Re: Small teams and other platform positions...
On Sunday 27 March 2005 02:10 pm, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:
> Employees maybe not, but the majority of the work in Debian is done by
> people who probably spend 20+ hours a week on it and if that's not
> professional it certainly isn't what I'd call amateur either.
>
> Then we have many DDs who just basically react to bugs in their packages
> but otherwise don't really pay much attention to project matters.
>
> It seems rather pointless to hobble the first class just to cater to the
> second class and equally pointless to make the second class have to jump
> through hoops just because the first class can.
I'm not sure we are working with the same definitions of first and second
class. I am talking about the difference between developers who can fly to
several meetings a year and developers who cannot.
> Well, it's related because as you can tell, I think trying to keep Debian
> the way it used to be is a dead end. So the task becomes one of triage.
> How can we preserve all the good things such as democracy and openness in
> the new order? I don't claim to have all the answers but I think this is
> a promising avenue for discussion.
In your mind how did Debian "use to be" and what has changed now?
> Yes there should be accessible documentation for what all the teams are
> upto and electronic systems could automate a lot of that. But eventually
> someone has to monitor the electronic systems and then we are right back
> to square one. Only those with an inordinate amount of time will be able
> monitor everything. Those without time will have to choose the particular
> bits they are informed about and will be at sea and unhelpful on the bits
> they don't know about.
My point is that you can monitor an electronic system *remotely* which is much
easier for someone who can't fly to 3 or 4 strategic Debian business meetings
a year.
> Come on let's be realistic now. There's no guarantee but people _are_
> nice at face-to-face meetings.
Now, why don't you be realistic? Physical meetings are not a silver bullet for
making people play nicely together. Most disagreements have some
philosophical basis that is orthogonal to the communications medium.
> You missed the low-intensity part. In fact it is basically the idea
> behind the US consitutions systems of checks and balances. Or
> alternatively look at the Mafia's system which by "organizing" crime
> actually substantially reduced the amount of killing and risk to innocent
> bystanders. Yet the tribal nature of the Mafia family prevented the
> "commission" from degenerating into a bureaucracy -- which is just as
> inimical to liberty as anarchy.
Petty street crime is "low intensity" when compared with a full-scale war but
I think the analogies are not serving us. If you are saying that an
equilibrium of competing small organizations is the most free and efficient
system then I think we agree. One key is to avoid the creation of oligopilies
or monopolies. That is exactly why I'm against these physical meetings for
decision making.
--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com
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