Brian Nelson wrote:
Carl Fink <carl@fink.to> writes:On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 09:41:33AM -0700, Brian Nelson wrote:There's very little resistance from developers to increase the release frequency. Nearly everyone agrees the current cycles are too long.No one seems to like my proposal: six months after any stable release, freeze, then test and release. Period.It's not that no one likes the proposal. It's more of the "herding cats" phenomenon. There's no consensus on how the release process should work, it's hard to make a thousand scattered volunteers listen anyway, and no one other than the current release manager is willing to step up and actually try to manage the release...
I was thinking about that, thinking back to Mr Worthington, my history teacher in the early 60s. Teaching me history then was a pretty fruitless task, but I do recall that democracies don't provide efficient governance.
That's why we don't have democratic armies. While a democratic army is planning the next battle, it would get cut to ribbons by the enemy.
Debian is worse than a democracy, it's a democracy of hackers. No managers at all, to speak of.
Hackers are good at cutting code. They don't like documentation - go look for debian-installer documentation for example.
They don't like deadlines. "We'll release it when we're good and ready."Hackers who show management talent are likely to go get lucrative jobs managing. Managing the hosts of hackers here must be pretty thankless.
The ideal government, according to Mr Worthington, is a benevolent dictatorship. A benevolent dictator's word is law, but he rules to the benefit of those whom he rules. Taking advice is, of course, allowed and good. So is making decisions.
That, I think, is about how the kernel works. -- Cheers John -- spambait 1aaaaaaa@computerdatasafe.com.au Z1aaaaaaa@computerdatasafe.com.au Tourist pics http://portgeographe.environmentaldisasters.cds.merseine.nu/