On March 15th I asked each candidate to indicate a frank evaluation of their tasks and time for the job of DPL given their existing commitments. I did this because I think this an extremely important criterion: after all, it is a question asked and answered every year, and which candidate platforms generally anticipate and address.
But I have historically been frustrated at the near-identity of the answers, which assure the reader that while the candidate has been doing lots of important things, they won't prevent working effectively as DPL, and while the candidate has a job, the job won't detract, and so forth. Faced with this problem in discriminating between the candidates' assessments of their time commitments and such, I framed a different question this time, designed to ask the candidates to frankly discuss their existing commitments and how well they are meeting them. See http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/03/msg00549.html for the question. Of the six candidates, only Andreas Schuldei elected to answer my question, and his answer can be found at http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/03/msg00556.html. The second part of my question calls for the candidate to evaluate the information from the first part, and I can't make up that lack. But here follows my own assessment of the candidates' existing commitments (except for Andreas Schuldei, who chose to answer the question himself), as my first question asked. I cannot fully evaluate each of these cases, but I have gone on the basis of readily available statistical information. I post this now so that the information I have researched may be available to the voters, having waited until the end of the campaigning period to give each candidate a fully fair opportunity to answer for themselves. First, the executive summary: Matthew Garret: five packages all in good shape. Angus Lees: six packages five in good shape, one could be better. Anthony Towns: eight packages, two other jobs three maintained exclusively by co-maintainers, two in good shape, one could be better, two in dismal shape ftp master and bts work in good shape Jonathan Walther: eight packages all in good shape Branden Robinson: eleven packages, two other jobs nine in good shape, two could be better. other jobs in good shape (though one, policy, might not really exist) I hope this information is useful to others. Thomas Now the details: In what follows, bug counts are given as RC-important-normal/minor-wishlist Matthew Garrett: Maintains dasher (2 bugs, 0-0-2-0), oldest bug 396 days old. Regularly maintained, up-to-date with upstream Maintains netapplet (4 bugs, 0-1-3-3), oldest bug 160 days old. Regularly maintained, not up-to-date with upstream Maintains nstx (2 bugs, 0-0-2-1), oldest bug 275 days old. Regularly maintained, up-to-date with upstream Maintains vbetool (no bugs) Regularly maintained, up-to-date with upstream Maintains vino (3 bugs, 1-2-0-0), oldest bug 212 days old. RC bug has been fixed in NMU, but package is regularly maintained and up-to-date with upstream. Not listed on http://www.debian.org/intro/organization. Angus Lees: Maintains defoma (22 bugs, 2-1-19-4), oldest bug (important) 1065 days old. Adopted the package in June 2003. One RC bug reported today, the other was fixed by NMU last August and not yet acknowledged (the only NMU since he adopted the package. No maintenance since May 2004). Maintains libapache-sessionx-perl (no bugs, 0-0-0-1). No recent upload, but no indication any has been needed. Maintains libdbix-recordset-perl (no bugs) No recent upload, but no indication any has been needed. Maintains libembperl-perl (no bugs) Regulaly maintained, up-to-date with upstream. Maintains libextutils-xsbuilder-perl (no bugs) No recent upload, but no indication any has been needed. Maintains libhtml-embperl-perl (1 bug, 0-0-1-0), oldest bug is 965 days old. Bug has been forwarded upstream. No recent upload, but no indication any would easily solve the bug. Not listed on http://www.debian.org/intro/organization. Anthony Towns Maintains cruft (30 bugs, 1-4-21-4), oldest bug 2532 is days old. RC bug has been fixed in unacknowledged NMUs, a total of six bugs are in NMU-fixed status. Last upload was February 2000 labelled "maintainer NMU"; last maintainer upload was November 1999. Maintains debootstrap (17 bugs, 1-5-11-26), oldest bug is 1310 days old. Last upload by Anthony Towns was in November 2003. From the changelog it appears J.H.M. Dassen has been functioning as a co-maintainer. Last maintainer upload was September 2004. Maintains ifupdown (75 bugs, 3-4-68-83), oldest bug is 1537 days old. Last upload, April 2004 as a maintainer NMU. Last maintainer upload was June 2001. Open RC bugs have been fixed in NMU, with a total of 55 bugs in NMU-fixed status. Maintains ipmasqadm (4 bugs, 0-0-4-2), oldest bug is 1806 days old No recent upload, but no indication any has been needed. Maintains netbase (26 bugs, 0-3-24-21), oldest bug is 2890 days old. Last upload by Anthony Towns was in November 2001. From the changelog it appears Marco d'Itri has been functioning as a co-maintainer. Packages is regularly maintained. Maintains netkit-base (47 bugs, 0-2-45-32), oldest bug 2068 days old. (There is an older bug, but it's marked wontfix.) Last upload by Anthony Towns was in October 2004; NMU for translations on March 17, 2004 not acknowledged. Maintains pretzel (3 bugs, 2-0-1-1), oldest bug 1306 days old. Last maintainer upload August 2003. RC bugs fixed in unacknowledged NMUs. Up-to-date with upstream. Maintains tcpwrappers (1 bugs, 0-1-0-2), bug is 111 days old. Extant bug is tagged help. Last upload by Anthony Towns in November 2001. Maintenance since by co-maintainer Marco d'Itri. Serves as ftpmaster. ftp.debian.org has 61 bugs (14-6-41-40). Eight RC bugs are tagged woody; one is tagged moreinfo/sid; one is tagged experimental; four are tagged sarge or sid. Oldest sarge/sid RC bug is 200 days old. Oldest non-woody bug is 2669 days old. The NEW queue has about 380 packages in it. Two new ftpmasters were recently appointed who have made huge progress in clearing out the bug list. Anthony is listed as having general responsibility in http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/03/msg00142.html. He presumably played a role in the decision to appoint new ftpmasters who have been doing work. Despite unfortunate flamage from others, seems to take the work seriously and do a good job. FTP archives are well mirrored and stable with no substantial outages. Anthony worked to develop the Vancouver plan to improve future release times and has been active in explaining it to the maintainership at large. Serves the bts. bugs.debian.org has 51 bugs (0-7-44-103). Oldest bug is 1908 days old. Responsibility for this task is shared, and I am not aware of a list showing who has what responsibilities. BTS is stable and backed up with no substantial outages and generally good performance. Jonathan Walther Maintains encore, ghostcore, jhcore, lambdacore, lambdamoo, lambdamoo-docs, ratmenu, and ratpoison. All have no open bugs and appear to be well maintained. Branden Robinson Maintains ctwm, render, twofish, and xcursor, which have no open bugs and appear to be well maintained. Maintains debsigs (3 bugs, 0-0-3-3), oldest bug 913 days old. Last upload in September 2002. Not clear any more really needed. Maintains mdetect (7 bugs, 0-1-6-2), oldest bug is +moreinfo; next oldest is 1389 days old. No uploads since October 2002. Maintains read-edid (12 bugs, 0-8-4-0), bugs reliably forwarded upstream. Last upload October 2002, but is up-to-date with upstream. Maintains vtwm (5 bugs, 0-0-5-0), 3 upstream, one moreinfo, last is 62 days old. Last upload December 2004, and is up-to-date with upstream. Maintains xfree86 (830 bugs, 3-224-603-234). Two RC bugs are marked pending; third is tagged sarge-ignore and relates to licensing. Many important bugs are tagged upstream but not forwarded, the oldest is 2681 days old. There are so many bugs, so many of which are extremely stale and should probably be closed, that this bug page cannot be of any potential use to users. Regularly maintained and kept up-to-date with upstream. Maintains xft (4 bugs, 0-4-0-1), three bugs are tagged wontfix, help, or moreinfo; the last is 146 days old. Last upload March 2004, but it is not clear any needed since. Maintains xrender (3 bugs, 0-1-2-0), oldest bug is 389 days old. Last upload was March 2004, but it is not clear any needed since. Serves as a debian-policy editor, but is not listed as doing any recent work in the changelog He is a regular suggester of policy changes through the BTS and participates occasionally on the mailing list. Serves SPI. Received criticism for past performance as treasurer, but recent work has been good. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
