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Re: Nomination



[ To reduce clutter on the list, I reply to two public replies at one. First
to Joseph, and below to John. ]

  Dirk> You earn respect, and trust, by showing what you are capable of.

[...]
  Joseph> The best person for the job should be the one elected, not the one
  Joseph> with the most popularity points.

Precisely. Now please prove why you are 'the best person'.  And no, my metric
is not based on the number of emails to this list, or slashdot. Nor does it
have to be programming.  But I clearly think that Wichert has done more than
you, for example by preparing the Debian Configuration proposal.

qualifiedYou still have to prove that you are to me why you think you are
qualified.  

  Dirk> Debian strives for technical excellence, and often achieves
  Dirk> remarcable result. [...] Ian is obviously qualified for his post
  Dirk> because he did lots of work that is essential to the project.

  Joseph>  But look at the consequences!  Ian may have worked on dpkg and
  Joseph> done a lot with it, but what has he done with it since taking his
  Joseph> position as leader? 

You do not seem to know that he also had a PhD to finish, and now has a job
in Real Life (TM).  I've done the same, and trust me, that changes life from
being a grad student (which I was when I started maintaing some 3.5 years
ago).

  Joseph> I'm going to pick on Manoj a big here too since he is another
  Joseph> developer widely considered somehow superhuman in terms of
  Joseph> development of packages.  When I asked him to consider running he
  Joseph> declined saying that he doesn't have the time necessary to do what
  Joseph> he's doing now AND be the project leader.

He has a rewarding job, and a life.  I respect his decision. 

  Joseph> To answer your question better, no I haven't done anything like
  Joseph> write dpkg.  In fact, I hardly speak C at all. 

I think you should run as leader. But not now. Maybe next year, maybe the
year after. You might make a great 'officer' but I won't vote for you at the
top job. Sorry.

We can discuss further in private if you like.


On to the second post:

  Dirk> You earn respect, and trust, by showing what you are capable of.

  John> Then please, judge people based on what they have done, and not how
  John> old they are, how many packages they maintain, or what sort of bugs
  John> they have.

That is exactly what I propose. Judge based on what someone has done, beyond
the package maintenance job.  Where someone has "lead" Debian to higher
aspirations, goals and excellence. I never said I restricted this to package
maintenance, or programming.  Oliver would qualify based on Doc project, for
example. Adam di Carlo has shown leadership by picking up the slacking
manual and reviving it. That counts.  

  John> Leadership requires a very different set of qualities than does
  John> writing good code.

Right. And I never put the restriction up that you are reading into my
statements. That was not my intention. I think we see the same criteria.



-- 
Linux is not only free; it is, arguably, a better operating system, offering
a degree of stability and an ability to scale up that NT cannot match.
                                             -- The Economist, Oct 3, 1998


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