Re: What do you expect from the DPL?

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Anthony Towns writes ("Re: What do you expect from the DPL?"):
> To my mind, that's because there's a lack of obvious alternatives on how
> to do ambitious Debian reform plans -- or in particular establishing the
> moral and practical support for them. So in the same sense that "the DPL"
> is the final answer for trying to resolve disputes when everything else
> you can think of fails, it's also the answer for trying to make big
> changes when you run out of other idas.

It seems to me that the problem is that

 - the workload is too big for one person (although Zack did
    an astonishing job)

 - too many of the tasks involve exercise of implicit personal
    authority, so that delegation is not an effective tool

I don't have an easy answer to this.  It has often been suggested to
replace the DPL with a board, but with Debian's current approaches to
collective decsionmaking the board would want to argue internally
about each decision.  The result would probably be more work per board
member per decision than the current DPL has work to do per decision!

> > They are all fine and well of course, but DPL time will in
> > the end have to be split among implementing those plans and tending to
> > often unpredictable day by day duties, with the latter often dominating
> > the DPL agenda (IME).
> 
> I haven't seen any followup from the tech ctte on some of the disucssion from
> Dec about improving the way the ctte approaches requests, cf
> 
>  https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/12/msg00050.html
>  https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/12/msg00069.html
>  https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/12/msg00075.html
> 
> Improvements there might help with the DPL's workload, in so far as that
> involves dealing with arguments over technical things.

I have a very different view of the TC to Anthony (and to those otehrs
who have suggested that the TC should be less quick to decide, or less
definite).

My view is probably best summarised here:

  https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/12/msg00098.html

And exemplified by my very trenchant comments (un-rebutted!) here:

  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=766708#305

Ian.