Re: Question about membership.
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Charles Plessy ple...@debian.org wrote: * Do you need to come up with a GR to change membership procedures, or is there a different way? I will cast a GR if I think it is needed. If I am wrong, the result will be NOTA, and I will resign as DPL. You'd really resign as DPL if a certain GR that you wanted was not passed? I think, once again, that you are mistaking the role of the DPL. If you were to be elected, it'd mean that enough people had wanted you to lead them. What would be the sense in resigning just because a certain GR is not passed? Being a DPL means leading a community, it doesn't mean that whatever you think is what the community wants. I had said before that I'd vote for all the other candidates. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, because of the work you've done on DebianMed. However, you've proved more than once that your opinion on the role of the DPL is way to different than mine, so I have made up my mind and decided that I will not be voting for you. -- 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/e8bbf0361003271342y55e04bd0yae8949d259a18...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Question about membership.
Le Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 05:42:24PM -0300, Margarita Manterola a écrit : On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Charles Plessy ple...@debian.org wrote: * Do you need to come up with a GR to change membership procedures, or is there a different way? I will cast a GR if I think it is needed. If I am wrong, the result will be NOTA, and I will resign as DPL. You'd really resign as DPL if a certain GR that you wanted was not passed? Hi Margarita, let me clear your doubts. I think that one of the roles of the DPL is to lead debates to conclusion. I want a debate on membership, and if nobody steps up to lead it after my election (if it happens), I will lead it. If the result is a consensus, no GR will be needed. Is a result is camps so strongly opposed that chosing one option will demotivate many DDs, I will not cast a GR and prefer status quo. If the result it that the Project as a whole is hesitating between possibilities that are acceptable, I will cast a GR to make a choice and go ahead. This is what I mean by ‘if I think it is needed’. I never wrote anywhere that I will twist arms with GRs. Here is the extract of my platform about GRs: “GRs: Sometimes, lack of consensus and action does not reflect conflict or division, but simply that in a large project like Debian, which heavily relies on electronic communication, it can be difficult to get the feeling of approbation. In these cases, I think that a vote can be a very healthy process, and I will initiate GRs when the Project is blocked on choosing between directions that are all acceptable.” To answer your question about quitting, why would a DPL resign after casting a GR that results in NOTA? A GR draws energy from the project, and if badly managed, can create tensions and divisions. In particular on the membership issue, if as DPL I would cast a GR that leads to NOTA, it would mean that I failed to understand the situation, and possibly harmed the project. I think that such a failure would be so high that a demission is the correct reaction. I hope that I convinced you that it has nothing to do with which option I would vote for if such a GR would be proposed. Have a nice Sunday, -- 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/20100328010142.ga...@kunpuu.plessy.org
Re: Question about membership.
Charles Plessy wrote: If I am elected DPL, I will re-open the discussion and lead them in a way that maximises everybody's contribution, for instance by making pauses if necessary, and by posting neutral summaries. After the discussion reaches conclusion, I will initiate a GR. When did you talk with DAM and the NM FrontDesk people about such things? Do you think it is the DPL's job to initiate GRs to change such procedures? Is a GR necessary at all or how are such things decided in Debian? When would you need a GR? -- Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org GPG Fingerprints: 06C8 C9A2 EAAD E37E 5B2C BE93 067A AD04 C93B FF79 ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F -- 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/4bacb164.5010...@bzed.de
Re: Question about membership.
Le Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 02:06:44PM +0100, Bernd Zeimetz a écrit : Charles Plessy wrote: If I am elected DPL, I will re-open the discussion and lead them in a way that maximises everybody's contribution, for instance by making pauses if necessary, and by posting neutral summaries. After the discussion reaches conclusion, I will initiate a GR. When did you talk with DAM and the NM FrontDesk people about such things? Do you think it is the DPL's job to initiate GRs to change such procedures? Is a GR necessary at all or how are such things decided in Debian? When would you need a GR? Hi Bernd, I think that discussions on membership have to be held in public. If a pre-packed propsal is perpared behind the scenes and proposed to the DDs as a fait accompli, I think that it will face a strong opposition. I do not think that a DPL has the role of defining the content of a GR in such a debate. However, our constitution gives to the DPL the role of leading discussions, and to propose draft GRs. In my understanding of the constitution, the content of the GR matches the result of the discussion, not the personal opinion of the DPL. This is what I propose and nothing else. Here is the content of my platform about membership: ‘Becoming a member gives motivation, responsibility and reward. Currently one has to prove a lot to become become a DD, and I think that the level we require for new members is nearly to be able to do distribution-wide quality control and participate release operations. While it is exactly that manpower that we are critically needing, I do not think that it is in the interest of the project to be so restrictive on membership. I liked a lot an earlier proposition that any DD can nominate a new member in the project. This resembles how the DM status is working, and it is working well. Importantly, to make it easier to enter the project also makes it easier to leave it for a while. With a more appealing emeritus system, we can give motivations to DDs who are lacking time to take a break officially instead of simply becoming inactive for a long interval. And if lost membership can be recovered more easily, I think that we can also ease the conditions for cancelling inactive memberships. I will restart discussions on membership, with a vote as a goal.’ In the question I sent to the other candidates, to fuel the debate I reminded a proposition that was made and that I find interesting. I tried to make a bit of prospective, speculating that it would not be very popular, and wondering what would make it feel more secure. Taking the recent Bits from the NM process as an inspiration, which specifies that an account must be 6 month old to qualify for becoming Application Managers, I wondered if that requirement for seniority should be kept or not in a new system. Obviously, opinions about this differ. I do not have a premade conclusion about Debian's membership process, and I am not seeking to be elected for pushing one solution or the other. However, I am campaining for having the membership issue solved in the next DPL's term, and will put this priority high in my list if I am elected. Other candidates have suggested that what Debian needs is a polished version of Joerg's proposal. If as a result of my election, I lead a debate that results in a GR that does this, I will consider it as an accomplishment, whatever my personal opinon is. 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/20100326133832.ga21...@kunpuu.plessy.org
Re: Question about membership.
Hi Charles, thanks for you long answer. But unfortunately I feel like a journalist now, instead of getting a short *answer* to my questions, I got a looong talk around them. So here are they again, in a very simplified form: * Did you or do you plan to talk to DAM/Frontdesk about membership changes? * Do you need to come up with a GR to change membership procedures, or is there a different way? Thanks, Bernd -- Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org GPG Fingerprints: 06C8 C9A2 EAAD E37E 5B2C BE93 067A AD04 C93B FF79 ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F -- 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/4bad2a3c.5070...@bzed.de
Re: Question about membership.
* Did you or do you plan to talk to DAM/Frontdesk about membership changes? Discussion must be public from the start. DAM/Frontdesk is contribution essential. Your position will be first in the discussion's summary. * Do you need to come up with a GR to change membership procedures, or is there a different way? I will cast a GR if I think it is needed. If I am wrong, the result will be NOTA, and I will resign as DPL. -- 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/20100327010209.ga24...@kunpuu.plessy.org
Re: Question about membership.
Hi Charles, On Donnerstag, 25. März 2010, Charles Plessy wrote: [...] In order to make it more consensual, there is probably a need for making concessions like shortlisting the trusted DDs according to some criteria like [...] What do you mean by shortlisting? cheers, Holger signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Question about membership.
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 09:17:44AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: Dear all, Following the ‘Membership procedures’ GR, discussion on membership were started after the Lenny release, but eventually stopped. In this thread it was proposed to trust DDs to nominate other members and I found the idea very interesting. In order to make it more consensual, there is probably a need for making concessions like shortlisting the trusted DDs according to some criteria like the time they have already spent in the project. I would actually be tempted to propose a more variable but more symbolic measurment of time: having been part of the project for at least one full release cycle. I don't think this will help, at all. The DM procedure allows people to upload packages after just one Debian Developer has advocated them. This is a good way for people without full developer status to cooperate on Debian. Giving people full developer status should not be something we go over lightly. I happen to know that frontdesk and the DAM do not mind a 'lightweight' TS part of the NM procedure for those people who have shown exceptional skill. However, I don't think we should reduce on the PP part of NM. We do not wish people to join the project who do not understand what 'free software' means. [...] -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Question about membership.
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 09:17:44AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
In this thread it was proposed to trust DDs to nominate other members
and I found the idea very interesting. In order to make it more
consensual, there is probably a need for making concessions like
shortlisting the trusted DDs according to some criteria like the time
they have already spent in the project.
The reason to be somehow strict before accepting someone as a DD is
essentially trust. A DD will be able to upload any package to our
distribution, so we should trust his/her judgement in when to (not) use
such a privilege.
Of course it is difficult to come up with a metric for trustworthiness.
Nevertheless, a metric that works surprisingly well in practice (at
least in our volunteer-based FOSS world) is to look at what and how the
applicant has done in the past [1]. This metric is actively used in the
NM process where it is paired with questions on our principles.
The problem I see with what you propose is that the time they have
already spent in the project is, for once, not well defined (when do
you start counting?). Additionally, it tells you: nothing about the
abilities of the applicant, nothing about his/her interactions with
other, nothing about how much he/she share our principles. So if, as you
observe, there is resistance to nominations, I doubt that adding time
would do any better.
[1] note that the implicit stuff done that I intend here is more
general than packaging, it also includes stuff like interaction
with others
I have put membership issues as a first priority in my
platform. Partly because
Yes, but as I've observed in my rebuttals I haven't really got what you
are _actually_ proposing.
So my question to other candidates is simple: what is your opinion and
program about membership?
I've discussed this quite extensively in my platform already.
To recap:
- The addition of DMs have been very good for our project.
I like the existence of such a status, but I believe we should
reward DMs more, in terms of visibility. On one hand, we currently
have quite a mess of terminology which we might want to fix, even if
it is hard to do that at this point. On the other hand, we should give
out some symbolic gift, like a @debian.org email address (just an
example, we can find another sub-domain or something): it might seem
silly to all of us, but it can be important for newbies!
- I would like to see a proper vote---no matter its result---on the
establishment of a new project member status (i.e. with voting rights)
for non-packaging contributors.
The GR we had on DAM proposal [2] has been only on the procedure which
led to the d-d-a mail. In fact, the outcome of the GR asks for
discussion+consensus (or vote), but we've never dwelled into that
afterwords.
Cheers.
[2] http://www.debian.org/vote/2008/vote_002
--
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 about membership.
Charles Plessy ple...@debian.org writes: In this thread it was proposed to trust DDs to nominate other members and I found the idea very interesting. In order to make it more consensual, there is probably a need for making concessions like shortlisting the trusted DDs according to some criteria like the time they have already spent in the project. I would actually be tempted to propose a more variable but more symbolic measurment of time: having been part of the project for at least one full release cycle. I don't see why someone who joined the project a few months ago should be trusted less than someone that got in, for example, before we had any formal checking of new members. This idea just doesn't work. Marc -- BOFH #198: Post-it Note Sludge leaked into the monitor. pgp9Xipk3outH.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Question about membership.
On Thu Mar 25 21:19, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: The GR we had on DAM proposal [2] has been only on the procedure which led to the d-d-a mail. In fact, the outcome of the GR asks for discussion+consensus (or vote), but we've never dwelled into that afterwords. I did try quite hard, but it never got anywhere Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Question about membership.
Dear all, Following the ‘Membership procedures’ GR, discussion on membership were started after the Lenny release, but eventually stopped. In this thread it was proposed to trust DDs to nominate other members and I found the idea very interesting. In order to make it more consensual, there is probably a need for making concessions like shortlisting the trusted DDs according to some criteria like the time they have already spent in the project. I would actually be tempted to propose a more variable but more symbolic measurment of time: having been part of the project for at least one full release cycle. I have put membership issues as a first priority in my platform. Partly because I have contributeed to the rejection of a proposal and feel resposible to not leave the Project in inaction, partly because I think that the the contribution of DMs is growing and I do not feel like leaving them out of the project. In my platform, I suggest in my second priority (less restricted operations) that social control can replace technical control. I think that most DMs could be DDs now. If I am elected DPL, I will re-open the discussion and lead them in a way that maximises everybody's contribution, for instance by making pauses if necessary, and by posting neutral summaries. After the discussion reaches conclusion, I will initiate a GR. So my question to other candidates is simple: what is your opinion and program about membership? Have a nice day, -- 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/20100325001744.gc13...@kunpuu.plessy.org
