Re: Debian: abandon ship?
>>"Alan" == Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> writes:
Alan> Maybe the developers should amend the Social Contract to make this
Alan> more explicit? At least in the vote, it would become clear to what
Alan> degree that statement is true or untrue.
Ah, yes, the social contract argument. I said jump, so hop
around, since your social contract says you shall. This is aking to
arguments like: My taxes pay for the gummint. So the gummint works
for me. You work for the gummint, so you work for me. So I order you,
mr police man, not to write that ticket for speeding. Doesn't quite
work that way, does it now?
What works collectively, in the abstract, does not work in the
specific; and unlike an elected governement, in Debian people who are
not part of the project really have no franchise. Even Debian
leadership cannot tell a developer what to work on -- and that has
ever been the case.
There is no way one can satisfy all the people all the
time. There is no way one may cater to every voluble set of people --
indeed, if we did this mindlessly, this would be used by ill wishers
to damage Debian, and thus reduce the benefit we offer everyone else
-- all the _other_ users.
Guess what. The social contract is not meant to be applied
mindlessly. A modicum of common sense is meant to be applied (if you
think I would rescue a user from a burning building in preference to
my wife, because of the social contract, you are out of your
mind). This is a thinking (hu)mans contract.
I do not speak for all developers - indeed, I speak for no one
but myself. I have a feeling though, that my viewpoint is shared by
quite a few of my fellow developers. Who am I doing this for? for
myself, of course, (and no, this is not flame bait). I want a stable
linux box for myself. However, I can not do it alone, so i seek a
bunch of collaborators (note: i did not say developers here) to
cooperatively develop this stable OS - and some on=f these
collaborators are people who help find bugs, tell me when my man page
is hard to understand, suggest alternative wording, etc -not users
and vendors, but fellow community members who are helping make this a
better box for all of us to use (and thus I get my nice Linux box)
The primary target for me is still me, and my collaborators,
but outside this free software community does user satisfaction
affect me? not the least whit. This is a collaboration, not the
developers giving and the users taking.
My interpretation of the social contract is that the people
who are collaboratively helping to improve the software are the
constituency we must cater to.
All if Debian is done just because we wanna. And, once we are
doing this, we do put concern for the users as an goal (an abstract
user, instead of any individual or group). We do not say that we
shall favour any group of users because of their number; and we
prefer doing what we think is right, for us, and the users, despite
popularity contests and opinion polls. We strongly believe, at this
point, that releasing woody is a disservice to the users.
Popularity does not figure in this. And if it is a matter of
selecting between two sets of users, the discretion lies with those
doing the work. People who work on porting are doing so of their own
free will, People who do chose to work so can't be reassigned merely
for the benefit of users on an architecture that maintainer does not
want to work on.
manoj
--
Q: What does a WASP Mom make for dinner? A: A crisp salad, a hearty
soup, a lovely entree, followed by a delicious dessert.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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