On Thu, Dec 10, 1998 at 10:39:32PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: > > 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. It also seems to kinda eliminate anyone who actually has time to be a good developer (whatever they do for the project) and to do justice to the monumental task of leading a project the size of Debian. > > 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. A programming instructor who was trying to convince me that the real money was in project coordination, not in simple coding told me that anyone with a compiler and a week or two can learn to code. Some of them learn to code well and of course they are in demand. But there are far more good coders than good leaders and all too often you need a good leader more than a good coder. I'm not sure I agree with him, but I do acknowledge the difference and I realize the potential he saw in me to look at a bigger picture than my own work. I've really started to appreciate this quality about myself in the past few weeks. > 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. No offense meant to Ian, but I think he should return to working on dpkg. I don't think he's done a bad job for Debian as leader really, but I do think he quite probably can do much more for the project taking charge of dpkg development again. > 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.) Hopefully I will not disappoint you. => -- "You're despicable." -- Daffy Duck
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