Hi, After last night's meeting, I spent some time thinking about the various bids, and I must say I have a bit of a bad feeling about the German two-bid stragegy. First of all, note that this is my own opinion, not that of the whole Mechelen team. Having said that, I understand that the reason for the two German bids is that this would allow the team to negotiate better conditions from the two options if they win the bid. While that is true, there is no reason why these negotiations could not have happened before today; in fact, one could argue that the whole point of the bidding process is to have this kind of negotiations take place with the stick of a little competition behind the door; we have, in fact, been talking to some options with that as an added note of information. As such, this strategy feels a bit like trying to game the system to me; by keeping their options open when winning the bid, the German team gets something of an unfair advantage -- I would be quite upset if debconf15 goes to Germany on the idea that one of the two bids is better than Mechelen, only to then find out that this one bid can't work out and we have to go to the other location. By postponing the decision in this way, the German team is in effect bypassing the decision meeting's deadline; this feels especially acerbic in light of <20140121032028.GA23562@fishbowl.rw.madduck.net>, where Martin asked for a quick decision. I'm not asking to disqualify the German team, or anything of the sorts. However, I am asking the German team to reconsider their strategy; I understand their desire to keep their options open, but I think it's not the best strategy on the whole. If the German team decides not to change their strategy, then I would like to reiterate Patty's question of last night, and ask the committee to please consider both options when deciding; that is, the German bids should only win if the committee considers that _both_ German options are superior to all other options. Thanks, -- This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today. -- http://xkcd.com/1133/
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