Re: Response to jcc's rebuttal
Hi Brian On 2020/03/24 18:33, Brian Gupta wrote: > I certainly don’t think it will be possible to create both Foundations in one > term, and it may not be possible to even finish creating the US Foundation in > one DPL term, but a lot of progress can be made. In my platform, I estimated > 6-12 months, but there are things that are out of our control. These things > include waiting for approvals from municipalities, working on the details, and > time spent building consensus on the details. > > I commit that if I am elected DPL, that I will run for a second term, and > finish the creation of the US Foundation if it hasn’t already been completed, > whether or not I am re-elected as DPL. In my first term, I will also begin > working with European developers to create the European Foundation but have no > expectation of completing that during the first-term. I'm not going to reply to all the specifics in your mail since I've already covered a lot of it already, but your explanation just convinces me even more that a creation of one or more foundations should not be linked to a DPL term. > I am curious, what was meant by “yet another Debian mess”? In my eyes, the > biggest Debian “messes”, are the endless bikeshedding sessions that end up going > nowhere. Yes, I suppose you could consider those examples of Debian messes. Although I was thinking more in terms of what Alioth had become before it was flushed out. Single sign-on in Debian is also messy. It's not any person's fault, and I appreciate people who have worked on it because it's both complex and something I don't like working on, but I think that as a project, we should be more strategic in dealing with issues like that so that services that affect every developer is easier to maintain and even easier to cleanly move away from when we eventually need to move to something else for whatever reason. I don't always like the Salsa team's policy of keeping our GitLab instance pristine and not integrating the whole world into it, but after I take a minute to think about it I appreciate that they do that and I think that they're making the right choices for Debian and that it forces us to innovate and come up with better and cleaner solutions. > As I’ve stated earlier, I’m not a fan of unnecessary GRs. If we can find a way > to assess the project’s will without them, we should, just as I thought Jonathan > believed, based on his 2019 DPL campaign rebuttal [2].: > > "I think that GRs should remain a last resort and that there are better ways > to gauge the community's stance on a topic when you need it. If a poll is > needed, it's better to do a proper poll than to use a GR as a generic tool." > > I will say that during the development work to create the Foundations, if we > discover legal reasons that would require us to change the Constitution, I would > have no issue seeking a GR, and working to build consensus to make the necessary > changes. Great! Yes I still stand with the idea that a GR should be used for final votes, not as a polling tool, and the options should be clear enough that people understand what they vote for and what the consequences of each option mean. -Jonathan -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋ https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org ⠈⠳⣄ Be Bold. Be brave. Debian has got your back. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Response to jcc's rebuttal
I certainly don’t think it will be possible to create both Foundations in one term, and it may not be possible to even finish creating the US Foundation in one DPL term, but a lot of progress can be made. In my platform, I estimated 6-12 months, but there are things that are out of our control. These things include waiting for approvals from municipalities, working on the details, and time spent building consensus on the details. I commit that if I am elected DPL, that I will run for a second term, and finish the creation of the US Foundation if it hasn’t already been completed, whether or not I am re-elected as DPL. In my first term, I will also begin working with European developers to create the European Foundation but have no expectation of completing that during the first-term. Speaking of a second-term, I believe that because the DPL job involves a large learning curve that can take over half of a DPL’s first term, prospective DPLs should be open to the idea of serving two consecutive terms. In the past, I’ve wondered if we should go as far as considering two-year DPL terms. Since then I have come to value the status quo and the annual project-wide discussions that the election stimulates. Also, annual elections give us regular opportunities to assess our progress and priorities so we can decide whether we want a change of direction. Staffing-wise, as I said in my platform, I’m projecting a half-time (20 hours a week) paid staff member to aid the DPL and related teams. If someone doesn’t believe it’s appropriate to hire a part-time admin to aid with bureaucratic tasks like finance and legal paperwork, they should not vote for me. Again, before hiring anyone, I would consult with Project Members, as is required by the Debian Constitution for all major expenditures. Funding-wise, Debian has managed to have an overall positive cash flow for many years, without any active non-purpose-driven fundraising. IE: We’ve raised funds for conferences, and for specific goals like funding interns, but we’ve never really done project-wide fundraising because we’ve never really needed to. Despite no active fundraising for the general fund, we have more than enough funds to hire a part-time admin. [1] I am curious, what was meant by “yet another Debian mess”? In my eyes, the biggest Debian “messes”, are the endless bikeshedding sessions that end up going nowhere. As I’ve stated earlier, I’m not a fan of unnecessary GRs. If we can find a way to assess the project’s will without them, we should, just as I thought Jonathan believed, based on his 2019 DPL campaign rebuttal [2].: "I think that GRs should remain a last resort and that there are better ways to gauge the community's stance on a topic when you need it. If a poll is needed, it's better to do a proper poll than to use a GR as a generic tool." I will say that during the development work to create the Foundations, if we discover legal reasons that would require us to change the Constitution, I would have no issue seeking a GR, and working to build consensus to make the necessary changes. Cheers, Brian [1] - https://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/annual-reports/2018.pdf [2] - https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/platforms/jcc signature.asc Description: PGP signature
