> > We really need a system of representative decision making in Debian.
>
> no way! why import a real-world obscenity into a virtual
> arena where it is unnecessary?
>
I am not suggesting that we should all get together and vote for people
to make our decisions for us. However, we need to make use of the
so-called "officers" of our organization. If they do not have the power
to make decisions, then why have them?
> decision making in a volunteer (i.e. essentially anarchist)
> co-operative is done by those who care enough to do some work.
> i.e. those who do the work decide what work they're going to do
> and how they're going to do it.
>
That's fine when we are speaking about technical implementations.
It is not so fine when we are trying to define things like a release
schedule, means to encourage a reduction in the bug count, etc., etc.
> if you, or anybody else, doesn't like decisions that have been made
> then you are free to implement your own superior solution whenever you
> like. if your way is truly superior and you provide a
> workable and safe migration path to it, then it will be adopted.
>
Again, this is true and obvious when we are speaking about a package
management system or similar. There are clear metrics that can be
used to judge suitability. This thing is faster, or uses less
resources, or is more robust, etc.
However, when we get involved in the messy, organic nature of human
interactions we find ourselves sinking into a morass of bickering
and ineffectual behavior.
For example, three months ago we talked about trying
to define a release date. After an initial flurry of messages about
how to organize archives, what to put in, etc., it was just dropped.
We all returned to business as usual, even more new packages were
added to the archive, and life went on.
If we are not willing to make decisions about when a release is
going to happen and then create strictures that encourage people
to do so, we will have longer and longer cycles between releases.
Perhaps we should just do away with the whole concept of releases,
as it is not really meaningful. I have been running on unstable
for years, and aside from the occassional perl upgrade or whatnot
things are fine. Why not just say, our distribution is our
unstable archive. Every so ofter we copy it over to a new archive
and give it a release name. We could make such a "copy" prior to
landing some major horkage (like the great X reorg or the Perl update)
and continue.
Debian has gone from being the best technical distribution, to being
quite stable but way way out of date. It is embarassing to see
the reviews we get, comparing our 2.0.X kernel distro to the latest
and greatest SuSe or similar. Reviewers having to go out and
download GNOME from the web, etc., because they can't get a full
set from Debian. This has to stop.
-B