Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?
On 9/15/2022 11:59 AM, Gerardo Ballabio wrote:
> Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > I have read much of the documentation online about how Debian understands
> itself, but I have never heard the term "do-ocracy" before.
>
> As I understand, it is an informal term, as such I don't expect to
> find it in formal documents. I read it as meaning "those who do the
> work run the show". I believe that is a sensible rule for a community
> of volunteers.
>
> > Obviously, my proposal would need to somehow define who are the users
> that should be given a formal vote for GRs, the DPL, etc.
>
> I do believe that being open to listening to other people's advice is
> a virtue, and that the Debian project should definitely listen to its
> users, but I don't think that this should necessarily translate into
> voting rights.
>
> Besides, voting isn't always the best way to make decisions. On
> technical matters it is usually better to let it to those who know the
> subject best, and those are normally the people who routinely work on
> it -- which brings us back to the "do-ocracy" concept.
>
> Also, please consider that while voting rights are restricted to
> Debian members, discussions are usually open to everybody, so if you'd
> like to contribute to Debian's decision-making process, you already
> can.
>
> > I actually, after some fruitful
> discussion with some of the people on debian-user, tentatively came to the
> conclusion that the fact that Debian is created by volunteers is probably one
> of the biggest *disadvantages* of Debian software.
>
> If you could explain concisely how you came to that conclusion, I'd
> like to read it. My view is quite the opposite but I suppose that
> learning a different way of thinking about this issue may help me
> widen my perspective.
To put it in the most brief terms, I come to that conclusion based on what
many people are telling me: Debian maintainers cannot fix bugs in software
because they are just volunteers. That explains why I almost always am at
least annoyed by one or two bugs when running Debian software, and sometimes
after an update the computer is totally unusable until I can debug it and find
the fix, because volunteers don't have the time to do it for me. That is what
most everyone on debian-user is telling me. Do you disagree with what they
say?
Also, in my experience, these bugs and catastrophic failures caused by updates
of a supposedly stable release happened *much* less often when I used software
that is written by paid developers.
Best regards,
Chuck
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