Debian's problems

[Joe Drew <hoserhead@woot.net>]

I've got some experience in leadership and what people need
and don't need in order to get things done. I pride myself on
my ability to simply put, get things done, period.

The problem with Debian is that it's currently got sort of a 
mushy structure instead of having something concrete, "here 
are our plans, now go forth and implement them, O our developers."
This isn't from any one person, or any group of people; instead,
it's because as things go on, anarchy ensues. It's a rule of the
universe and it's a rule when you're dealing with people.

Now, there are some definite goals for potato, which I'm familiar
with:
 - FHS compliance
 - Transition to perl 5.005
 - Glibc 2.1+
 - X 3.3.5
 - Kernel 2.2
 - And, as usual, updates

We've got everything but X and FHS behind us. 

Now, in order to run things properly, there are some things
that everyone needs.

1) People need direction. Very few are good at leading, but many
   people are good at following directions.
2) People need limits. If you give someone a centimetre, they will
   take it, and anything else they can.
3) People need to be able to say "We're done."

Right now, none of that's being done with Debian. It's not an
insurmountable task, either, putting this into our structure.

Direction can be brought by our fearless leader, Wichert. Ruling
by committee is a good thing, but for certain issues a leader
has to put their foot down. Declare what we're doing, and how
we're going to go about it.

Limits can be brought about by doing one thing, that everyone
will bitch and moan about: /not/ forking off into unstable once
potato freezes, and having every single maintainer of every single
critical bug incessantly tortured about it until it is fixed, if
it's possible to be fixed. Believe me, frozen will be finished
quickly.

And finally, we're done. When X 3.3.5 is in there, and FHS has
been achieved, we freeze, simple as that. Then, while we're frozen,
bugs are hammered out, and hammered out, and hammered out.
Then, when the final release-critical bug is gone, we go into
super-deep-freeze for 2-3 weeks, while we see if any more bugs are
lurking. Then we release, and we change frozen to unstable.

I really do think that it's a doable thing. It requires some
strong leadership, and some talented individuals, but we've got
that in spades.