Re: The status of desktop-base in wheezy
Hi Stefano,
thank you for the explanation. In my opinion it was important an helps a
lot to limit frustration.
Unfortionally it looks like I joined the desktop list just to late. I
didn't learn that there was nobody caring for the voting process until
Paul stepped in.
I joined the desktop-list because I saw the call for artworks on debian
news and thought it would be great be involved in the realisation of the
new look and feel of the next debain release.
If I knew right away I might have tried to step in to help with it. (On
the other hand I'm possibly not very qualified since I know little about
the whole process and who is involved in different ways.)
I completely agree that it should be coordinated much better next time
and that it is absolutely necessary to remember what happened to avoid
the same issue with the next release.
Since I can't ensure, that I will be around then because it will be
years in the future, I strongly suggest to place two notes on the
wiki-page:
1) Tell (very shortly) what happened.
2) Suggest publishing the responsible people for the process (directly
on the wiki page) next time and state that the same thing might happen
again if nobody is prepared to volunteer for this tasks. (It might help
as well to publish a timetable with deadlines for the necessary steps.)
I could try to write something like that - if the members of this list
agree on that...
Best
Franz
On Mon, 2012-07-02 at 14:47 -0600, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> Hi everybody, and sorry for the delay in commenting on this flame^W
> thread. As a (lame) excuse this thread took me during a long-ish period
> of (Debian-related) travels, that ended only now arriving at DebConf12.
>
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 04:08:58PM -0400, Paul Tagliamonte wrote:
> > As many of you know, we're tragically close to freeze. As a result, the
> > usual process of voting, debating and picking a theme via consensus is
> > not really possible. There was also a distinct lack of interest in such
> > a process, as well.
> >
> > I've taken it upon myself to start getting desktop-base into shape for
> > wheezy.
>
> First of all let's observe that, looking strictly *from the point of
> view of typical Debian procedures*, what Paul did is flawless. He picked
> up the job on himself, coordinated with the desktop-base package
> maintainers, and coordinated with the Release Team to ensure that an
> important part of our forthcoming stable release was in good shape for
> the freeze. For this work, and for the courage that it took to do that,
> I think we should all be grateful to Paul: thanks!
>
> Unfortunately, that is not enough to conclude that the whole "Debian
> Wheezy artwork process" has worked at its best. Some of it is in need of
> massive improvement, while others parts of it did work quite well.
>
> Before looking at the details, let's ask ourselves while we (partially)
> failed: because nobody picked up the job of organizing the selection
> process. Yves-Alexis, who did the job for the Squeeze, made it very
> clear that he wasn't willing to do that again. And that's a very good
> start actually: stepping down considerately is very helpful for other
> team members. But that's not enough to find someone else doing the
> job. Which is why I've been calling repeatedly for volunteers, both on
> this list and on debian-devel-announce, willing to do the job. Finding
> no one. So I did try to cover it up myself, one step at a time, but at
> each step I made it very clear that I didn't want to step on anybody's
> toes and that I'd have preferred if some of the people active on this
> list pick up the remaining tasks. (Still finding no one.)
>
> So, what did work well? My answer: the call for help went well. We sent
> out a PR on it and we got 24 submitted proposals for Wheezy. If the wiki
> pages are to be trusted on this, we got only 4 for Squeeze. This is
> massive improvement! No matter which decision process we choose and its
> flaws, proposals are what allow to make a decision in the first place
> and all artists who contributed a proposal have helped with that, even
> if they haven't been chosen.
>
> And what didn't work well? The timing and the (meta-)decision on how to
> decide the artwork. Even if I didn't really want to do this myself, I
> "gladly" take my share of responsibility on these two. I didn't really
> realize (out of naivety) that a good deal of the theme should've been
> ready for the Freeze. I was (implicitly) counting on freeze exceptions
> and I didn't know theme-related exceptions had caused RC bugs in the
> past.
>
> Then there's the meta-decision. I did mention surveys as a possible
> mechanism for choosing the theme, but actually never committed to it.
> Originally, I wanted to discuss how to decide on this list. But more
> recently, discussing with people who worked on this in the past, I got
> convinced of doing it differently: nominating a group of people (a
> "committee", if you want) that would've taken the decision. Given no one
> else was doing the job, I thought it would've been legitimate to do so,
> possibly (DPL) delegating the committee members to take the decision.
>
> In fact, the day Paul picked up the task, I was looking for committee
> members, starting first with informal /query-ies, as I often do for this
> kind of stuff. I didn't have much luck with that either; of the people
> who I contacted, only Yves-Alexis was willing to participate (thanks!),
> although only as a fallback if I was short on candidates. I would've
> escalated the call for team members to this list, but Paul stepped in
> first.
>
> In the end, that final timing part is no big deal, the problem is that
> we were too late anyhow. Yes, that sucks, and I'm concerned because what
> happened gets in the way of the ability of we, Debian "packagers", to
> work with Debian "artists". I'm really sorry. But that's what happened.
> I think it happened that way because we have been unable to find, for
> more than 1 year, someone willing to coordinate the decision process.
> That kind of "management" contributions are as useful as packaging
> contributions and artistic contributions; we really need to find a way
> to attract them.
>
> Could we do better next time? Ulrich is right to have doubts, given he
> has been dissatisfied with how the process went with Squeeze already.
> My answer is that I've no idea. It could go better if: (1) we remember
> this and (2) someone steps in and do the coordination work with
> sufficient time advance. Either way, I think we should keep in mind what
> went well (the call for artwork) and repeat it.
>
> Thanks for the time you all put in making Wheezy a nice-looking release.
>
> Cheers.
>
>
> PS I think one specific criticism mentioned by Ulrich in this thread is
> not particularly fair, the one about (paraphrasing) "I've submitted
> on a proposal and I now feel I wasted my time". That specific problem
> is not related to how we made the decision, it's a more general
> problem of calling for several artworks and choosing only one of
> them, be it by vote, committee, of benevolent dictator ruling. In
> part, I disagree it's wasted time all together; as I mentioned above
> we need different proposals to make a choice, that's useful
> contribution already. On the other hand, we should (and could)
> minimize the sensation of wasted time, by shipping alternative
> proposals and make it technically easy to change theme, distro-wide,
> in a given Debian release.
Reply to: