Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 08:42:59PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: Well, some time back I wrote some patches for coreutils. Unfortunately they are not yet integrated, but thats not the fault of the maintainer. However I think it could help if the project decides that this is a good idea and (if needed) can overrrule single maintainers. There are existing procedures for overruling individual maintainers - i.e., appealing to the Technical Committee. If you think an override is needed, you might try the existing process before deciding that we need an entirely new one? Good point. Nothing to add. Best Regards, Patrick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: lifting censorship during the DPL campaign ...
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 07:14:57AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
I come to you again, with the same request as i did last year, that
you lift the censorship you are imposing on me for the duration of
the DPL campaign on debian-vote.
A DPL campaign is an exercice in democracy, and as thus, it is
totally unimaginable that you keep this censorship up.
Hi Sven, IMO in the censorship there is nothing which is DPL-specific
or anything which is related to the forthcoming DPL election. So I
don't see reason to back your request, if you have appropriate
messages ask for forwards. But please do not reply flaming when your
forward request is not accepted / moderated.
Cheers.
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 01:00:39PM +0100, Luk Claes wrote:
people. My proposal would be to add a join a team entry as one of
the *recommended* step in our join checklists.
I agree that this is a good idea.
Cool.
Let me add a second way to implement that default; I've split it
in a different mail because it touches a different subject:
handling of sub-standard quality packages. We need ways to
identify them and to, initially gently and then more forcibly if
needed, encourage maintainers to pass over maintenance. How to do
that is a different topic, let's assume we have a way to identify
such packages.
I think it's important to foremost work together with the maintainer
on this. The goal should be that the maintainer is more proactive in
the future and we would not get sub-standard quality packages for
them that easily anymore.
Yes, but at this abstraction level it is so vague that we cannot
really learn anything from it. How do you plan to ensure that that
will be the case? Neglected packages are in most case a signal of the
maintainer attention having moved elsewhere.
The most likely outcome is to pass over maintenance to somebody else,
which usually happens when the maintainer is still responsive enough
to publicly look for help by creating a maintenance team. Then, IME,
what will inevitably happen is that the new maintenance team will
completely take over the package. When this happens we have no problem
to fix ...
I don't think it's a good idea to take over packages from existing
maintainers unless that maintainer agrees with it or is not active
anymore. Proposing the maintainer to join existing teams maintaining
similar packages is a good idea though.
... the problem we have to fix is when the maintainer is not reactive
enough to look for help.
There, the QA team stepping in and suggesting to ask for help
(publicly, so that we have it traced) and suggesting the formation of
a maintenance team can be an interesting evolution.
Finally, I believe our most important packages (e.g., as defined by
their archive Priority or shared libraries with tons of reverse
dependencies) should be team-maintained, at least to provide backup
maintainers. In fact, the PTS already implements such a warning on a
Priority basis (implementation by Raphael, a while ago); similar
warnings can and should be added to other tools of our toolchains.
Not a bad idea, though it's only a 'should' and should not be
interpreted as a 'must' IMHO.
Agreed.
Cheers.
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:42:11AM +, Steve McIntyre wrote:
I'm very much a fan of people working together on their packages, but
I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to make teams the default. If
snip
P.S. Damn, just read Zack's answer and we don't seem to differ very
much. Oh well... :-)
... well, expect that you don't consider team maintenance to be the
reasonable default while I do :-)
Cheers.
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Re: GR proposal: Do not require listing of copyright holders
On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 04:55:39PM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
Le dimanche 22 mars 2009 à 14:55 +0100, Peter Palfrader a écrit :
The original discussion isn't even half over and you come running to us
screaming GR. Way to abuse our constitution and waste everyone's time.
Not appreciated. Not at all.
And should anyone appreciate the fact that FTP masters are wasting
valuable developer time and putting pressure on people to the point they
resign from maintaining critical packages?
Joss, what both Russ and Petter replied is just that it is _too early_
to have this GR. None of them said that we shouldn't have
it. Personally, I think we should have this GR, but just wait a bit
more to let things get clearer.
I think Joerg made it clear that the decision is made and he’s not
coming back on it. The only way left in the average developer’s
hands is to get the project as a whole override the decision.
We have had a couple of recent proofs that:
1) We are able to contrast Joerg choices when they are inappropriate
either in content or in form [*]. In this specific case, Joerg's
perplexity about _potential_ legal issues is not totally unsound.
FWIW, following the two messages you mentioned, Joerg also posted
8763i1bwkp@vorlon.ganneff which is a more calm analysis of the
problem as seen from FTP master point of view.
2) Hurrying to GR text writing can lead to absurd ballots.
I personally would like to have this GR and I would like to drop the
requirement of mentioning all Copyright holders. Nevertheless the
suggested procedure of first having at least some legal advice and
also discussing the issue a bit more, sounds more than reasonable to
me.
Which problem do you see with it?
Cheers.
[*] http://www.debian.org/vote/2008/vote_002
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Re: GR proposal: the AGPL does not meet the DFSG
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bill Allombert bill.allomb...@math.u-bordeaux1.fr wrote: - - - - - - - General Resolution made in accordance with Debian Constitution 4.1.5: The Debian project resolves that softwares licensed under the GNU Affero Public License are not free according to the Debian Free Software Guideline. - - - - - - - I second the above Resolution, although I note it is missing the world General before Public. My personal rationale is three-fold: firstly, the uncertainty about whether we have to ensure availability of the whole software or only our modifications (in other words, whether our app should go offline if savannah, debian or whatever upstream hosting service goes offline to our users) could be a significant cost of use (this is broadly Bill Allombert's point 2.2); secondly, the AGPL contradicts the freedom to distribute when you wish which I always thought was a fundamental part of free software. It has often been mentioned by RMS and others, in speeches such as http://fsfeurope.org/documents/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html and some forced-publication licences (such as Reciprocal Public License) have been listed on http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#NonFreeSoftwareLicense finally, the AGPL is grounded in the self-contradicting idea of being specifically designed to ensure cooperation as described in its preamble (which also differs from the GNU GPL). I believe cooperation is necessarily voluntary (and I am not alone in that - see http://www.ica.coop/coop/principles.html#1) and that ensured cooperation is coercion, not freedom. This is broadly in line with debian's constitutional idea that A person who does not want to do a task which has been delegated or assigned to them does not need to do it. I hope that others will support this debian and co-op view. Regards, - -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFJx3v4mUY5euFC5vQRAq4PAKCAILfH4vqC9mNfZEisA89K1bOtjQCgmKeh Z+cEKLJLzYnqDSMKBXZuXY8= =7dWJ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Amendment: automatic expiry-on-failure, to Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Joerg Jaspert jo...@debian.org wrote: While one could go and define another arbitary number, like 10 or 15 or whatever, I propose to move this to something that is dependent on the actual number of Developers, as defined by the secretary, and to increase its value from the current 5 to something higher. [...] Given that I feel the project's way of removing MIA developers is a bit random, a bit opaque and not an explicit part of the NM agreement, I think anything dependent on the actual number of Developers risks paralysing the democratic processes. Debian Membership should probably be addressed before increasing the GR requirements. Various IRC discussions and the discussion on debian-project in December told me that others feel similar. So here is a proposal. Further, the discussion on debian-project in December asked for data http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/12/msg00197.html and there's little available data to support the options in this GR. I think it's improper that the proposal did not link the discussion. Because there's little available data, I'm open to experimenting with this, but I think we need a safeguard to avoid paralysis. I think a so-called sunset expiry is a good idea. AMENDMENT START Replace too small with thought to be too small, but there is a lack of evidence about the correct level. Replace clause c with c) if general resolutions are proposed but none receives the required number of seconds in a year, this resolution expires and the required number of seconds returns to K. AMENDMENT END This amendment may be combined with any of the proposal in Message-id: 87vdq3gcf6@vorlon.ganneff.de or the amendments in Message-id: 87r60rgcdd@vorlon.ganneff.de Message-id: 20090322131519.gh4...@halon.org.uk and I invite their supporters to accept this amendment. Otherwise, I ask for seconds for all three combinations. I suggest that their ballot lines be the same as for the proposal or amended proposals with with expiry clause appended. Hope that helps, - -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFJx4JYmUY5euFC5vQRAkCtAJ9NHeYDTo9iK1naFzCWkgzvCHgqowCfc+r2 UL7jAjNUDckNaQhbeXcK19w= =L7mO -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
On Sat, 2009-03-21 at 15:47 +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote: PROPOSAL START General Resolutions are an important framework within the Debian Project. Yet, in a project the size of Debian, the current requirements to initiate one are too small. Therefore the Debian project resolves that a) The constitution gets changed to not require K developers to sponsor a resolution, but floor(2Q). [see §4.2(1)] b) Delaying a decision of a Delegate or the DPL [§4.2(2.2)], as well as resolutions against a shortening of discussion/voting period or to overwrite a TC decision [§4.2(2.3)] requires floor(Q) developers to sponsor the resolution. c) the definition of K gets erased from the constitution. [§4.2(7)] (Numbers in brackets are references to sections in the constitution). PROPOSAL END Seconded. -- Gustavo Noronha k...@debian.org Debian Project signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: GR proposal: the AGPL does not meet the DFSG
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 12:09:39PM +, MJ Ray wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bill Allombert bill.allomb...@math.u-bordeaux1.fr wrote: - - - - - - - General Resolution made in accordance with Debian Constitution 4.1.5: The Debian project resolves that softwares licensed under the GNU Affero Public License are not free according to the Debian Free Software Guideline. - - - - - - - I second the above Resolution, although I note it is missing the world General before Public. My personal rationale is three-fold: Thanks! I like to say that I am in the process of improving the wording of this GR, to address issues raised on this list. In particular, I am considering making the rationale part of the GR text (to make it a position statement from the project), but we would need more discussion on this topic so we can agree on a rationale. Cheers, -- Bill. ballo...@debian.org Imagine a large red swirl here. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
blablablablablablabla (was Re: lifting censorship during the DPL campaign ...
Hi, On Montag, 23. März 2009, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: Hi Sven, IMO in the censorship which censorship Sven can post his opinion on thousand of sites on the internet, he is not censored. He is blocked from posting to debian-lists because of the severe disruptions he has caused at several times. He doesnt like that, but thats what the project decided. Could people please stop bringing this up again and again? regards, Holger signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Question for DPL Candidates: Debian $$$
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 12:43:06PM +, MJ Ray wrote:
Steve McIntyre st...@einval.com wrote:
Do you have any further ideas yourself on where we should spend our
money?
How about
I don't get much of the actual payment you are proposing to do, let's
see.
paying grants to other charities to evaluate debian,
What does this mean? Paying someone to evaluate debian? I don't get
this ...
to adapt it to meet their needs and deploy it,
Who will be payed to do the development and deployment? If that boils
down to paying DDs, then it is a no-go for me. If otherwise that boils
down to paying external people, you will first need to convince me
that you have looked for volunteers and you've found none.
or to hold meetings to do that?
That, on the contrary, is perfectly reasonable and I will be all for
that.
I was at a meeting for local voluntary and community infrastructure
organisations and the most-mentioned reason for not considering
debian seemed to be a lack of resources. Meanwhile, the debian
project seems to have surplus resources. This seems a bit of a daft
situation.
Please expand this argument. Who was looking for resources and which
kind of resources where they looking for?
--
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Re: All candidates: Membership procedures
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 11:34:57AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
What's your opinion on membership procedures?
Hi Lars, thanks for the question.
I feel that my approach and Joerg's are pretty much diametrically
opposed. What's your opinion?
I'm going to respond to this as soon as I complete my backlog of
week-end email. In the meantime I've a request that will help people
following this discussion. Can you please point us all to your
proposal, possibly revised with changes raised in the discussion, if
any? I do remind your proposal, but I'm not sure whether it was
significantly changed during the subsequent discussion or not.
Many thanks in advance,
Cheers.
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Re: [not a second] Re: Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 08:31:31PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
I'd like to see other options too, for, say Q/3, Q/2, 10, 15. This
would allow us to compromise on what people think is necessary,
without being restricted by your arbitrary choice of Q and 2Q. Could
you add those to your proposed resolution, so people can second all
of them at the same time and reduce the number of emails on -v...@?
Agreed: if we have to vote on numbers, that I prefer to vote on a good
range of them.
Also, I would like to ask the secretary or the proposer to prepare,
for when the ballot will be ready, an informative page with the
numbers matching the current number of developers and the
corresponding number of needed seconds. I believe in a vote like this
one people will be likely to vote on the basis of those numbers.
Cheers.
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Re: blablablablablablabla
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 02:28:32PM +0100, Holger Levsen wrote:
On Montag, 23. März 2009, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
Hi Sven, IMO in the censorship
which censorship
FWIW, posting it to -vote was a mistake of mine, I overlooked that the
mailing list was among the recipients. He submitted the request to the
DPL candidates and I replied with the reasons why I think the request
was inappropriate.
So, sorry, and please let's drop the thread here.
Cheers.
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Re: Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 11:21:34AM -0500, Guilherme de S. Pastore wrote:
There are some that do not take part in the discussions but vote,
there are those who do not even follow debian-vote because they do
not feel it is worth the effort, and those that are simply not
active at all. I do not have the numbers right now, but IIRC we have
had an average of 300 to 400 votes in the most controversial
disputes recently. In other words, considering the seconds
requirement from the 1000-something DDs we count formally is
fiction, when less than half of them actually participate in the
decision process.
Full ACK, that's one of my concerns about this issue, concern that I
was going to raise. In particular, I think a proposal like this one
should be paired with a more visible report of how WAT runs are going
[1]. My preferred magic formula is certainly different if it has to
be computed on top of 1000 DDs or if it is computed over 400. The only
numbers I've seen about WAT runs are from an old blog post [2].
According to it a very few accounts have been disabled as inactive and
the number over which, in perspective, the formulae have to be
computed is apparently about the current 1000 total.
Question for Joerg, which happens to be both DAM and the GR proposer:
let's assume WAT runs stabilize, on which number of voters do you
think the magic formulae should be computed?
Cheers.
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007/07/msg4.html
[2] http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2007/07/14/wat-where-are-they.html
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Re: [dissenting]: Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
This one time, at band camp, Lucas Nussbaum said: Could you propose an amendement that explicitely says that the current rules don't need to be changed (different from FD), and another one that proposes a compromise by requiring 8 or 10 seconders? You're aware that you can propose amendments as well? It seems rather clunky to ask someone to write an amendment they don't agree with and hope that the wording is what you want. -- - | ,''`.Stephen Gran | | : :' :sg...@debian.org | | `. `'Debian user, admin, and developer | |`- http://www.debian.org | - signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [dissenting]: Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
On 23/03/09 at 14:28 +, Stephen Gran wrote: This one time, at band camp, Lucas Nussbaum said: Could you propose an amendement that explicitely says that the current rules don't need to be changed (different from FD), and another one that proposes a compromise by requiring 8 or 10 seconders? You're aware that you can propose amendments as well? Yeah, but I'm lazy, so I'm trying to find a victim first ;) -- | Lucas Nussbaum | lu...@lucas-nussbaum.net http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: lu...@nussbaum.fr GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: All candidates: Membership procedures
ma, 2009-03-23 kello 14:52 +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli kirjoitti: I'm going to respond to this as soon as I complete my backlog of week-end email. In the meantime I've a request that will help people following this discussion. Can you please point us all to your proposal, possibly revised with changes raised in the discussion, if any? I do remind your proposal, but I'm not sure whether it was significantly changed during the subsequent discussion or not. My message is here: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/10/msg00145.html However, I'm asking the candidates to hear what their opinions are on how Debian should handle membership. I don't desire a detailed commentary on the various proposals (if only since that would take a lot of time to write and read). I am interested in the candidates' opinions, rather than their reactions to other people's opinions. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: [dissenting]: Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
2009/3/23 Lucas Nussbaum lu...@lucas-nussbaum.net: Secondly, the GR process depends heavily on the possibility of developers to offer amendments and extra options on the ballots. In particular it is vital that middle-ground options get on the ballot. Requiring of them a high number of seconds might bar them from being on the ballot, because they are not preferred options, but compromises. I agree, and I'm a bit concerned that everybody seems to think that it's a good idea to increasing the number of required seconds, while I really think that it's a terrible idea. IANADD, but I think that if the concern is that amendments aren't going to have enough seconds, you could amend the proposal not to affect them: after all once you're having a ballot, having one more option is not that huge effort more for the voter, so it seems sensible that amendments need fewer seconds... Cheers, Luca -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
This one time, at band camp, Joerg Jaspert said: PROPOSAL START General Resolutions are an important framework within the Debian Project. Yet, in a project the size of Debian, the current requirements to initiate one are too small. Therefore the Debian project resolves that a) The constitution gets changed to not require K developers to sponsor a resolution, but floor(2Q). [see §4.2(1)] b) Delaying a decision of a Delegate or the DPL [§4.2(2.2)], as well as resolutions against a shortening of discussion/voting period or to overwrite a TC decision [§4.2(2.3)] requires floor(Q) developers to sponsor the resolution. c) the definition of K gets erased from the constitution. [§4.2(7)] (Numbers in brackets are references to sections in the constitution). PROPOSAL END seconded. -- - | ,''`.Stephen Gran | | : :' :sg...@debian.org | | `. `'Debian user, admin, and developer | |`- http://www.debian.org | - signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
This one time, at band camp, Joerg Jaspert said: Hi, I have felt for some time that the low requirement for seconds on General Resolutions is something that should be fixed. Currently it needs 5 supporters to get any idea laid before every Debian Developer to vote on. While this small number was a good thing at the time Debian was smaller, I think it is no longer the case. We currently have over 1000 Developers, and even if not everyone is active all the time, there should be a little higher barrier before all of them have to deal with something, effectively taking away time from their usual Debian work. I'd be very happy to see something like this. I'd like to propose an amendment something like (wording not finalized, so no call for seconds yet): While the number of seconds required to start a vote should be nQ, the number of seconds for an amendment should mQ, where m = n/x (x 1). I think that it should be difficult to start a GR, as it's a large time sink for the project as a whole. Once it's clear we're going to have a ballot, though, I see no reason it should be difficult to represent a range of opinions on the ballot. Possibly it should be more difficult than it currently is, but I am not yet convinced either way. Thoughts? -- - | ,''`.Stephen Gran | | : :' :sg...@debian.org | | `. `'Debian user, admin, and developer | |`- http://www.debian.org | - signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
[ ACK on the comment that proposals like this one deserve a wider
audience than -vote and the candidates. Given you are asking, here
is my answer, which does not inhibit re-raising the issue elsewhere
of course (hint hint :-)) ]
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:43:16PM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
Some of these packages are very well maintained and others.. well,
bug numbers sometimes speak for themselves. For these packages we have
that cool text on the PTS pages: The package is of priority standard
or higher, you should really find some co-maintainers. which brought
me on this at all. What I thought about when I read that is: HaHaHa,
we are kidding on us own, because we recommend something to us, what
should actually be the default (for this type of packages).
I don't get what you mean here: it should be the default in which
sense? in the ideal world? agreed. Beside that, it is not written
anywhere that it should be the case. The warning is there because (as
I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread) the PTS has been used in the
past to push for QA practices which were considered good by the PTS
maintainers. That warning was implemented (IIRC, I haven't checked the
svn logs) by Raphael and has stayed there because the other people who
maintainer the PTS agrees with its good intention.
Thats why I thought it would eventually be a good idea to form a
core team, meaning a team of a bunch of people (10-20?), with
wide-spread knowledge and known to have enough free time
(e.g. people who have 50 packages and aren't able to keep up with
the bug reports in their own packages wouldn't qualify) that gets
the job to (co-)maintain all these packages that are very important
to us. It doesn't mean that the existing maintainers are taken away
the packages, because they could still stay the maintainers, but
obviously some of these packages are not easily maintainable by one
person.
What do you think about such a proposal?
It would make perfectly sense, but I fail to see its specificity. I
think that such important packages should be team maintained, even
only for backup reasons [1]. Is it that relevant for your proposal
that the team is a single one as opposed to multiple one? In practice,
I imagine that the overlap between maintenance team will grow over
time, so you can also see it as a gradual path towards your proposal.
Finally, let me observe that nothing in our current rules inhibit that
from happening: it would be enough to get the current maintainer
around an (IRC-)table, and decide to start over by asking for people
interested to join the forthcoming teams.
Cheers.
[1] but in practice for other good reasons, like team reviewing of
patches which are considered sensitive, like it happens on the
devscripts maintenance team for example
--
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: Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
On Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:23:06 +, Stephen Gran wrote:
While the number of seconds required to start a vote should be nQ, the
number of seconds for an amendment should mQ, where m = n/x (x 1). I
think that it should be difficult to start a GR, as it's a large time
sink for the project as a whole. Once it's clear we're going to have a
ballot, though, I see no reason it should be difficult to represent
a range of opinions on the ballot. Possibly it should be more difficult
than it currently is, but I am not yet convinced either way.
I'm not sure either; I see your point about having a range of
opinions , but OTOH more options can also lead to more confusion, so
making them too cheap might be unfavourable.
Cheers,
gregor
--
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Re: GR proposal: the AGPL does not meet the DFSG
MJ Ray m...@phonecoop.coop writes: I hope that others will support this debian and co-op view. I continue to object to this GR as currently worded because it is a stealth delegate override that doesn't clearly state its implications and effects. I encourage all DDs to not second it until it's been fixed, even if you agree with the substance. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 05:48:08PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: [ ACK on the comment that proposals like this one deserve a wider audience than -vote and the candidates. Given you are asking, here is my answer, which does not inhibit re-raising the issue elsewhere of course (hint hint :-)) ] As already stated elsewhere I'm surely opening that topic somewhere with a broader audience, but its a good topic for me to see which opinions the DPL candidates act for. On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:43:16PM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: Some of these packages are very well maintained and others.. well, bug numbers sometimes speak for themselves. For these packages we have that cool text on the PTS pages: The package is of priority standard or higher, you should really find some co-maintainers. which brought me on this at all. What I thought about when I read that is: HaHaHa, we are kidding on us own, because we recommend something to us, what should actually be the default (for this type of packages). I don't get what you mean here: it should be the default in which sense? in the ideal world? agreed. Beside that, it is not written anywhere that it should be the case. The warning is there because (as I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread) the PTS has been used in the past to push for QA practices which were considered good by the PTS maintainers. That warning was implemented (IIRC, I haven't checked the svn logs) by Raphael and has stayed there because the other people who maintainer the PTS agrees with its good intention. Stefano, actually I agree with its good intention. What I actually think is that we are kidding ourselves, because we already see whats needed, but don't go an active way of solving something which might be an issue. Instead we are acting only passive, with this note, with the best hope that someone will come and fix the problem. What do you think about such a proposal? It would make perfectly sense, but I fail to see its specificity. I think that such important packages should be team maintained, even only for backup reasons [1]. Is it that relevant for your proposal that the team is a single one as opposed to multiple one? In practice, I imagine that the overlap between maintenance team will grow over time, so you can also see it as a gradual path towards your proposal. No, actually its ok if we have more then one team. Some of these packages are already team-maintained and possibly good. What I aimed at was a team that backups existing teams and pitches in where team-power is missing. A team that is always responsible for packages, which are otherwise only in the responsibility of single maintainers. Such a team would always be empowered to make uploads for these packages, without needing to escalate single issues to the CTTE or comply with waiting periods for NMUs. Finally, let me observe that nothing in our current rules inhibit that from happening: it would be enough to get the current maintainer around an (IRC-)table, and decide to start over by asking for people interested to join the forthcoming teams. Yes, asking the maintainer weither its okay, if a core-team can assist him with his duties, would be the normal way that should always be followed (even with my proposal). But it goes somewhat farer in that it it would make the members of that core team delagates with a given package set as their responsibility. It still needs volunteers to act in this team, but I think that a team which one can be part of makes volunteer positions actually more interesting as doing work, reporting it in the BTS and hoping some overloaded person will ever look into and considering it. Regards, Patrick signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: lifting censorship during the DPL campaign ...
On 11696 March 1977, Sven Luther wrote: I come to you again, with the same request as i did last year, that you lift the censorship you are imposing on me for the duration of the DPL campaign on debian-vote. As you obviously do not know the word, lets copy what a dictionary or also Wikipedia has to say: Censorship: Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor. This is *not* what is done in your case. You are free to say whatever you want[1]. And none of your mails that made it to the lists got deleted. What is done is called a Ban, Debian decided to no longer be an audience for whatever you have to say. Quite different from censorship Debian does *not* forbid you to speak, Debian just does not want you to use up any Debian resource. [1] respecting the usual laws everyone follows The current taboo i am under, is well beyond what the DAM originally decided after my explusion, and the ask a DD to forward your mails politic is not working (almost 50% or so of my mails are not forwarded, either because there is some pression on the would-be forwarders, or because people tell me what i say would not further their own argument and position). Maybe you should listen to them, if so many of the people tell you its not worth it. And yes, i am still hurting to even write this by the evil you have done to me, but i am also ready to forgive you, as i have amply shown in the past by proposing constructives approaches to solving the conflict which would have been in the best interest of debian, but which received no support at all. The ball is in your camp, as it was since the start of this mess. I'm not sure how big the signs have to be before you read them, but this camp does not want to be assigned with you anymore. The biggest letters for years now read MOVE ON, THERE IS MORE IN THE WORLD THAN THIS Don Quichotte LIKE 'FIGHT' YOU PLAY -- bye, Joerg I think there's a world market for about five computers. -- attr. Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board, IBM), 1943 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: GR proposal: the AGPL does not meet the DFSG
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 12:31:01PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: MJ Ray m...@phonecoop.coop writes: I hope that others will support this debian and co-op view. I continue to object to this GR as currently worded because it is a stealth delegate override that doesn't clearly state its implications and effects. I encourage all DDs to not second it until it's been fixed, even if you agree with the substance. +1 -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com Google-bait: http://www.debian.org/CD/free-linux-cd Debian does NOT ship free CDs. Please do NOT contact the mailing lists asking us to send them to you. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: GR proposal: the AGPL does not meet the DFSG
Russ Allbery r...@debian.org wrote: MJ Ray m...@phonecoop.coop writes: I hope that others will support this debian and co-op view. I continue to object to this GR as currently worded because it is a stealth delegate override that doesn't clearly state its implications and effects. I encourage all DDs to not second it until it's been fixed, even if you agree with the substance. Did the delegates decide this particular matter or was Bug #495721 merely a summary of current practice? The statement there seemed incomplete in significant ways. Also, I think we should let the secretary to decide if a GR proposal modifies some foundation document, overrides a delegate decision, or requires amendment to be valid, rather than withholding seconds. I'm not that great at bureaucracy, so I think it's better that only the secretary decides the rules, rather than having every DD try to use the rule book as a weapon. Hope that explains, -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: GR proposal: the AGPL does not meet the DFSG
MJ Ray wrote: Russ Allbery r...@debian.org wrote: MJ Ray m...@phonecoop.coop writes: I hope that others will support this debian and co-op view. I continue to object to this GR as currently worded because it is a stealth delegate override that doesn't clearly state its implications and effects. I encourage all DDs to not second it until it's been fixed, even if you agree with the substance. Did the delegates decide this particular matter or was Bug #495721 merely a summary of current practice? The statement there seemed incomplete in significant ways. Yes, they did. Also, I think we should let the secretary to decide if a GR proposal modifies some foundation document, overrides a delegate decision, or requires amendment to be valid, rather than withholding seconds. I'm not that great at bureaucracy, so I think it's better that only the secretary decides the rules, rather than having every DD try to use the rule book as a weapon. I think it's wrong to leave the decision on whether a GR proposal modifies a foundation document to the secretary. I do think it's a good idea to request withholding seconds if anything is unclear. Cheers Luk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: GR proposal: the AGPL does not meet the DFSG
MJ Ray m...@phonecoop.coop writes: Did the delegates decide this particular matter or was Bug #495721 merely a summary of current practice? The statement there seemed incomplete in significant ways. The ftpmaster statement about the AGPL was remarkably explicit. recently we, your mostly friendly Ftpmaster and -team, have been asked about an opinion about the AGPL in Debian. The short summary is: We think that works licensed under the AGPL can go into main. (Provided they don't have any other problems). I'm not sure what requirements you have, but I have a hard time imagining much done in the project that is more obviously a delegate decision. Also, I think we should let the secretary to decide if a GR proposal modifies some foundation document, overrides a delegate decision, or requires amendment to be valid, rather than withholding seconds. I don't think the secretary currently has that power under the Constitution. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: GR proposal: the AGPL does not meet the DFSG
On Mon Mar 23 15:08, Russ Allbery wrote: Also, I think we should let the secretary to decide if a GR proposal modifies some foundation document, overrides a delegate decision, or requires amendment to be valid, rather than withholding seconds. I don't think the secretary currently has that power under the Constitution. (sorry to hijack the thread) this is exactly what I want to clarify in the other thread over - there about constitutional issues. And why I was trying to get that in _first_ Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GR proposal: Do not require listing of copyright holders
On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 08:53:19PM -0400, Daniel Dickinson wrote: On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:09:43 + Sam Kuper sam.ku...@uclmail.net wrote: To be honest I think when it comes to copyright issue ftpmaster has the final say because they *personally* are the ones legally on the hook if something is wrong. If I were an ftpmaster and thought I could get sued if I obeyed a GR, I would resign from the ftp team, and presumably you could lose the team that way, if it were over something that could cause legal action. Frankly I have never seen any serious argument why the FTP masters would be more likely to be sued that anyone else in Debian. I find that rather far-fetched, but assuming this is the case, the answer is to restructure our organization to avoid such liability. Cheers, -- Bill. ballo...@debian.org Imagine a large red swirl here. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
[Amendment] Reaffirm the GR process
Hello developers, I am hereby proposing the amendement below to the General resolution entitled Enhance requirements for General resolutions. PROPOSAL START General Resolutions are an important framework within the Debian Project, which have served us well since the first GR vote in 2003, with 804 developers, nearly has much as today slightly over 1000 developers. Therefore the Debian project reaffirms its attachement to the constitution and the current General Resolutions process. PROPOSAL END Cheers, -- Bill. ballo...@debian.org Imagine a large red swirl here. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GR proposal: the AGPL does not meet the DFSG
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 12:31:01PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: MJ Ray m...@phonecoop.coop writes: I hope that others will support this debian and co-op view. I continue to object to this GR as currently worded because it is a stealth delegate override that doesn't clearly state its implications and effects. I encourage all DDs to not second it until it's been fixed, even if you agree with the substance. The options I can see that might end up on the ballot would include: - 4.1.3: override a delegate [1:1] - 4.1.5: position statement about the AGFL [1:1] (Either the same as ftp-master, or the opposite.) - 4.1.5.3: override a foundation document [3:1] The last option is probably unlikely. The problem I see with a position statement is that it's non-binding and that the delegate's decission would still hold. What ftp-master does with that is up to them. I currently see no problem putting it under both of them, and would like to see that clearly in the text of the proposal. Kurt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: [Amendment] Reaffirm the GR process
(Dropping -devel…) Bill Allombert bill.allomb...@math.u-bordeaux1.fr (23/03/2009): Hello developers, I am hereby proposing the amendement below to the General resolution entitled Enhance requirements for General resolutions. PROPOSAL START General Resolutions are an important framework within the Debian Project, which have served us well since the first GR vote in 2003, with 804 developers, nearly has much as today slightly over 1000 developers. Therefore the Debian project reaffirms its attachement to the constitution and the current General Resolutions process. PROPOSAL END Something's wrong, according to 20090322235056.gk4...@halon.org.uk. Mraw, KiBi. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [Amendment] Reaffirm the GR process
PROPOSAL START === General Resolutions are an important framework within the Debian Project, which have served us well since the first GR vote in 2003, with 804 developers, nearly has much as today slightly over 1000 developers. Therefore the Debian project reaffirms its attachement to the constitution and the current General Resolutions process. === PROPOSAL END IMO this deserves to be an explicit option on the ballot. It makes for a much clearer choice than having further discussion fulfill that role. OTOH, I think the text of the amendment could be improved as the GR from Ganneff does not really change the GR _process_ but only the requirements regarding nr. of seconders. I'd second a somewhat revised text, for example: Therefore the Debian project confirms the current requirements for the sponsoring (seconding) of GR proposals or amendments, and for overruling of delegates. I'll not comment on the accuracy of the first para. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
What will improve Debian most?
Hi *, So looking through the nominations, platforms and the current -vote threads, I'm left wondering if any of this actually matters. Only two candidates running, no IRC debate or rebuttals added to the platforms, and only a couple of topics people have even raised for the candidates to address? Debian used to involve lots of people with different ideas about how to improve free software; not just a handful of different ideas about how to run a free software project. One of the most impressive things about Debian in the past was its exponential growth -- users, developers, packages, architectures, email volume, etc -- but I wonder if that's still happening, or if growth is something that's been outsourced to Ubuntu somewhere along the line. Maintaining an exponential growth curve essentially means finding new ways to make Debian twice as interesting at a constant rate -- each year or two, I'd guess. So here's the question, and really the only part of this mail that warrants a response: Over the next twelve months, what single development/activity/project is going to improve Debian's value the most? By how much? How will you be involved? A possible example might be making Debian 5% faster on m68k -- that'll affect about 1% of our users, making them about 20% happier since speed is their number one issue, for an overall improvement of 0.2%. Another might be we'll make web applications, like WordPress, Drupal, Tomcat etc, easy to install, activate and maintain; this will expand our userbase by 30%, and make 20% of our users three times happier -- that's an overall improvement of 82%. Another might be we'll get 45% more patches from downstream distros (Ubuntu, Xandros, HP's Mi, etc) into Debian, and get 35% more patches from Debian incorporated back upstream, for a 96% improvement in our free software community participation. Another might be we'll make working on Debian twice as fun so current developers spend twice as much time/effort on Debian, and we'll make participating sufficiently easier to get half as many contributors again without any drop in quality, for an overall increase in our rate of improvement of 150%. Another might be we'll stop working on Debian and move developers and users to Ubuntu instead, following Canonical's existing goals/processes, giving users three times as many other folks they can turn to for support, pre-installed systems on various netbooks and laptops, and sharing work on things like archive maintenance, bug triage, and routine packaging making that take 70% as much work, with minimal transition costs of about 5% due to Ubuntu's derived nature, for an overall benefit of 389%. Communication is important, but not if it means everyone's time and attention gets focussed on things that don't make an appreciable difference to our goals, while things that would make a huge difference keep getting ignored or deferred. And even if we didn't want to commit to actual numeric values for different ideas, we've got plenty of developers and users we could poll to at least get an overall ordering. Bonus question: in retrospect, what single activity/etc over the past twelve months improved Debian the most? By how much? (Can you really justify that?) How were you involved? Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 03:49:02PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote: Hi, and here is the promised amendment which will require a maximum of floor(Q) developers to second a GR. PROPOSAL START General Resolutions are an important framework within the Debian Project. Yet, in a project the size of Debian, the current requirements to initiate one are too small. Therefore the Debian project resolves that a) The constitution gets changed to not require K developers to sponsor a resolution, but floor(Q). [see §4.2(1)] b) Delaying a decision of a Delegate or the DPL [§4.2(2.2)], as well as resolutions against a shortening of discussion/voting period or to overwrite a TC decision [§4.2(2.3)] requires floor(Q) developers to sponsor the resolution. c) the definition of K gets erased from the constitution. [§4.2(7)] (Numbers in brackets are references to sections in the constitution). PROPOSAL END Also seconded. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com Into the distance, a ribbon of black Stretched to the point of no turning back signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [Amendment] Reaffirm the GR process
On 24/03/09 at 00:29 +0100, Frans Pop wrote: PROPOSAL START === General Resolutions are an important framework within the Debian Project, which have served us well since the first GR vote in 2003, with 804 developers, nearly has much as today slightly over 1000 developers. Therefore the Debian project reaffirms its attachement to the constitution and the current General Resolutions process. === PROPOSAL END IMO this deserves to be an explicit option on the ballot. It makes for a much clearer choice than having further discussion fulfill that role. OTOH, I think the text of the amendment could be improved as the GR from Ganneff does not really change the GR _process_ but only the requirements regarding nr. of seconders. I'd second a somewhat revised text, for example: Therefore the Debian project confirms the current requirements for the sponsoring (seconding) of GR proposals or amendments, and for overruling of delegates. I'll not comment on the accuracy of the first para. Indeed, the numbers are clearly questionable. Maybe it shouldn't include them, and also provide a sketch of justification for refusing the change? Something like: --- General Resolutions are an important framework within the Debian Project, which have served us well for years. While over those years, some problems have arised during the discussion and/or voting of some resolutions, there is no evidence that changing the number of sponsors (seconds) for GR proposals or amendments will help solve those problems. Instead, by making it harder to propose general resolutions or amendments, it might make it harder to improve imperfect resolutions, or to add valuable options to a ballot. --- -- | Lucas Nussbaum | lu...@lucas-nussbaum.net http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ | | jabber: lu...@nussbaum.fr GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 03:47:57PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote: PROPOSAL START General Resolutions are an important framework within the Debian Project. Yet, in a project the size of Debian, the current requirements to initiate one are too small. Therefore the Debian project resolves that a) The constitution gets changed to not require K developers to sponsor a resolution, but floor(2Q). [see §4.2(1)] b) Delaying a decision of a Delegate or the DPL [§4.2(2.2)], as well as resolutions against a shortening of discussion/voting period or to overwrite a TC decision [§4.2(2.3)] requires floor(Q) developers to sponsor the resolution. c) the definition of K gets erased from the constitution. [§4.2(7)] (Numbers in brackets are references to sections in the constitution). PROPOSAL END Assuming that you'll provide explicit diffs for the constitution: Seconded. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com You raise the blade, you make the change... You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane... signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: What will improve Debian most?
Anthony Towns a...@erisian.com.au writes: So here's the question, and really the only part of this mail that warrants a response: Over the next twelve months, what single development/activity/project is going to improve Debian's value the most? By how much? How will you be involved? Maybe you meant to ask what are you going to work on over the next twelve months that will improve Debian's value? Because the right answer to what one thing is going to improve $FOO the most in the next twelve months, for pretty much any value of $FOO, is ask us in twelve months and we'll tell you. Personally, here's some things that I plan on working on over the next twelve months that I think will improve Debian's value: * Implement (or merge implementations from others) of multiple repositories, archive areas, and architectures in Lintian. Redo the Lintian reporting scripts so that they install as regular programs with documentation to make it easier for other people to set up Lintian checks of private repositories. * Whittle the Debian Policy bug backlog down considerably and document in Policy some of the things that are currently underdocumented from a standardization perspective, to provide a more concrete standard and increase their visibility. For example, I think better Policy documentation of diversions, alternatives, and symbols files would be straightforward and useful. * Try to do real work as part of the Debian Technical Committee, hopefully resulting in resolving issues and reducing the decision backlog. * Add support for the new PAM automatic configuration to the two PAM packages that I maintain. * Package more tools and utilities for maintaining Kerberos realms and OpenAFS cells. None of these are exponential and I don't care about percentages with any of them. I'm okay with that. I don't think those are useful measures, and I don't think exponential growth is a useful or interesting goal. One thousand people all improving the parts of Debian that they care about produces incredibly impressive results. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: [dissenting]: Proposal: Enhance requirements for General resolutions
Le Sunday 22 March 2009 23:53:02 Bill Allombert, vous avez écrit : Furthermore I am a Debian since 2001 and I see no evidence than the GR process was abused during that time. On the contrary, some GR were delayed to the point where it was inconvenient for the release process. I agree. I fail to see where the GR process was abused. Since that seems the main argument in favour of this change, I fail to see the motivation for it. Romain -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: All candidates: Membership procedures
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 11:34:57AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote: la, 2009-03-21 kello 01:42 +, Steve McIntyre kirjoitti: P.S. Damn, just read Zack's answer and we don't seem to differ very much. Oh well... :-) Dear Zack McIntyre, Steve Claes, and Luk Zacchiroli, Hi Lars Garbee! What's your opinion on membership procedures? Last year there were some rough proposals for how to change the membership procedures. It started with Joerg's proposal, but other people suggested their own kinds of changes, including me. I feel that my approach and Joerg's are pretty much diametrically opposed. What's your opinion? Do you feel the current NM process works well and almost always selects for the kind of people that are really great for Debian? Would some other kind of process work better? What kind of membership process would you like to see in Debian in, say, a year from now? Please feel free to dream, there's no point in being too constricted by reality and practical considerations. My own feelings about Debian membership are a little varied, I think. At the moment, I believe that there *is* quite some benefit to the long(-ish) current NM process in that it does help us select for people who are likely to have the persistence to stay in Debian once they are accepted. As a project we've been around for a long time, and I expect that we'll also hang around for quite a long time to come. It's good for us and our users if we have some continuity in personnel, and people who are not going to give up, get bored and wander off only a short time. However, I don't think we always check enough to see how NMs interact with others and I'd be much happier to see more of our NMs join teams and work in groups to start with. Technical excellence is great, but if you're impossible to work with then I don't think Debian is the right place for you. However, to offset that, I also think that we should give clear recognition to more of our contributors. The large groups of dedicated documenters, translators, testers and users who help to support each other all deserve some kudos for their efforts. How should that be shown? I believe that giving out debian.org addresses for people who have done a reasonable amount of work would be a good start. How much work? Good question. :-) In terms of the right to vote in Debian, I'm thinking that does need to be earned by an obvious long-term commitment to the project. Maybe a minimum count of packages uploaded, or strings translated, or web pages written over a 1-year period would work for that. For the rights to upload packages directly or to have logins on the various project machines, they should also be earned. After a number of sponsors are happy with sensible uploads, you get upload rights. If you need access to a project machine, it's given to you after a certain probation period. That may sound a little incoherent, but you did ask for dreams... :-) Overall, I'd like to see more of a continuum of privileges and duties in the Debian project. I'm happy to see that we're ready to have some open discussions about moving in that direction. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com Welcome my son, welcome to the machine. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: What will improve Debian most?
I should probably note here that it looked like Anthony had carefully phrased his question to apply to the entire project, not just the DPL candidates, and I replied in that context. If it was intended as a DPL candidate question, er, never mind. :) -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
Hi Patrick, On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:43:16PM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: In Debian we have some packages that are either by default on every system or are commonly expected to be found on Debian systems. Such tools could be called the core of our system, because they are most commonly used on a Debian system. Such packages include coreutils, gzip, grep, hostname, initscripts, obviously all the tools that make up a Debian system like dpkg, at, cron and some more. Short said: More or less all packages with a priority of Standard or higher, although one would need to think about this scope wrt to the following proposal. Some of these packages are very well maintained and others.. well, bug numbers sometimes speak for themselves. For these packages we have that cool text on the PTS pages: The package is of priority standard or higher, you should really find some co-maintainers. which brought me on this at all. What I thought about when I read that is: HaHaHa, we are kidding on us own, because we recommend something to us, what should actually be the default (for this type of packages). Thats why I thought it would eventually be a good idea to form a core team, meaning a team of a bunch of people (10-20?), with wide-spread knowledge and known to have enough free time (e.g. people who have 50 packages and aren't able to keep up with the bug reports in their own packages wouldn't qualify) that gets the job to (co-)maintain all these packages that are very important to us. It doesn't mean that the existing maintainers are taken away the packages, because they could still stay the maintainers, but obviously some of these packages are not easily maintainable by one person. What do you think about such a proposal? I'd be quite worried about the blocking potential of such a move, actually. One of the reasons that Debian scales so well is that *most* of the work we do day-to-day does not depend on the work of a small core team. That means that we can continue to work independently and get the major package work done without having to co-ordinate everything and share decisions all the time. If we *did* end up with such a core team, then I'd bet money on them always being over-worked. It wouldn't start that way, but it would get there. Your people with enough free time quickly wouldn't have. :-) Of course, there are places where our work does need co-ordination, like before a release. And those are the places where we often end up needing large teams doing a lot of work just to do that co-ordination. I'm much more convinced about encouraging people to set up individual teams for core packages, and then finding enough people to help cover the needs of those packages. More keen NMs are always good here... -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com I can't ever sleep on planes ... call it irrational if you like, but I'm afraid I'll miss my stop -- Vivek Dasmohapatra -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: [Amendment] Reaffirm the GR process
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 11:42:40PM +0100, Bill Allombert wrote: Hello developers, I am hereby proposing the amendement below to the General resolution entitled Enhance requirements for General resolutions. PROPOSAL START General Resolutions are an important framework within the Debian Project, which have served us well since the first GR vote in 2003, with 804 developers, nearly has much as today slightly over 1000 developers. I disagree that GRs have served us well. I found developers were much more likely to seek consensus during the period when the GR procedure was unavailable, and that having a mechanism for forcing a majority view on people has only served to draw out the tendency to do exactly that. But I also don't agree that raising the number of seconds required is an appropriate way to handle this. So I am seconding none of these proposals. Therefore the Debian project reaffirms its attachement to the constitution and the current General Resolutions process. s/attachement/attachment/ -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
