On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 02:35:52AM +0000, James Troup wrote: > Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> writes: > > As with the Release Manager, the first thing to do with a delegate is > > *talk* to them. More importantly, in fact, *listen* to them. > > No offence, but in my experience[1], you've had lots of trouble > communicating with the existing DAM and Release Manager in the past; > what's going to change in that regard when you're DPL? While I'm not crystal clear on the specifics of what you're referring to, and I'm not sure how productive it would be to revisit old history, one might just as easily say that the existing DAM and Release Manager have had lots of trouble communicating with *me*; it takes two to communicate. I think I've been crystal clear about the approach I'm going to take; I'm not calling for your head on a platter, though some people do from time to time, which causes the usual tiresome flamewar on -private. (But that's okay, they call for my head too, every time a day passes since the latest XFree86 upstream release and there aren't already packages of it in unstable that work flawlessly with their hardware which isn't even supported upstream -- but I digress.) Also, I don't recall having any particular disputes with James-Troup-as-DAM or Anthony-Towns-as-Release-Manager. I've gotten into some humdinger arguments with Anthony over things that have absolutely nothing to do with release management, like the details of our implementation of the Condorcet method, but why should that matter? Should we elect as DPL someone who's so timid and insecure in his convictions that he'll never argue about anything with anyone? Moreover, I think it's a problem if anyone in this project, be it a developer, a delegate, or the DPL, is going to let negative feelings from one dispute spill over into other aspects of his or her responsibilities. Anthony Towns and I may disagree about, say, the utility of supermajoritarianism. Big deal. I don't think this makes him less receptive to my needs of him as Release Manager, and likewise I don't dismiss what he has to say on any subject because dared to disagree with me about supermajoritariansm. Oh, horrors! :) I don't, as a rule, hold grudges, and I don't maintain killfiles of Debian developers I can't tolerate. I believe everyone has it within him to stop being an ass from time to time, including me. ;-) > [I'm not necessarily blaming or judging you; I don't have any conceits > about my communication skills, but that doesn't change my question.] I think you and I will get along exactly as well as you want us to. I pledge to do my best to keep an open mind and be attentive to your needs as a delegate; I'm assuming that all of the DPL candidates have a complementary commitment from you, and that you're not planning to be uncooperative with certain people should they win the election. I'm confident that you'd agree with me that that would be silly and counterproductive; certainly it must be more important for us to get our work done than nurse grudges and keep old wounds open. So, if a truce needs to be offered, I'm offering one; but I would be disappointed to learn that you felt there were some sort of ongoing hostilities between us -- if there were, I haven't seen much evidence of it. -- G. Branden Robinson | Human beings rarely imagine a god Debian GNU/Linux | that behaves any better than a branden@debian.org | spoiled child. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Robert Heinlein
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