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Re: [platform] My little self-pumping/ego-trip/self-righteous speech :)



Wow, I'm talking to myself on -project...who wants to vote for me!

First off, I wanted to comment on Branden's platform, mainly dealing
with the delegation. He has some very good points about delegating tasks
to others. IMO, he is talking more about "officially" holding people
responsible for tasks they already have (DAM and NM). To be honest, I am
somewhat leary about what he is proposing.

While this might sound like a good idea, I don't really see it making
anything work better. There are several sides to this. Some might
consider it a good thing to suddenly be able to point fingers at DAM or
NM or ftp-master when they aren't doing their job well enough. Some
might think that DAM and NM being against this is just The Cabal trying
to retain it's power. You might be right, and you might be dead wrong.

I see it this way. Currently DAM is doing it's job very well. Why bother
them? We have pools and testing from the Release Manager and the
ftp-masters. We have a well greased machine rolling on ftp-master.
Incoming stays pretty clear. All of our *.debian.org machines are
documented on the machines.cgi. They all have a well developed user
maintenance setup (ud-ldap). What if we suddenly say "here is your job
description, report to the DPL immediately, send regular progress
reports to -project, and keep on your toes or we'll replace you"? I
think they'd be pretty pissed at having to be in a position where the
slightest thing happens and they have to answer to every whim of every
developer. I don't think the DAM has ever done anything harmful to
Debian, and they are long time trusted developers, very capable, and
working quietly in the background. I think we should just let them do
their job, and just define what that is for the developers benefit, not
to declare to these people what their job is. Outlining who these people
are would also be helpful, so it doesn't seem like such a secret.

Now, as for NM, I am hoping that my proposal on allowing new maintainers
with less privildges will make this go more smoothly, with some sort of
bar to reach before becoming a full maintainer (time, references from
others, etc..?). I don't think holding NM responsible will fix the
problem. IMO, it is more of an issue about the process. The newest
incarnation of NM has made leaps and bounds, we need to build on this
from what we have learned already.

On Tue, Feb 20, 2001 at 06:05:49PM -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> 
> One of these areas is visibility. We all know that the DPL is a figure
> head for Debian. They get invited to all the neat Linux expos. Quite
> honestly, being a father/husband, I may not be able to travel as much as
> recent DPL's, are as much as any of the other candidates (I'm unaware of
> their specific situation regarding this). I am more than willing to
> spend as much time as possible, however, keeping contact with outside
> factions who are interested in Debian workings, and keeping our
> developers informed of such factions. I will travel to as many Linux
> related events as humanly possible for a man in my position.
> 

Anthony Towns pointed out that I did not cover "sponsors" as he
expected, which was an oversite on my part. I actually implied that in
this statement, and I want to clarify and expand on that. The bottom
line is, sponsors have very little reason to donate to Debian, other
than being able to say "we did that" and for us to pump that fact as
much as possible. When they loan or give us equipment, we need to stay
in very close contact with them, and give them warm fuzzies about what
they did, and show everyone else that it was an important thing.

I've worked directly with several sponsors as a developer. One of the
main ones being Sun. None of our sponors get recognized as much as they
should, and some do not even get a "thank you" afterwards. This needs to
change, if we are to expect continued good relations with these
companies that practically support our work. Without sponors, we would
not exist at all.

Ben

-- 
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/  Ben Collins  --  ...on that fantastic voyage...  --  Debian GNU/Linux   \
`  bcollins@debian.org  --  bcollins@openldap.org  --  bcollins@linux.com  '
 `---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---'



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