On Wed, Mar 14, 2001 at 11:23:28PM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > on this matter. I think nobody denies that Ian wrote the constitution in
> > an attempt to effectively castrate the DPL and leave him all but powerless
> > in practice,
>
> Huh?
Ian Jackson was a non-leader. He was the complete opposite of Bruce who
was very outgoing, and widely considered to have too much control of the
project. So Ian made sure the constitution took away the DPL's control.
He gave it to the project secretary, it would seem. =p
There is very little in the way of decisions the DPL gets to make for the
project anymore. Ian was quite successful at making sure the leader has
no real power over the project.
> > share their opinion. What we need is someone willing to lead.
>
> So what should a Debian Project Leader actually do?
> (Serious, unloaded question.)
>
> How should they lead us?
No two people have the same skills or can lead the same way. I would
generally prefer someone a bit more proactive within the project itself
than Wichert since I feel he handled most problems with a wait-and-see
position and sometimes that just doesn't work too well. Clearly it's
important to get the facts before stepping in, but waiting for everything
to play out and people to agree the results aren't very good before
stepping in is more reactive than proactive.
I'm sure at least two of our candidates will be strong leaders, though one
of them has a so far undiscussed potential conflict of interest regarding
his position in his employer's company. Our other candidates are very
quiet people and will I fear lead a bit much like IWJ - that is, they'd
have the title but we won't hear from them much.
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Free software developer
Eric Raymond: I want to live in a world where software doesn't suck.
Richard Stallman: Any software that isn't free sucks.
Linus Torvalds: I'm interested in free beer.
Richard Stallman: That's okay, as long as I don't have to drink it. I
don't like beer.
-- LinuxWorld Expo panel, 4 March 1999
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