Re: Questions for candidates -- Debian's Organizational Structure
* Pascal Hakim <pasc@debian.org> [2004-03-03 16:48]:
> Which of the groups/people on [1] do you consider delegates? Why or
> why not? Would you change this?
Before answering this mail, I talked to Pasc on IRC for a while. Pasc
was added as a listmaster during my term as DPL, and has done
excellent work, especially with helping users with list related
matters. I asked him if he, from his point of view, considers himself
a delegate. He said he did not know. My question next question was,
"Has this been a problem so far, working with me and others?", and
Pasc answered, "it has never been a problem for me". I was truly
wondering about the answer to this question because I'm in quite
regular contact with him about listmaster matters, and our
communication is working very well.
Anyway, I take a very pragmatic approach on this. Some of it is
outlined in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/debian-devel-200311/msg00041.html
In general, I don't care about the "status" of people (also see the
question about women; I don't discriminate based on sex/gender,
nationality, or "delegate" status). In free software, we usually
don't carry around big titles (the DPL being one major exception).
What I care about is getting work done. I care about creating the
best free operating system out there! If there is a problem, it has
to be fixed -- no matter if that person is a delegate, a developer or
a sponsored person. I stay in contact with many people in the project
to see how their work is going, and how I can help them getting their
work done. If there are problems, any kind of problems in the
project, I, as the DPL, see it as my responsibility to make sure those
problems are being addressed.
In summary, I think we should ask questions like "is the work by these
people or in these areas being performed properly", "is their work
documented properly and transparent" rather than wondering about the
status. But if you do care about titles, then, yes, I consider all of
these people as delegates (with the exception of the Technical
Committee, see next question). All of them perform duties in the
spirit of a delegate as defined by the constitution.
> Do you believe the Tech Committee is effective in its role for the
> project?
No, I am extremely disappointed with the role of the Technical
Committee. I actually talked to Peter Palfrader <weasel@debian.org>
about this at FOSDEM two weeks ago. While I think that we should in
most cases come to a consensus by discussing matters on our mailing
lists, I think it's important to have a healthy Technical Committee
just in case. When I became DPL last year, I wanted to use my
delegation power to re-active the committee, but found out that the
Technical Committee is exempted as per the constitution. Of course,
if you read what I wrote above, you'll see that this is a bad excuse
for not fixing the problem - the problem has to be fixed even if they
are not delegates. I admit I didn't do that, which was partly because
there were more important things to handle and fix. However, as time
goes on and the Technical Committee becomes even more stale, it has
become a priority for me to do something about the situation. Having
people on the Technical Committee who don't have a single package in
the archive or whose packages have been orphaned because they were not
maintained is simply not how it should be!
--
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com
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