Re: Your opinion on Debian Maintainer status
On 2013-03-17 14:50, Moray Allan wrote: On 2013-03-17 00:13, Raphael Hertzog wrote: while reviewing the vote that introduced the Debian Maintainer status in 2007 (http://www.debian.org/vote/2007/vote_003_tally.txt) I noticed that Lucas voted in favor and that Moray voted against it. Moray, why did you vote against? I'll follow up to explain this soon, but I need to check a couple of things, in case I'm misremembering details from 2007. Part 2 of the full-disclosure answer: Does that still hold or did you change your mind in between? To all, what's your opinion on the DM status? Has it been effective? I am glad to have all the DMs as Debian contributors, and am happy to have helped a few on their way to DM status. But I still wonder if they should be automatically given project membership if we trust them to have the technical rights of the DM status, or should at least have a very easy fast-track to becoming members, rather than, as too often currently, being discouraged from becoming members. While aj's original proposal https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2007/03/msg00074.html left open the possibility that DMs might be allowed to vote, i.e. project members, that's never been taken up (perhaps because one of the arguments used most strongly by the GR proposers was that some people genuinely didn't want DD status). In fact we've moved in the opposite direction. I am not happy that: - People have gone for DM status because it's easier to get, but then not gone on to become project members, in many more cases than because they actively don't want to have full rights. - People have been told not to become project members but to be happy with DM status, if they don't strictly need the full technical rights that currently come with being a member. Nor am I happy that, though it's comparatively less of a worry to me compared to those two: - People are regularly told that they should get DM status before applying for NM. The original GR said, "- Applicants in the n-m queue may choose to apply to be a Debian maintainer while finishing their application or waiting for it to be accepted." (I.e. it was taken for granted that people can enter the membership process first, and become a DM in the interim if that takes a while.) and "- Individuals may apply to the n-m process, and pass through it without becoming a Debian maintainer at any point." (I.e. no one would be forced to become a DM before entering the membership process.) While those statements were guaranteed there only as initial conditions, introducing DM status as a prerequisite for, or instead of, entering the NM process, and telling people to be happy with DM and not become project members, seem much greater changes to me than the original introduction of DM status, and I'm not happy that this seems to have happened without a wide discussion, and in fact with many members being unaware of the changes. -- Moray -- 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/8783a7df368570f7acee8f7636b04...@www.morayallan.com
Re: Your opinion on Debian Maintainer status
On 2013-03-17 14:50, Moray Allan wrote: On 2013-03-17 00:13, Raphael Hertzog wrote: while reviewing the vote that introduced the Debian Maintainer status in 2007 (http://www.debian.org/vote/2007/vote_003_tally.txt) I noticed that Lucas voted in favor and that Moray voted against it. Moray, why did you vote against? I'll follow up to explain this soon, but I need to check a couple of things, in case I'm misremembering details from 2007. And here's the first part of the full-disclosure answer, on the historical aspects. I already had a long-standing interest in how we integrate new contributors into Debian. See for example this 2005 talk with Hanna Wallach and Dafydd Harries: Debian New Maintainer Process: History and Aims. DebConf5, Helsinki, July 2005. http://debconf5.debconf.org/comas/general/proposals/39.html http://people.cs.umass.edu/~wallach/talks/new_maintainer.pdf A couple of points from that talk: "What matters? - Appropriate outlook: free software - Sufficient skills" "NM as a citizenship process - Clear route to becoming a full member - NM could focus on bringing people into Debian, rather than keeping them out - Building a feeling of responsibility and commitment to the Debian project as a whole, and to the community" I'm sure you (Raphaël) can remember some of the arguments on each side of the GR, since you were rather a major participant in the discussion https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/threads.html but I'll give a summary below for others reading this. I didn't participate in the GR discussion -- note that it happened during DebConf7 while I was working on local arrangements for the conference! Summary: The point of adding this extra process wasn't clear to everyone e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00062.html But arguments used in favour included: The NM process sets too high a barrier for people who want to maintain one package e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00054.html Getting sponsors is annoying e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00063.html Not everyone wants full DD status e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00050.html or https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00105.html This was a good way to work around problems with the NM process or account creation e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00091.html though others in the "for" camp claimed this wasn't right e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00046.html Arguments against included: This was creating second-class DDs e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00043.html or https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00067.html Adding a new status was overcomplicating things e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00043.html This was just an attempt to work around perceived problems with the NM process or account creation e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00043.html If we wanted to change things, we should just change the NM process e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00058.html If people don't want full DD rights, they're free just not to use them e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00111.html If people genuinely don't want to be associated with us, they shouldn't be part of the project at all e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2007/06/msg00090.html If you want to go back further, there was a previous discussion https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2007/03/msg00074.html at that point things were still vague, without a detailed proposal, and therefore the issues were a bit different though. For my actual vote, if I recall correctly: - I just wasn't persuaded that adding another status, rather than modifying something about the NM process, made sense. - I didn't see the sense in allowing people to upload freely (even for single packages), but not making them eligible for membership privileges. - The people proposing the GR saw it as widening access. Due to the above two points, for me, it seemed like narrowing it. I could understand reasons for initially putting *technical* restrictions on new contributors, but if we reached the point of fully trusting someone with a package (and therefore root privileges on every machine where it's installed), and giving them a formal status in Debian, I felt that we should already recognise them as members. Though the GR proposers said that it was for people who would not have otherwise have had any status at all, I was worried that the effect was to shut some formally recognised contributors out of membership. Therefore I was part of the about 38% of people who voted against the GR, see curl -s http://www.debian.org/vote/2007/vote_003_tally.txt | grep -v "^1" -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@
Re: not being elected?
On 2013-03-17 07:19, Paul Wise wrote: What do you plan to work on if you are not elected? If I am not elected, then by default almost all my Debian time would continue to be taken up by DebConf work. However, after setting out my my ideas about Debian teams more clearly for my platform, I wonder if even in that case I should set an example by retiring from heavy DebConf work before I suffer burn-out, or should at least take a break from it. While I might gain then more time for other Debian topics, my overall time allocation to Debian would be likely to reduce, unless I agreed to take up another specific Debian role immediately. (This is a specific case of some of the issues I mention in my "Delegations and teams" section.) Will not being elected de-motivate you? In many ways, not being elected would be a relief. I'd have more time to put into non-Debian parts of my life. However, if I am not elected, I would see that as a lack of agreement with my proposals, or at least a lack of interest in them, and I would be "de-motivated" from pushing those topics further against the apparent view of the project. Will you work on the things in your platform even if you are not elected? Most of the things mentioned there are not DPL specific tasks. I think most of my core ideas would be very difficult for me to advance if I am not elected, because they are coordination-level tasks for which I would have no mandate, and because they specifically relate to the DPL's powers. A few examples from my platform: - Agreeing additional topics, in particular communication plans and turnover plans, as required part of delegation documents and for other teams - Pushing more topics out from the DPL to delegates, and towards more public communications - Ensuring that good speakers are authorised/have recognised roles to represent Debian, and doing it myself as required - Making sure that "official" communications can happen with company representatives and governmental organisations where appropriate - Encouraging more Debian local groups and agreeing a framework for this - Starting more active and transparent budget planning for Debian before money is spent, more active fundraising to allow the plans, and avoiding having major spending happen merely by DPL edict - Moving/merging some DebConf teams to become general Debian ones, with approriate delegates as required. If I am not elected, I would lack both the DPL's constitutional powers and the greater influence that comes from being elected. If I tried to push the list of items in my platform without being elected, I think it would look like I was trying to set up some kind of parallel government for Debian, and people would quite fairly be very resistant to me pushing these things without a mandate, or indeed view them as already having been voted down. -- Moray -- 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/27036b9dc38dd3f79ba9b6937aa45...@www.morayallan.com
Re: to DPL candidates: getting new people to Debian
On 17/03/13 at 14:54 +0100, Serafeim Zanikolas wrote: > On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 04:28:03PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote [edited]: > > On 16/03/13 at 15:31 +0100, Serafeim Zanikolas wrote: > > > have > > > you considered assignments for the preparation of patches for wishlist > > > bugs in > > > native and pseudo-packages (eg. infra-related sw projects)? > > > > Have others thought about that/tried to organize such university > > projects? > > There's this (master's, I think) module, ran by an academic who's a FreeBSD > member, with goals amongst others: > > Appreciate and understand maintenance activities > Be able to change existing systems > > http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/ismr/intro/indexw.htm > http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/ismr/index.htm > > You can see in their "hall of fame" examples of successful contributions. We are talking about two different things. Your example is a course on Open Source Software Engineering. The project's goal there is "have students discover the inner workings of a Free Software project." Typically this is achieved by having the students fix a few bugs, so that they have to understand all the project's structure and procedure. In that case, all the students following the course work on [possibly different] Free Software projects. I was thinking more of typical programming projects, where the goal is "improve the students' C/Java/whatever skills, as well as their project management skills". In that case, most of the students following the course would develop yet another game from scratch, but the groups you mentor would work on Debian. My list of blockers apply to the second kind of projects. For example, bug triaging or fixing does not work here, because you need students to develop something sufficiently big so that coordination between students becomes necessary. Lucas -- 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/20130317142147.ga17...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: to DPL candidates: getting new people to Debian
Hi, On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 03:47:57PM +0100, Gergely Nagy wrote: > Serafeim Zanikolas writes: > > If you refer to university students in some software-related discipline: > > have > > you considered assignments for the preparation of patches for wishlist bugs > > in > > native and pseudo-packages (eg. infra-related sw projects)? > > That doesn't really help, in my opinion. It will be a 'forced' > contribution, one which will not continue past the assignment. that depends. If the course is compulsory, it would be a forced contribution, but if you offer such kind of work as one option for an assignment with a significant duration (a master's thesis has already been mentioned), things change. In that case, the time frame would be at least equivalent to a GSOC project, and voluntary committment can be assumed as well. OTOH, we're then quite late in the game - we should find methods of engaging people earlier. Kind regards, --Toni++ -- 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/20130317143417.ga31...@spruce.wiehl.oeko.net
Re: to DPL candidates: getting new people to Debian
On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 04:28:03PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote [edited]: > On 16/03/13 at 15:31 +0100, Serafeim Zanikolas wrote: > > have > > you considered assignments for the preparation of patches for wishlist bugs > > in > > native and pseudo-packages (eg. infra-related sw projects)? > > Have others thought about that/tried to organize such university > projects? There's this (master's, I think) module, ran by an academic who's a FreeBSD member, with goals amongst others: Appreciate and understand maintenance activities Be able to change existing systems http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/ismr/intro/indexw.htm http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/ismr/index.htm You can see in their "hall of fame" examples of successful contributions. > YMMV, but due to the way student projects are organized in France, the > following problems are often blockers: > - Tasks are not long enough. Typically, what you need is something that > would take an experienced DD about 40 hours (for part-time projects > with groups of 2 to 4 students). Many of tasks are much > smaller than that, and you can't just aggregate several tasks, because > then, the project loses interest in terms of "project management". Assignments don't necessarily have to have a patch as the sole deliverable. Smaller ones could very well be about producing a design or triaging bugs (reproducing, documenting approaches that didn't work, and so on). > - I don't know the software, and there's no one willing to act as > backup-mentor on the Debian side, in case I cannot answer the > students' question. > > - The project is not motivating enough for the students (it does not > result in exposing the students to sufficiently-interesting > technologies, for example). If I understand correctly, in the aforementioned course, they don't point students to specific projects or issues to work on. So it's up to the students to find something they find do-able and interesting enough to work on. > - The amount of learning required to be able to do the project, compared > to the amount of work to do, is too high. I don't see that as a problem if documenting what one's learned is part of the deliverable you grade. > - (for infrastructure) setting up a development instance is not > documented, impossible, or extremely difficult. Indeed that's an issue for infra projects -- and a point of improvement for us. Anyhow, I think that whatever we'd do to make such academic assignments easier would be useful to potential contributors in general. A couple of other ideas to encourage work on wishlist bugs of infra & native packages: - tag them as wontfix, needs-discussion or patch-welcome - for patch-welcome bugs, tag them also in terms of order of magnitude of time required to fix (eg. hours, days, weeks; yes, it depends on a bunch of factors, but it'd be better than nothing) With this info in place combined with debtags data (eg. implemented-in::*), one could develop a web page where newcomes can ask "I know language X and have a spare weekend to code. what should I do?" (this would be similar to wnpp-by-tags.debian.net but for native Debian projects instead). -- Every great idea is worthless without someone to do the work. --Neil Williams -- 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/20130317135412.GC6878@mobee
Re: [all candidates] on distribution-wide changes and scalability
On 17/03/13 at 16:34 +0300, Moray Allan wrote: > On 2013-03-17 16:27, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: > >Actually, I disagree that we should not focus more effort on > >increasing > >the existing convergence. > > I was replying as part of a discussion of using NMUs to increase > convergence, not on whether convergence is good in general. Oh, I thought you were replying to | Should we really focus more effort on increasing the existing | convergence? Thanks for the clarification. Lucas -- 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/20130317133953.ga16...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: [all candidates] on distribution-wide changes and scalability
On 2013-03-17 16:27, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: Actually, I disagree that we should not focus more effort on increasing the existing convergence. I was replying as part of a discussion of using NMUs to increase convergence, not on whether convergence is good in general. So despite your "I disagree", it seems that we are actually agreeing here -- you go on to say: On NMUing, I'm not so sure: NMUs are not a very efficient process, so I don't think that we should actively encourage people to NMU just for that, unless it's particularly urgent or convenient to change that for another reason. -- Moray -- 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/e921aa40e18b921d0204648cd66cf...@www.morayallan.com
Re: [all candidates] on distribution-wide changes and scalability
On 17/03/13 at 15:03 +0300, Moray Allan wrote: > >Implementing dh(1) or source format 3, notwithstanding their > >advantages for > >DD's, is successful if the generated binary packages are the same > >as before. > >Should we really focus more effort on increasing the existing > >convergence? > > No, I don't see a strong argument for it. If, for reasons that I > can't yet imagine, we made a decision that it was important, I would > rather that the transition happened fairly quickly, including NMUs > slightly earlier than I would expect under current guidelines. Actually, I disagree that we should not focus more effort on increasing the existing convergence. I think that it is very important that, as a project, we work on improving our development practices (including standardizing on the best of them). That does not have a direct impact on users, but on the long term, having more efficient practices makes us more likely to satisfy our users, because we will be able to package more stuff, do it better, etc. Discouraging the use of some development practices is part of that. There are good reasons for not using any of dh or cdbs, not using 3.0 (quilt), so I don't think that we should force that in policy, and make that RC bugs. But I think that we should discuss adding lintian warning or errors for: - packages using 1.0 format and having files modified directly => should move to 3.0 (quilt) - packages using 1.0 format and simple-patchsys, quilt, or dpatch => should move to 3.0 (quilt) - packages using debhelper directly (not dh or cdbs) => should move to dh [ there are good reasons in some cases for doing some of the above. Adding lintian override in those cases would be totally OK, and also a good way to identify current limitations in 3.0 (quilt) or dh. ] I would hope that the increasing visibility brought by lintian warnings/errors, and as well as the advertised project consensus that such practices are discouraged, would help us get rid of such practices. On NMUing, I'm not so sure: NMUs are not a very efficient process, so I don't think that we should actively encourage people to NMU just for that, unless it's particularly urgent or convenient to change that for another reason. Lucas -- 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/20130317132719.ga12...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: Your opinion on Debian Maintainer status
Wouter Verhelst writes: > On 17-03-13 02:02, Gergely Nagy wrote: >> Arno Töll writes: >>> In fact, even the wiki says "Becoming a Debian Developer: You should be >>> a Debian Maintainer for six months before applying to the Debian New >>> Member Process" [1]. That's somewhat different to the original idea of >>> the DM status and not really a direction we should endorse. > [...] >> Thank you, for reminding me of that. I haven't looked at that page since >> I re-applied, and almost forgot those words. We really should reconsider >> that paragraph, and preferably kill it with fire (post-wheezy, of >> course). > > As someone who supports that policy (in the general case), can you > elaborate on this? Why do you think it is such a bad thing? > > Note that, first, the NM frontdesk has always been willing to fast-track > someone who is "obviously" skilled (with "obviously" being vague on > purpose) and, second, that the DM step is not required for emeritus > developers returning to Debian. This is exactly why I think it is such a bad idea. Because it is too easy to make it sound like DM is a stepping stone to becoming a DD. It is not. It is *one* of its aspects, a useful one, but in my opinion, far from being the most important one. It can too easily be read as putting more road-blocks in front of people who already know they want to become DDs, and are confident in their abilities. It is too easy to feel discouraged, when you're reading that you should spend half a year as DM, when that really is not your goal. It makes it sound as if the DM status was there to limit new people in what they're allowed to do, as if it was a stepping stone and no more. It can be used as such, but the original intention was not to limit people, but to empower them. The quoted paragraph goes against that spirit. It is great that we can use the DM status as a stepping stone, really. But it sucks if that's what we emphasize most, and it's even worse when we put a time-frame on it, a time-frame of six months. (Too many assumptions hidden in there, for my taste...) In contrast, the DebianMaintainer[1] reads: "It is highly recommended to be a Debian Maintainer before applying to the Debian New Members process to become an official Debian Developer (see the Applicant's Checklist)." [1]: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer#Introduction I like that much better, because it does not directly say six months (the applicant's checklist does), and I find it much easier to interpret this as an optional step. A recommended, but optional step. If we could rephrase the "6 months" thing too, into something like (in case of the checklist): "...and have been maintaining and uploading packages long enough that both you and your advocates feel ready to take the next step." That would express the intent better, I believe, without invalidating current practice. TL;DR: Putting the emphasis on DM being something that empowers is much more useful than putting the emphasis on DM being a stepping stone. -- |8] -- 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/87620qchoc@galadriel.madhouse-project.org
Re: various ideas
On 2013-03-17 07:00, Paul Wise wrote: Would becoming DPL increase the chance that you would work on any of these ideas? Would not becoming DPL increase the chance that you would work on any of these ideas? Becoming DPL would certainly make work on this myself: better communication on Debian fora If you mean what I think by the ideas, then becoming DPL would make me much more likely to try to encourage/recruit others to work on, for example: ending the tyranny of unix permissions/groups - move more projects to collab-maint remove Debian-specific stuff split branding into separate packages UDD add more to UDD base more services on UDD use distromatch to link to patches, bugs etc from other distributions release reduce the impact of the freeze on development mail people when their packages do not migrate instead of when they do oldstable security support until stable+1 release clarify/obsolete the conflation between bug severity and RC-ness support information in Release files and user notification revive package promotion/reviews and promote them from packages.d.o (543343) If I am not elected DPL, it's fairly likely that almost all my Debian time will continue to be taken up by DebConf. Hypothetically if I am not elected but decided to take a break from DebConf anyway, I would bear in mind your list of ideas. Although I have more ideas/plans of my own for Debian work, I think that the items mentioned in my platform, plus issues arising during the year, will be enough to keep me busy if I am elected. As I say there, I do not see pushing my own specific ideas (including the ones in the "Specific ideas" subsection of my platform) as primary to the DPL role. I do have some ideas in note files as well as in my brain -- I should probably follow your example and throw them into the wiki, so that others can join me in not getting round to them. -- Moray -- 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/7523f12e8c3fdcea77783559ae37b...@www.morayallan.com
Re: [all candidates] on distribution-wide changes and scalability
On 2013-03-17 12:40, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: Do you think that changing X-Vcs-* to Vcs-* is something Debian should actively spend cycles on NMU'ing to change? No. Implementing dh(1) or source format 3, notwithstanding their advantages for DD's, is successful if the generated binary packages are the same as before. Should we really focus more effort on increasing the existing convergence? No, I don't see a strong argument for it. If, for reasons that I can't yet imagine, we made a decision that it was important, I would rather that the transition happened fairly quickly, including NMUs slightly earlier than I would expect under current guidelines. As a counter point, in the current cycle I've been involved two archive-wide transitions that actually do impact the installed system: multi-arch and hardening build flags. Once the dpkg/apt infrastructure was in place, the archive-wide changes have in my opinion been reasonably successfully implemented within the timeframe of this release, with the help of them being a release goal. Why do we need more tools than we currently have? If it helps, imagine that I hadn't mentioned the idea yet, and that instead I mentioned it the next time an agreed transition is being slow. (Well, preferably just before, with somehow-believed foresight about the slowness that would occur if nothing changed.) -- Moray -- 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/479510cd8af09dacd3ef41ef8a912...@www.morayallan.com
Re: Your opinion on Debian Maintainer status
On 2013-03-17 00:13, Raphael Hertzog wrote: while reviewing the vote that introduced the Debian Maintainer status in 2007 (http://www.debian.org/vote/2007/vote_003_tally.txt) I noticed that Lucas voted in favor and that Moray voted against it. Moray, why did you vote against? I'll follow up to explain this soon, but I need to check a couple of things, in case I'm misremembering details from 2007. But, before that, I wanted to send immediately the more general comments below. If I am elected DPL I will: - Respect (and promote) project positions, even if they differ from what I would personally like. - Act neutrally when required during project discussions (Constitution 5.1.9). (Also note that 3.2.2 and 8.1.2 ban the DPL from making membership decisions.) I certainly do not want to use the DPL position to reopen old decisions. I want the project to be outward-looking and to move forward in the best way, not inward-looking and focused on the past. -- Moray -- 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/b97e4d7cc537c153e7044c96ede95...@www.morayallan.com
Re: various ideas
Hi, On 17/03/13 at 12:00 +0800, Paul Wise wrote: > Candidates, > > I maintain a wishlist[1] of ideas of various levels of craziness I would > like to see implemented and directions I would like Debian to go in. > Some of these should be moved to bugs, but at least they are somewhere > more public than the previous location (a damp dark corner of my brain). > > Would becoming DPL increase the chance that you would work on any of > these ideas? That I would work on them myself, no. That I will try to advertise them, make sure we decide on the best way to move them forward, yes. > Would not becoming DPL increase the chance that you would work on any of > these ideas? Probably, for: - QA + add more to UDD + base more services on UDD (oops, I hope I did not convince you not to vote for me) > What ideas for Debian are lurking in the corner of your brain? Some of them are in my platform[1], some of them are in this blog post[2]. [1] http://www.debian.org/vote/2013/platforms/lucas [2] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=763 Here are some other things I have in my TODO list: - UDD-related: + de-duplicate DEHS and UDD's own implementation of DEHS that was created when DEHS was broken + re-integrate PET data in UDD, use it in interesting ways + integrate mentors.d.n data in UDD, use it in interesting ways + improve UDD so that DDPO and the PTS can be simple UDD services + improve http://udd.debian.org/dmd.cgi - experiment with providing automated backports - auto-generate data from http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=751 Lucas -- 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/20130317114014.ga11...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: not being elected?
Hi, On 17/03/13 at 12:19 +0800, Paul Wise wrote: > Candidates, > > What do you plan to work on if you are not elected? > > Will not being elected de-motivate you? > > Will you work on the things in your platform even if you are not > elected? Most of the things mentioned there are not DPL specific tasks. A DPL election is a quite strange process. We vote for people as well as platforms and ideas, and it's difficult to translate success or failure in the election to success or failure in other particular area. Of course, not being elected will be de-motivating. I ran because I thought I would be a good DPL, and I'm not convinced yet that the other candidates would be better than me (but YMMV :p). Most of the things I mentioned in my platform do not require DPL powers, but would be much harder to do if I was not elected. For example, I should not be expected to push for "fostering innovation inside Debian". Also, a large part of what I planned to do was to coordinate so that good ideas are implemented. I believe that it's the DPL's role to ensure that this coordination happens. Tasks I am quite sure I will do are: - continue to improve and extend UDD, and explore how it can contribute to improving our processes (including, but not limited to, team-maintenance and our sponsorship processes). - investigate the "localization" of -mentors@ and #-mentors. Language is often a barrier for new contributors. That sounds like a low-hanging fruit. Lucas -- 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/20130317114105.gb11...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: various ideas
Paul Wise writes: > Would becoming DPL increase the chance that you would work on any of > these ideas? > > Would not becoming DPL increase the chance that you would work on any of > these ideas? Well, not becoming DPL means I'd have less time to spend on Debian things than if elected, so, technically, not becoming DPL would severely decrease the chance that I'd work on any of the ideas on your list. But, if we take a hypotethical scenario where I'd have all the time in the world, elected or not - becoming a DPL would not increase the chance of me working on any of the ideas, either. That is to say, being DPL has nothing to do with what I find important, and what I'd like to work on, and work towards. There are some very good ideas on your list, that I find important to push further along (just to name a few: better communication [all kinds of it]; touchscreen-only and mobile support in d-i; d-i being able to highlight platform specific freedom issues; Supersedes; etc), but this is only tied to how much time I have, not to the DPL position itself. It's a mere coincidence that if elected, I'll have more time I can dedicate to Debian and DPL duties. It's the availability of time that increases the chance, not the position. -- |8] -- 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/87d2uycnux@galadriel.madhouse-project.org
Re: not being elected?
Hi! At last an *easy* question to start the day with! Thank you! Paul Wise writes: > What do you plan to work on if you are not elected? I have not made plans. There are many similarities between all three platforms, and in our goals, so most likely, I will first wait and see where things go, and decide how and where to proceed along the way. (But see below) > Will not being elected de-motivate you? Demotivate? No. Perhaps a little sad, for a very short time. > Will you work on the things in your platform even if you are not > elected? Most of the things mentioned there are not DPL specific tasks. If not elected, the time I can spend on these tasks will be much less, as I will not be able to use work time for it. But nevertheless, I'll do my best to further the goals I see as important. > Gergely Nagy, was not being elected in 2012 de-motivating? Nope, not at all. It's not easy to demotivate me, when I set my mind to something. (Read: I will continue running for DPL until I win, and then some more, each and every year, as long as I'm certain I'll have the time needed to be of good service.) I was reasonably happy with the results last year - I hoped to fare a bit better, but the results were in the same ballpark. > In 2004, how did you feel about getting votes after running as a joke > candidate? Relieved, that people have a sense of humour. Happy, because I reached my goal: NotA received more votes than I did. Overall, I enjoyed the whole process, and loved the outcome too. The best though, was the feedback I received during and after the election. -- |8] -- 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/87hakacotn@galadriel.madhouse-project.org
Re: [all candidates] on distribution-wide changes and scalability
Op zaterdag 16 maart 2013 17:39:56 schreef Moray Allan: > On 2013-03-16 12:13, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: > > The current NMU guidelines[1] discourage fixing cosmetic issues or > > changing the packaging style in an NMU. The reason for that is that > > such changes are often a matter of taste (though there are > > exceptions, > > such as the standardization of debian/control fields - going from > > X-Vcs-* to Vcs-*). > > I only intended to include distribution-wide changes that have already > been agreed as goals. Even where everyone has agreed on a change, we > are often quite slow to adapt all packages. The classic example is the > /usr/doc transition, but I don't think we've really solved the problem > since then, just made it less bad by more use of helpers. Do you think that changing X-Vcs-* to Vcs-* is something Debian should actively spend cycles on NMU'ing to change? Our users will not see any impact of that, and I doubt they will reap any benefit from a more expedited /usr/doc transition. Why is this a problem? Implementing dh(1) or source format 3, notwithstanding their advantages for DD's, is successful if the generated binary packages are the same as before. Should we really focus more effort on increasing the existing convergence? As a counter point, in the current cycle I've been involved two archive-wide transitions that actually do impact the installed system: multi-arch and hardening build flags. Once the dpkg/apt infrastructure was in place, the archive-wide changes have in my opinion been reasonably successfully implemented within the timeframe of this release, with the help of them being a release goal. Why do we need more tools than we currently have? Cheers, Thijs signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Your opinion on Debian Maintainer status
On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 12:37:35AM +0100, Arno Töll wrote: > Thus, the sheer number of DMs is not a really a resilient number per se, > although I agree that the DM status itself is a good procedure. FWIW, a more relevant number is the number of packages in the archive "maintained by DMs," see [1] for the actual number and a more precise definition. No matter whether DMs are "transient" or not, all those packages are packages that currently have a lower barrier for day-to-day maintenance activities by interested people than they would have without DM. (No judgement implied in this sentence, just another, IMHO more relevant, data point.) Cheers. [1]: http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=746 -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Your opinion on Debian Maintainer status
Hi Gergely, On 17-03-13 02:02, Gergely Nagy wrote: > Arno Töll writes: >> In fact, even the wiki says "Becoming a Debian Developer: You should be >> a Debian Maintainer for six months before applying to the Debian New >> Member Process" [1]. That's somewhat different to the original idea of >> the DM status and not really a direction we should endorse. [...] > Thank you, for reminding me of that. I haven't looked at that page since > I re-applied, and almost forgot those words. We really should reconsider > that paragraph, and preferably kill it with fire (post-wheezy, of > course). As someone who supports that policy (in the general case), can you elaborate on this? Why do you think it is such a bad thing? Note that, first, the NM frontdesk has always been willing to fast-track someone who is "obviously" skilled (with "obviously" being vague on purpose) and, second, that the DM step is not required for emeritus developers returning to Debian. -- Copyshops should do vouchers. So that next time some bureaucracy requires you to mail a form in triplicate, you can mail it just once, add a voucher, and save on postage. -- 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/51456a21.40...@debian.org
