Re: What have we learned? (WAS -RE: Idea: Reponse to the responses( was RE: Interesting idea....(at least I think so) ))
Hello Maurice (and others),
Maurice Hilarius wrote:
Just for interest, I asked the Debian maintainers, through the
recommended page, and through the Debian alpha list, where we should
send/communicate with to donate a machine.
So far we have no response.
This is an example of what I perceive as the biggest issues with
Debian ( and Alpha) at present:
Who is actually in charge of anything?
Certain people are officially in charge of certain activities, such as
maintaining the repository and coordinating releases. Where a specific
need arises, there is often a "call" of sorts for help, and somebody
steps in, such as when Sam Hartman put together the initial list of
questions to ask of legal cousel regarding the crypto-in-main
transition. In a smaller way, each package has its maintainer, who is
an important single contact for the maintenance of the package, and
there are procedures for replacing that person if it proves necessary;
we also have the single Debian Project Leader (DPL), and an interesting
mechanism for electing that person...
But a lot of activities don't have a single point of contact. Is that a
problem? Sometimes. It might be nice to have single contacts for, say,
each port, but I don't think there is one. "Write to the list" has been
sufficient.
Do they have time and inclination to deal with these issues and others?
The offer of a free machine still stands. Does the Debian project need
it?
If not I will throw this open to others who might be interested in
Linux Alpha development.
I'm going to put my neck out here and guess that the lack of any
response whatsoever to Branden's email to debian-alpha in the last three
days is probably a decent indication that the Debian project doesn't
absolutely need such a machine right now. There are three basic demands
for machines of a given architecture:
* Autobuilding. As a maintainer, I can safely say that alpha
binaries for my packages are autobuilt very promptly after source
upload, so there's no big need there.
* Rbuild for stable security updates, which is one of the
requirements for an architecture to release with woody. Again, I
think we're okay here.
* Miscellaneous machines for maintainers who need to debug/test
their packages on a given architecture. Haven't heard this need
expressed for alpha either (though ARM often gets this complaint).
Since these are the three primary demands for machines, I think we're
probably safe on the alpha port for the time being.
Alternatively, "it's only been three days," and with a volunteer project
that is not a very long time, even if there is a port coordinator it
could take longer than that to reply. Also, you send your original post
(Subject "Donation", 23 Apr 2002 03:30:23 -0000) as a reply to "Alpha
newbie install woes", making it difficult for people to read it, since
it threads under that message and is invisible in many mail clients,
this is why creating a brand new message is encouraged vs. replying to
an existing one on a list like this. But that's a technicality.
Of course, it doesn't change some of your main points. I don't think a
central coordinator for the port would have helped things, but it might
be worth considering; the downside is that a single point of contact is
also a single point of failure. Judging from the reply to one of
Branden's emails, it seems the 68k port is similarly slow to process
hardware donations. Is this a problem? Yes, it is, particularly in
this instance for 68k which is slow to autobuild packages, and to the
extent that it leaves a bad taste in your mouth and bad association with
the Debian project, that is a problem too. It is, of course, not
Debian's only problem, but it's an important one.
Debian is also slow to package X 4.2.0, and KDE 3, and to actually
complete a release. But when a release is made, it's darn stable,
because X 4.1.0 has gone through sixteen releases often with prereleases
between them to make sure everything works properly on every single arch
and subarch (for details:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0204/msg01343.html), and KDE 2.2 is
absolutely rock-solid, as is GNOME 1.4 (though much of GNOME 2 is also
entering woody). The Debian packages for these which will be released
with woody are the best, most portable, thoroughly tested such packages
anywhere, even if they don't have the latest bleeding-edge features. I
am hoping that package pools and active development of the next
generation install system will make Debian 3.1 come out a whole lot
closer to 3.0 than 3.0 was to 2.2, and will do my best to make my
packages ready for that next release.
Back to the issue at hand, a small handful of dedicated volunteers is
all it takes to make a port happen and keep it going. Which is why
Debian's released architectures keep growing: four with slink, six with
potato, *eleven* with woody (with Hitachi SuperH also working in
unstable, and Hurd, BSD, and even Cygwin kernel ports under active
development). Need alpha consulting work on the Debian port? No need
to go to the distributing CalSuHatDrake company and risk their lack of
interest, one can go hire, say, HardData for the work and be reasonably
confident that the improvements will be contributed back to Debian.
This is where alvin has it wrong in his assertion:
I am sure it will not be too long before debian follows suit with RH and cuts its support for the Alpha.
As long as there are user-developers, there will be support. This was
the gist of Peter's original post, and the piece on alphanews: if
everyone from axp-list comes over to debian-alpha, then we'll not only
have support, but world-class support, e.g. testers for the APB install
method on the Nautilus subarch (currently disabled in woody
boot-floppies; my Nautilus has failed or I'd test and debug myself), and
a working PGI graphical installer with hardware auto-detection (also
described in the "for details:" link above).
And you'd more quickly find a deserving taker for your donation, who
would run Debian on it and join the community of user-developers
committed to making this the best distro anywhere (nine hundred
maintainers and growing...).
Oh, I see Chris has just replied to your message, and expressed more
authoritatively an interest in your machine donation. Add another
"Thanks for the donation!"
Regards,
--
-Adam P.
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