Ever wondered who calls the most shots in Debian? The developers elect a project leader each year, but at best the election will reflect the consensus that already exists, and the powers that come with the office are so limited that the leader cannot, by himself, start the project moving along a new and exciting track.
So who really influences the consensus in Debian; who sets the agenda? Or, phrased more colloquially: Who are in the Cabal? Now you can know, thanks to our proprietary BrainShare<tm> Sampling technology! Since there are pesky "ethical" rules against the sampling of actual brains, we estimate the BrainShare<tm> of Debian community members based on mailing list activity. But not all mailing list posts are equally influential; posting lots of trivialities does not an agenda set. So we use a further approximation and consider a mailing list post influential if it gets cited by the venerable Debian Weekly News. The rules, thus, are simple: Each time the Debian Weekly News links to a mailing list posting by you, you get 1000 brainshare points. Points do not last indefinitely: For each new issue your point score is multiplied by .96 and rounded down to an integer. This will make your points go away after 105 issues unless you replenish them. The one with the most points in total is the winner. Find the result on http://people.debian.org/~henning/brainshare/ Be sure to look up yourself - perhaps you're more influential than you thought! (The brainshare calculation was originally conceived as a "cabalometric experiment" during the 2005 DPL campaign. Then I let it rest for some time. By popular demand it is now back, recomputed, and results will be kept fresh by the magic of cron. Enjoy!) -- Henning Makholm "Oh, hvilken kok detilig!" -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
