Re: More votes in Debian? Any idea for improvement?
On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 03:11:28PM +0800, Thomas Goirand wrote:
> On 03/12/2012 04:04 PM, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 03:28:53AM +0800, Thomas Goirand wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> If you see projects like Openstack or oVirt (sorry for the examples
> >> taken from my area of expertise...), they have elections every 6 months
> >> for project leaders in this or that area of the project.
> >>
> >> In Debian, we just elect a DPL, and then we hope that he appoints people
> >> who then can make decisions on the behalf of Debian.
> >>
> >> I feel strange that such a big project as Debian appears to work in a
> >> less democratic way than some software which has adopted open governance
> >> (truth, this is the new hype, but still...).
> >
> > Debian is not a democracy, nor does it need to be.
> >
> > We have one elected representative, whose job it is to make sure that
> > the project runs smoothly. But having an elected representative doesn't
> > necessarily mean that this person is the best for the job. Technical
> > tasks should have experts doing them, otherwise they'll not work; and
> > while an election can give you many things, experts in a particular job
> > is probably not one of them.
>
> So if I understand well, you're saying that the DPL knows better than a
> majority that would vote
Absolutely not. I'm not sure how you derive that from my above
statement. I said "having an elected representative doesn't [...] mean
this person is the best for the job", which seems like exactly the
opposite.
I'm saying there are a number of jobs that require experts, not elected
representatives. These people should know better than other people what
they're doing (precisely because they are experts).
Now, while an elected representative can theoretically be an expert in a
specific field, this will never be by virtue of being elected.
Therefore, we should not put elected representatives in jobs that
require experts; and while it may be that there are other jobs than just
the one of the DPL that would benefit from elected representatives, I
don't think there are that many.
--
The volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z can be described by
the following formula:
pi zz a
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