Re: Question for all candidates: Release process
(And to answer to the comment ‘you do not need to be DPL for doing this’, that is true, but if I make a bad score at this election, I will conclude that there are not many persons interested in what I propose anyway, and will save everybody's time by not discussing them further in the short term.) Now, I think thats the wrong conclusion. While it should be pretty known that I am not really a fan of you getting DPL, I have one remark about the above: - A good idea should (unless its constitutional required, but what is?) not be bound to a DPL term. - A lost election might not mean that the ideas are all bad. (It can mean it). It might just mean they are presented wrong, or that everyone thinks they got presented wrong/at wrong time/at wrong place. -- bye, Joerg I'm not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to Hell? -- 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/8739zjlhra@gkar.ganneff.de
Re: Question for all candidates: Release process
Le Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 11:03:00AM +0800, Paul Wise a écrit : I find that attitude problematic. When electing a DPL we get a package deal. Some of each candidates ideas are liked by some/many, others disliked by some/many. It would be a shame to throw out good ideas with bad ones. Le Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 09:16:41AM +0200, Joerg Jaspert a écrit : - A good idea should (unless its constitutional required, but what is?) not be bound to a DPL term. - A lost election might not mean that the ideas are all bad. (It can mean it). It might just mean they are presented wrong, or that everyone thinks they got presented wrong/at wrong time/at wrong place. Hi Joerg and Paul, you are completely right, and that why I moderated my comment by finishing it with ‘in the short term’ :) Cheers, -- Charles -- 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/20100329072751.ga4...@kunpuu.plessy.org
Re: Question to all candidates: DPL's role in important package maintenance
On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 8:27 PM, Kumar Appaiah a.ku...@alumni.iitm.ac.in wrote: My question to you is, do you envision a role for the DPL in fixing such inadequate maintenance of important packages, or are you of the opinion that is it up to the affected Debian community to stop whining and step up with some action themselves? I think my view is somewhat in the middle. I do not think that the DPL should be constantly checking on every maintainer or team in order to see if their job is being done correctly, or meddle with people that are generally doing their job right. However, when such an issue is brought to the DPL attention, I believe that it's part of the DPL role to help in finding the solution that's best for Debian, acting as a sort of mediator. In the particular case of the Python packages that was linked, I agree that the correct place to bring the issue to was the tech ctte, but keeping the DPL involved was also a good idea, because the DPL can help by organizing meetings and the like. Regarding your second question, posted to zack: The method adopted for resolution of this conflict has, for better or for worse, happened behind-the-scenes. Now, some in the project feel that this is the best way to avoid a conflagration of sorts, but others feel that this back channel approach does not augur well for a project which strives to adopt open procedures. Would you, as DPL, facilitate such negotiations in the open (for instance, on a publicly viewable mailing list), or under wraps? I've been thinking about this myself, for a while. If I'm elected, I'd like to have a most viewable point of contact that goes through RT or a similar interface, so that requests are easy to track and follow. I'm not sure if the current installation of RT for Debian would be well suited for this purpose, but in case it isn't, it's probably easy to find one solution that is well suited I'm also not sure if redirecting leader@ to that system would be alright, because it might break an expectation of privacy from certain people. But I'd definitely like to have an open by default policy, and have closed conversations only when the subject of the conversation requires it. -- 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/e8bbf0361003291203r9400a3er7dc2791d15e6f...@mail.gmail.com
Re: planet.debian.org is RC buggy (?)
On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 9:39 AM, Frank Lin PIAT fp...@klabs.be wrote: planet.d.o has became one of the most visible media for Debian, if not the most visible one. Do you think it is a good thing? As has been already said, I'm not sure it's the most visible media. If it is, it's probably because we are failing to communicate properly by other means, and we should work on improving other areas of communication, not on stopping planet. DFSG / rc-buggy ¨¨¨ I consider blogs as non-free, proprietary material (a very few have a proper license, the distribution media s*cks anyway). Breaks DFSG #1: A document (HowTo...) published on planet can't be distributed in Debian main. Is this a problem? Breaks DFSG #3: Derived work aren't allowed. In the few case where it is legally possible, it is difficult to merge and publish the updated version. Is this a problem? Breaks DFSG #2: No source for stuffs like charts and graphs (HTML is a valid source here). Is this a problem? As has been already pointed out (sorry I got late to the thread), mailing lists suffer from the same issue. Blogs and mailing lists are just two different forms of communications, and I don't think that either of them should be stopped because the authors retain their copyrights. Opacity ¨¨¨ Replying to a blog entry is very difficult. The replies and the original posted aren't available side-by-side. The comments aren't available on Debian planet (a kind of censorship). Actually, some blog even forbid comments! Is this a problem? No, it's not a problem. People can do whatever they want with their blogs. If they don't want comments, they'll receive feedback some other way, or they won't, but that's not censorship. The content isn't archived. Is this a problem? a feature? All important content should be also posted somewhere else. Either a mailing list, a wiki page, a documentation file inside a package, or whatever is appropriate. Unimportant information doesn't need to get archived. Community ¨ Do you think Debian Planet reflects the fact that Debian is a community where people collaborate? Do you think planet encourage collaboration? A little bit. The main point of having a planet is being able to quickly see what the other developers are up to, be it personal or project related. When it's project related, sometimes it helps by getting more people involved or spreading some news. However, this is only a side effect, not the core of the planet. Do you think Debian Planet reflects the fact that Debian encourages to constitute teams? Do you think planet encourage that? I don't, but I don't think it's relevant to what planet is for. Do you see a shift in recognizing people for their communication skill (and/or committed time to communicate), rather that their actual work? No. What would you suggest and/or do? Nothing regarding planet. I *DO* want to improve on communication. Giving more visibility both to the DeveloperNews and to the news.debian.net sites, and having more information available to users. -- 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/e8bbf0361003291228x4e09cf78h705454af0b0a8...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Questions for all candidates: decentralization of power
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Clint Adams sch...@debian.org wrote: Well, in the paid employment part of my life, I have been put in positions where I have needed to work with people I disliked, and it is not considered professional to refuse on those grounds. Indeed, I guess most of us have gone through similar situations. The difference is mainly what you are already emphasizing: in paid employment, you get paid for your work. In volunteer work, you do it because you want to, nobody can force you to work with someone you don't like, you can just walk away and stop working on that area of the project. Would you consider it appropriate me to refuse to acknowledge bugs or patches from anyone I consider to be a bad person? If not, why would it be appropriate for someone to refuse to collaborate in other ways? I don't think that refusing to fix a bug is comparable to refusing to work on the same team as someone else. We theoretically all want good things for Debian here, even if we disagree on most of the details. Letting groups of people with privileged access maintain their own membership creates a power imbalance that I believe has led to much trouble in the past. I think it forms cliques and cabals, and encourages territoriality. Do you disagree? No, I don't disagree. I would very much prefer that all teams were open and that even taking into account personal differences people could be able to work together towards a common goal. However, I realize that it's not an easy problem to solve, because if the DPL (or whoever is delegated by the DPL to do this) goes around imposing members to teams, or switching members willy-nilly, it would definitely lead to a lot of frustration and resignations. I think that the DPL can talk to the involved parties and make some recommendations, but anything more forceful would be received with a lot of resistance and lead to loss of people. So, I once again turn the question to you, since this was what I intended to ask before, but didn't get the reply I wanted. If you were elected DPL, how would you go about supervising team membership? -- 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/e8bbf0361003291242xeb129cbr4a60b78cfc3a6...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Questions for all candidates: decentralization of power
Clint Adams sch...@debian.org writes: Well, in the paid employment part of my life, I have been put in positions where I have needed to work with people I disliked, and it is not considered professional to refuse on those grounds. In Debian I receive bug reports from people I might dislike, but I treat those just the same as I do from anyone else. Don't you think this conflicts somewhat both with Debian being a volunteer project and with the overall goal that a lot of us have to have fun doing Debian work? (Which, even if not a universally-accepted goal, certainly makes it easier to find more resources.) I'd much rather try to apply the standard Fidonet/Usenet advice: do not intentionally offend, and do not be too easily offended. There are some significant differences between professional behavior for which I'm being paid, and what I do in my free time. While there aren't many people involved in Debian who would fall into that category for me, there have been a small handful who I'm not willing to work closely with unless I'm being paid to do so and hence have some compensation for the amount of time, energy, and emotional drain involved. Would you consider it appropriate me to refuse to acknowledge bugs or patches from anyone I consider to be a bad person? If not, why would it be appropriate for someone to refuse to collaborate in other ways? Some forms of collaboration are considerably closer than others. Bugs and patches tend to be mostly one-time interactions at a distance, not real time, and involving only a few back-and-forth exchanges. That's a lot different than working with someone regularly on tasks for months or years at a time. There are a lot of behaviors that I can easily tolerate in the course of a bug discussion or patch exchange that would drain me of emotional energy and resources if I were putting up with them for months on end. It's a question of energy for me. If I have to devote energy to working with people who are active emotional drains, that's energy that's not going to improving Debian or doing other things I find worthwhile, and if that balance gets too out of whack, I'll just stop doing things for Debian. The net result is that the project as a whole ends up with fewer resources and more problems. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- 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/87zl1qew3a@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: Standardization, large scale changes, innovations
On Thu, Mar 25 2010, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Hello, those questions are for all candidates. By standardization I mean that something should be used as default tool unless reasons exist to use something else This is great!! perhaps we can get rid of the abomination that is vi and get everyone to use the one true editor all at once. What did you say? What difference does it make what tool is used when the result is equal? What a silly idea. The concept that rules and policies dictate interfaces and standards rather than implementation seem so antiquated. In the name of standardization we can stifle all variation and innovation. Ah, needless conformity, the hobgoblin of ... manoj -- The Official Colorado State Vegetable is now the state legislator. Manoj Srivastava sriva...@acm.org http://www.golden-gryphon.com/ 4096R/C5779A1C E37E 5EC5 2A01 DA25 AD20 05B6 CF48 9438 C577 9A1C -- 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/871vf7vf73@anzu.internal.golden-gryphon.com
