news media, , social networks, blogs, microblogging sites non-IRC chat, video sites and so on. Which project and external Debian-related communications media do you follow? and contribute to? As well as a general list I'm interested in specific lists (for eg #debian, #debian-devel, debian-de...@l.d.o, debian-proj...@l.d.o, the Hardware forum on forums.d.n etc). How do you see those two lists changing if you become DPL? Which of these communications media do you feel is important for the DPL to read? Please breifly comment on how you see Debian's relationship with some of these media. Do you feel any of these media have been misused by Debian people (DDs/non-DDs alike)? If so, what action would you take if you become DPL? Do you feel the general tone and perception of Debian is positive on the media that you follow? What action would you take to improve these if you become DPL? -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e13a36b31003131917w12368dbfo5d7ada032b565...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 05:01, Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org wrote: Some DDs are able to pursue specific Debian projects due to bounties they put on the projects (both AJ and Raphael have similar initiatives on their homepages, even though I don't know how much they are successful in terms of customers). Unless you mean some other AJ, that's not right. I mean, technically I guess I haven't removed the page for that I had back in 2005, but I don't think it's linked from anywhere anymore except maybe old blog posts; Google doesn't see any links anyway. I think I got about $100 out of bounties all up. For anyone who cares, I blogged about the concept at: http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/10/04/the-aj-market http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/10/18/aj-market-update And the stuff that got done with that was: http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/10/10/usercategories-and-other-miscellania (BTS usertags, usercategories) http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/10/16/tiffani (apt pdiffs) http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/10/26/debugging-debootstrap (debootstrap miscellania) http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/11/06/britneys-memory-management (testing scripts memory management) It was fun and educational, but covered about a month's worth of broadband. OTOH, I was lucky enough to be able to get a couple of ideas directly funded at a more useful level (about $2000 AUD from Andrew Pollock and about $3000 USD from HP iirc). http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/11/17/afraid-of-your-neighbours-disapproval http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/11/26/the-niv2-plot http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/11/26/queue-building http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/12/06/security-infrastructure-changes http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/12/12/changing-the-security-infrastructure http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/12/21/dak-dsa -- support for unembargoed uploads http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/11/16/hacking-dak http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/12/msg00014.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/01/msg7.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-mirrors-announce/2006/02/msg0.html http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/a/apt/apt_0.7.25.3/changelog#versionversion0.6.44 http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/03/msg00014.html -- support for the mirror split and inclusion of amd64 I did get flamed for accepting money to work on the latter project while at the same time being an ftpmaster. But then I also got flamed for the AJ market thing. A bit of history. IIRC, the Dunc-Tank affair has gone through two consequent problems. The first one was the proposal to use Debian money to pay DDs. That proposal was taken back, since it was obvious that most DDs were against. For the record, it was taken back because /some/ DDs were /strongly/ against it. At that point there hadn't been a formal poll, and far more people had posted in support than against. It's been the appropriate number of years, so the thread could even be declassified now if someone wanted to go to the effort... The eventual dunc-tank implementation had a few ballots on it; there was the we recall the DPL (in order to disassociate ourselves with it) one [0], which failed by 277 votes to 48; there was the reaffirms support for the DPL; dunc-tank isn't a Debian project; wish success to projects funding Debian or helping the release of etch one [1] which succeeded by 227 votes to 93 (and was preferred to the proposed amendment reaffirm support for the DPL; but not endorse or support his other projects by 177 to 128 voters). Another set of resolutions were proposed to explicitly endorse dunc-tank or to tell the RMs to decline payment and donors not to donate [2] didn't receive sufficient seconds to be voted on. Personally, I guess I'm more surprised people are still inclined to raise the issue -- there never used to be that many people looking into funding DDs, and unlike back then, it's now obvious that there's not an insignificant amount of opposition to deal with if you are interested in trying something out. (For full disclosure and as an additional note: back then in Dunc-Tank I was not against external founding. However, the fact that it was _still_ that much controversial and flame-prone is enough of a reason, for me as potential DPL, to discourage any DDs/DMs for attempting it again. The benefits of the founding can be totally overtaken by the disadvantages of troubles created in the community.) One of the challenges of being DPL is working out when to let a few violently opposed people block projects and ideas being worked on, and when (and how) to put up with the flack, deal with their concerns and objections and continue anyway. Anything the leader tries to do will fall into one of two camps: no one will
