More questions to the candidates
Hi to all,
I have been following the past discussions on -vote, though I stayed
quiet, being busy etc.
Straight to the point:
1. Debian currently supports more than 10 arches (just a quick check
in /ports. Obviously, trying to keep in sync all of them is too much.
And I hope I'm not the only one who sees that it's increasingly
becoming a burden to insist to keep in sync slow arches like arm,
mips* and m68k. And IMHO, keeping in sync arches that have a 20y
difference in technology is ridiculous.
My question: Do you believe that Debian should for ever support all
arches in parallel? Or establish some kind of "speed lanes" for fast
arches, slow arches, etc. For example if Debian/m68k is used by
embedded people, there is little use in building all of KDE/Gnome for
m68k.
2. Two of the candidates (Branden and Martin) have talked about the
development of processes around Debian, so that things get done right
and without unnecessary delays. While the theory is perfect and I
wholeheartidly agree, the implementation is what interests me most.
How do you plan on implementing processes in Debian and what
timeschedules you have for that? It's no good saying that you have a
10-year plan for developing a perfect process-driven Debian. Instead
of doing a theoritical analysis on the subject I would appreciate a
discussion on some specific part of Debian (pick the one you intend
to deal with first, if you get elected).
3. What are your plans about Java in Debian? I understand that Java
license is not Debian's decision, but Debian can push -and I gladly
witnessed some productive discussion between Martin and Simon Phipps
(Sun's CTO) in Malaga. From my own discussion with Mr. Phipps, it
seems that a lot of Java's license problems are because of
misunderstanding inside Sun wrt to Java turning truly Free. Debian
should care for its users and many of its users use Java.
My question: What are your plans to try and establish/strengthen the
communication link with Sun/whoever to ensure that there is a
workable Java implementation in Debian? I know about Kaffe, before
someone corrects me, there is (almost) noone in the commercial world
that uses it.
4. Transition from non-free. Please give a specific plan that you
intend to suggest if removal of non-free is voted. I don't care if
non-free is removed but to just remove it one instant is
irresponsible, imho. And non-free is an important subject and if a
candidate wants to be voted he has to provide a clear position on
this. (Note: I know that the candidates are against non-free, I want
to hear a strategy on non-free removal).
5. Debian has become quite big, much bigger than the previous years.
In fact, I have come to believe that it's too large a project for one
person to coordinate. Branded has explicitly talked about delegates
for tasks. My stance is that at some point in the future there will
have to be some form of senate :-)
My question: Do you think that you can handle all of the tasks a DPL
is supposed to do? If you have packages to maintain do you plan to
keep them as well? If at some point you realize that you cannot take
it anymore, what will be your action?
a) Drop everything and go to Hawaii
b) Work until you die
c) Resign
d) Other
6. Debian delegate selection
How would you choose a delegate for a position?
Sorry for the long list of the questions but these are, imho,
important and should be asked.
Thanks to all the candidates for your contribution to Debian all these
years and I wish good luck.
Konstantinos
PS. Martin, one correction wrt your platform text. I don't work on a
Debian based distro in Greece, I work -semi-officially- on adding
Greek support _into_ Debian itself, there is no distro :-)
Reply to: