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Re: why debian



On Sat, Nov 13, 2004 at 12:20:02PM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote:
> Brian Nelson <pyro@debian.org> writes:
> 
> > Debian isn't a true democracy.  We elect our leader, and thereafter
> > the leader acts under his own accord.
> 
> It's a representative democracy, much like the US government.  Except
> Debian actually works.

If the US only used Condorcet's Method for voting, like Debian does...
It would actually make 3rd party candidates viable.

> > The recent leaders have generally taken a hands-off approach so you
> > probably don't really notice they're even there.  However, I believe
> > some leaders before my time (Bruce Perens, for example), were much more
> > active and took more advantage of their power.
> 
> Do you see this for the better or worse, and if worse, how would you
> change it?

I think it's just Debian evolving and maturing.  A few years back,
stronger leaders were needed to help establish what Debian's
fundamentals--like the Social Contract, the DFSG...  Since Debian is now
so well defined, there's not much a leader needs to do to keep Debian
going.

Most of Debian's remaining problems (overly long release cycles and poor
scaling as the number of packages increases) are not something a strong
leader could easily solve, unfortunately.

-- 
For every sprinkle I find, I shall kill you!



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