Re: Questions for all candidates: decentralization of power
On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 04:42:22PM -0300, Margarita Manterola wrote:
> whoever is delegated by the DPL to do this) goes around imposing
> members to teams, or switching members willy-nilly, it would
> definitely lead to a lot of frustration and resignations.
I think that's probably fine. ftpmaster did not want Joerg to be
promoted, and when he was, without approval of the team, Anthony
Towns quit. I think that the common feeling is that this is an
improvement. Joerg does more and better work than Anthony did.
Was there a better way of handling the situation that would have
been less traumatic for everyone involved? Possibly. Would it
have been better to stick with the status quo for fear of
attrition or bad feelings? I really don't think so.
> So, I once again turn the question to you, since this was what I
> intended to ask before, but didn't get the reply I wanted. If you
> were elected DPL, how would you go about "supervising" team
> membership?
Well, I am not running for DPL so I have not spent time planning
changes that I will not be able to make. I imagine that I would
not do very much on day one. The idea of formally re-delegating
when the DPL role changes hands appeals to me a bit, but if I were
going to only renew all existing delegations for the sake of
setting precedent, I am unsure whether that is valuable.
In general, I would try to move things in a few directions at once:
more people on core teams, less power for core teams, more
cooperative atmosphere, more empowerment for the lowly DD.
If I thought that someone would be an asset on a core team, or if
someone suggested to me that someone else would be an asset on
a core team, I would likely explore that option. I would not
try to make surprise delegations; the episode with debian-policy
tells me that that would not work out well. Depending on the
situation, I might ask the target team for feedback, but I would
not ask their permission.
I absolutely would not allow core teams to invite people, whether
they had personal relationships with those people or not.
In addition, I think I would probably delegate all DDs to be
able to edit the website. It seems clear that I have not
convinced anyone who did not already agree with me that making
people ask for that access is a bad thing or even significant,
but is. It is a bad thing, and it matters.
Hopefully this would prove a point.
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