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Re: Question regarding Raphael's platform



On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 10:59:45PM +0000, Thom May wrote:
> 1) What resources do you feel that debian could provide to its developers to
> allow them to work more productively on their packages and other debian
> specific work?

I concur strongly with Ben Collins's thoughts on this issue.

> 2) Do you feel the sourceforge-for-debian proposal is a viable one given
> debian's limited resources and the already busy nature of our sys admin
> team? (mostly for Bdale and Branden)

I agree with Bdale's assessment of this issue.  To support a project of
this scope is going to require fresh blood, which it's probably better
off with anyway.  DSA already has plenty to do.

As you'll note from my platform and rebuttal remarks, my whole
philosophy as DPL is to try to match resources with the developers who
are interested in a project.

I'd be more than happy to give Raphaël the room and/or authority he
needs to pursue this interesting project.  This kind of freedom is
critical when a project is still in the conceptual stages.  As long as
the security and integrity (both technical and philosophical) of
Debian's resources and distribution aren't adversely affected, I'm open
to just about anyone's ideas.

See, that's the great thing about volunteerism; being DPL is not like
being a Project Manager at a company, where you have to think in terms
of man-hours and money.  Debian certainly has resource limitations when
it comes to bandwidth and hardware, but we *don't* have any inherent
limits on how many people can work on a given project, or for how long.
Some projects will fizzle, either because they were poorly conceived or
because they couldn't reach critical mass.  That's okay.  That's the
nature of the beast.

If the sourceforge-for-debian project succeeds, we all benefit.  If it
does not, we can probably learn why, and we all still benefit.
Education and experience are at least as valuable as tools.  I'd like to
do whatever I can to preserve Debian as an environment where
experimentation is encouraged and "crazy ideas" are given the
opportunity to flower.  If nothing else, being involved in a successful
experiment can be a great résumé-builder.  ;-)

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |    The basic test of freedom is
Debian GNU/Linux                   |    perhaps less in what we are free to
branden@debian.org                 |    do than in what we are free not to
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |    do.                  -- Eric Hoffer

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