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Re: Questions for candidates -- Debian's Organizational Structure



On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 04:48:01PM +1100, Pascal Hakim wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Which of the groups/people on [1] do you consider delegates? Why or why not?

Formally speaking, I guess only two are.  The Release Manager, and the
Hardware Donations Manager.

Martin can probably tell us if he's made other delegations on that page.

> Would you change this?

Yes, as I stated in my platform[2]:

  We need to respect the delegate process, or amend it. I don't think
  every "particular task" in the Project is the same as maintaining a
  package. The roles of archive administrator, project keyring
  maintainer, and project system administrator are important. In
  practice, we distinguish these roles from that of package maintainer
  in many ways. They are of particular importance and merit special
  attention. I do not think they can reasonably be lumped into the same
  category as the individual package maintainer. They have special
  powers and should be treated specially. The concept of the delegate in
  the Constitution was drafted with such roles in mind. That no previous
  DPL as taken the obvious step is a disappointment to me.
[...]
  I will take the obvious step described in the previous section, and
  formalize the delegate status of the many important people who do
  critical work for our project who do not already enjoy delegate
  status. In the event I cannot do so, or am persuaded that this is a
  bad idea, I will explain to the entire project why I cannot, and then,
  if necessary, propose a General Resolution amending our Constitution
  to reflect the facts of Debian's organization.

I think the following roles should be formally delegated:
        FTP Archives
        Release Manager
        Release Manager for "stable"
        Bug Tracking System
        Mailing Lists Administration
        Mailing Lists Archives
        New Maintainers Front Desk
        Developer Accounts Managers
        Keyring Maintainers
        Security Team [3]
        Web Pages [3]
        System Administration
        LDAP Developer Directory Administrator
        DNS Maintainer (hostmaster)
        Hardware Donations Coordinator
        Accountant

It's possible some of the above roles should be condensed into one.

> Do you believe the Tech Committee is effective in its role for the
> project?

I suspect not; as I stated in my platform[2]:

  I will reactivate the Technical Committee -- which has fallen dormant
  again -- or amend the Constitution to replace it with a body that
  works better. That almost a year has gone by with no mail to the list
  (apart from a test message by Wichert Akkerman), let alone a dispute
  to resolve, makes me suspect that this body has lost the confidence of
  the developers. I'd like to work with the members of the Committee
  that are still interested in serving to see how this body can be
  improved and revitalized.

> [1]: http://www.debian.org/intro/organization

[2] http://people.debian.org/~branden/dpl/campaign/2004/platform.xhtml
[3] It's probably only necessary to delegate a "head", who then has
    authority to appoint other members, much as the current Release
    Manager has appointed deputies.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |     Exercise your freedom of religion.
Debian GNU/Linux                   |     Set fire to a church of your
branden@debian.org                 |     choice.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |

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