Hi,
I think that everyone will agree that we are having a big crisis about
the role of the TC in Debian. What saddens me deeply is how some of us
framed this as a "Debian vs the Technical Committee" fight. The
Technical Committee _is_ Debian. If we feel it's malfunctionning, it's
our problem as Debian Project Members, and our responsibility to fix it.
So I agree with what Steve wrote:
On 16/11/14 at 11:37 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> This demonization of the Technical Committee for doing their job under the
> constitution needs to stop. If you don't like the way the TC is structured
> under the constitution, feel free to propose a GR to change that. But if
> all you (and certain others across various Debian lists) are going to do is
> attack the members of the TC for making a decision they've been asked to in
> the way that they believe is technically correct, then I invite you to be
> the next Debian Developer to leave and I promise you I will not mourn your
> departure.
I also would like to point out that decisions related to init systems
(default, coupling, upgrades, etc.) are probably the hardest decisions
that Debian ever had to make, because they mix political (Canonical
influence vs Red Hat influence), philosophical ("unix philosophy" vs
integrated solution), and technical aspects, and at the same time have
an impact over a large portion of our packages. The fact that those
decisions push our governance processes to their limits is not
surprising.
We need to be a bit careful here, and understand what are the root
causes for the problems we are seeing, before discussing possible
changes: depending on the identified causes, we could need a mix of
constitutional changes for TC composition and processes, agreed good
practices for the TC workflows, etc.
At the same time, we need to find a way to continue to work, especially
given that we are trying to release Jessie at some point in the near
future. There are some decisions that Debian needs to make rather sooner
than later, like the question of what to do about init systems during
upgrades. Even if many of us expressed disappointment about how the TC worked
recently, it served us well since 1998, so I am quite sure that we could
find a way to return to a way of making decisions that is considered
acceptable by most of us, until we agree on more radical changes to TC
procedures.
Specifically, I would like to ask Debian Developers to contribute
(positively) to TC discussions when relevant, in order to help the TC
get a complete understanding of the issues, their consequences, and
possible resolutions paths. I was disappointed to see that only a
handful of DDs (outside of TC members) took part in the recent technical
discussions. Every DD should really feel welcomed to act like a
(non-voting) TC member.
I would also like to ask the TC to provide a bit more time for public
discussions (during the technical discussions, and on draft CfV), as
many project members felt that some recent votes were a bit rushed, and
did not allow enough time for public review.
Thanks,
Lucas
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