Re: Nomination
On Thu, Dec 10, 1998 at 09:36:42PM -0500, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>
> Joseph> I disagree, though I have answered them all the same. I think
> Joseph> there are more important issues than who maintains what and how
> Joseph> popular their packages are, what kinds of bugs, etc.
>
> Debian, much like other Open Souce projects, is a meritocratic system.
> You earn respect, and trust, by showing what you are capable of.
Then please, judge people based on what they have done, and not how old they
are, how many packages they maintain, or what sort of bugs they have.
While having bugs can sometimes say something about the maintainer, first do
not forget that Debian can have people that do not do coding involved with
it, and secondly that a simple bug count is insufficient to draw any
meaningful information about the qualifications of any given person for
leader.
I should also add here that I don't know how many bugs, if any, any of the
announced candidates have, nor do I have any idea of whom I would support in
an election. I am simply objecting to this line of questioning as frivilous
and unnecessary.
> Debian strives for technical excellence, and often achieves remarcable
> result. Without dpkg, there would be no Debian as we know it. Ian is
> obviously qualified for his post because he did lots of work that is
> essential to the project. There are others with _outstanding_ contributions,
> and I believe that a question like the above helps to identify those who
> contributed significantly. And hence deserve merit.
I again must take issue here. Of course this is true, but your line of
questioning and implication is unfairly limiting the scope of contributions
that may be considered, even if we were to grant that past coding projects
of whatever nature would in any way make somebody more fit for leader.
Leadership requires a very different set of qualities than does writing good
code.
Furthermore, many people within Debian do things that do not directly create
new code. Some people spend a lot of time maintaining packages. Others
work on the web site or the mailing lists. Some may help ensure that master
and friends work well. People work on the FTP site. While these people may
not have any startling novel code as dpkg perhaps was, still they have made
contributions.
And not to belittle the contributions of our hundreds of
developers/maintainers, of which I am one, but still I must again point out
that simply being a coder or maintainer does not mean that a person is
qualified for leadership of Debian. I know of several people, particularly
those that argued on the losing side of the KDE debate that raged here some
time back, that do contribute a lot to the project but whose vision of the
future of the project I would consider to be too far in disagreement with my
own (and, I hope, the majority of other developers) for me to consider
supporting them in an election for leader (or any other position of
leadership.)
--
John Goerzen Linux, Unix consulting & programming jgoerzen@complete.org |
Developer, Debian GNU/Linux (Free powerful OS upgrade) www.debian.org |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Visit the Air Capital Linux Users Group on the web at http://www.aclug.org
Reply to: