On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 02:03:38PM +0000, Thorsten Glaser wrote: > Let’s GR it. No. I think I've already argued in the past against this idea on -devel, possibly even in reply to you, Thorsten. As I can't find my post back then, let me reiterate. GRs should be used for societal and policy[*] decisions. Using GRs for *technical* decision is stupid. We really need to stop thinking that every single member of the Debian project, just because he/she is a DD, has a clue on every single technical matter that go on in the project. And note that proving you have a clue on something in Debian is pretty easy: just work actively on that matter, being the maintainer of related packages, or having a verifiable flow of working patches against them, etc. [*] in a broad sense, not related to the document called Debian Policy On one hand, the belief that every DD is technically omniscient is the reason why we still have so many pointlessly heated debates on this mailing list. We would have way less of those if we let only people who have a clue debate specific matters. Unfortunately, many of us seem to be too arrogant to realize they, in fact, don't have a clue. On the other hand, if we stop believing that every single DD is technically omniscient, we would realize how foolish is to use GRs to vote on technical matters. Doing so results in taking important technical decisions essentially randomly. Based on popularity of the various options, trends, vocality of the supporting groups, etc. That's not what Debian is or should be about. Note that the *possibility* of taking technical decisions by GRs is important, as it provides a balance of powers within the project, but we should always do everything in our power to avoid doing that. The decisions about the init system (both "which are the supported ones?" and "which is the default one?") clearly belong to the tech-ctte at this point. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Former Debian Project Leader . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature