* Stephen Stafford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-03-07 23:42]: > Your platform[3] contains a lot of references to your organisational > skills and your people skills. I appreciate that last year you > attended a lot of conferences too. You *do* mention transparency > and accountability as well, but you're not nearly as focused on it > as Branden is. Do you see it as less important?
No, I don't see it as less important. I think the main reason I did not mention transparency as prominently as I could have is that I implicitly take transparency for granted. It's nothing we should explicitly have to mention - it should be there, otherwise something's clearly wrong. If you look at my work, you'll see that I have always been very transparent. I don't make empty promises saying that "I *will* be transparent (in the future)" - you can judge my work in the last years and see that I have always worked this way. Stemming from this perspective, I might not have mentioned it as prominently because it is an obvious thing for me. However, I realize it's not "an obvious thing" for many others, and hence I consider this a very important point, as described in section "Internal - Core Teams, Delegates, Communication, Transparency". > You posted several "Bits from the DPL" over the past year. I found > them informative and interesting, however they did at times feel > like just an itinerary of the conferences you were visiting, mostly > outward looking. Do you plan to continue them? If so would do you > plan to change the direction of them to make them more inward > looking? When I posted an "itinerary of the conferences", it was mostly with the goal in mind to let people know where I'll be in the near future so we can meet in person. However, I usually tried to summarize my conference attendance afterwards and to offer more information than just an itinerary. For example, I reported after a conference talking to some hardware companies and getting Opteron systems. This is clearly of interest to developers (since at that time we didn't have a single AMD64 system to start a port). I agree with you that some of the postings should be more inward directed. For example, while I stayed in contact with various core teams to see what they need, I should also have communicated more widely that progress in various areas are being made. I will certainly keep this in mind. And, as always, please do contact me to make such suggestions - not only during DPL campaigns, but throughout the year. > One of the dangers of being a successful conciliator is that you can > become the first rather than last resort in cases of dispute. Do > you think that this has been or will become a problem? It has been a problem when I started as DPL, but it is no longer a problem. In the beginning, I once made the mistake of acting as mediator (or better: man in the middle) when it was not necessary because the two parties were perfectly able to talk to each other. I certainly learned from this experience, and have not repeated this mistake. I don't plan to act as Man in the Middle, controlling all communication going on in the project, but instead to step in when my help is needed. > It appears to me that the technical committee has fallen into > disuse. Do you believe that this is due to there just not being any > issues for them to look at, because they have lost the faith and > respect of the developer body. because they are an anachronism and > no longer useful, or some other reason I've not suggested? I think the Technical Committee is mostly not working because of its current members; this is related to the structure of the Technical Committee and the way members are appointed. As I have argued in another posting, I don't think that we should make use of the Technical Committee very often. I think it is much better to discuss issues out on the mailing lists and to come to a consensus. However, I think it is very important to have a healthy Technical Committee just in case it is needed. > QA maintains an almost staggering number of packages. I am on the > QA list, and I see almost daily the amount of organisational work > you put into our QA effort. Do you think that we need to take a > more proactive stance in removing unmaintained packages from the > archive? Packages are being removed when they are no longer maintained and not adopted within a reasonable time. However, removing a package once we've released with it is not the ideal solution because users won't be supported any longer. I think we have to be more proactive, but not by removing unmaintained packages - rather, we have to make sure packages don't become unmaintained in the first place. There are several approaches towards this goal. For one, I clearly see group maintainership as one very good solution (see also http://cyrius.com/publications/michlmayr_hill-reliance.pdf); however, it remains to be seen when group maintainership works and when it doesn't. Furthermore, I think we should ask *before* uploading a package whether we really need it in the archive and whether we are able to support it in the long run (which is unlikely if, for example, upstream has vanished). At the moment, I don't think this is done enough. > What do you see as the greatest weakness of the project? Uncontrolled growth without a clear vision or focus in scalability (see what I wrote about core teams in my platform), and disputes about non-issues. > What new challenges do you plan to present to the project? We have to address fundamental issues which have become worse with the growth of Debian. I outlined some in my platform, but I think the biggest challenge at the moment is communication. We seem to fight about everything, instead of forming one community and working towards a common goal -- to create the best free operating system out there! > How many and which of the ideas outlined in your platform do you > expect to be able to implement and/or work towards if you are NOT > elected? As always, I'll listen to people and help them find ways to get their work done. I firmly believe that I don't get credibility just by being DPL, but by doing the work I have been doing for years. So many people trust me and would approach me because they know that I might be able to help them, regardless of whether I am DPL or not. However, through the DPL election, the project sort of appoints one person whose task it is to keep the whole picture into account and keep Debian running smoothly. If I was not elected, most people would probably approach the DPL rather than me (and perhaps rightly so, considering the other person is the DPL). So I fear I would not be as effective achieving the goals I've outlined in my platform simply because I'd not be fully in the loop. Furthermore, the "DPL" title significantly helps making contact with 3rd parties, such as companies (the 4th point in my platform), as I've learned during this year. In summary, I could certainly implement some ideas, but most goals outlined in http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/platforms/tbm are rather tied to being DPL. > Do you believe that if either Branden or Gergley are elected instead > of you that you would be able to work with them to achieve the goals > you outline in your platform? If Gergley gets elected, he'll probably resign or just hand over control to me. ;-) We have worked together for years, and it has been a good time. As to Branden: we raise many similar points in our platforms, but as he pointed out we have quite a different notion how to go about them. I would first have to see how he approaches them in order to find out how I can get involved and help out. However, since I really want the issues I/we raised in our platforms to be addressed, I'd try to find a way to help. -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED]
