Re: Questions for candidates -- Debian's Organizational Structure
On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 06:16:20PM +0000, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> 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!
That would be me.
Note that I am open to the idea of dropping my membership in the technical
committee in favor of someone else. However, I'd want this someone else
to be someone I could feel good about [both in terms of participation, and
background]. But I'd want to be extremely careful about stepping down...
A few things to keep in mind:
[*] The technical committee gets stuck with the really bad issues.
Normally, issues are resolved by the proper developers. Things don't
go to the technical committee until they've really messed up. The best
thing for the technical committee members to do, here, is to act in their
capacity as normal developers to keep things from getting that screwed up.
[And, obviously, this isn't something that only TC members can do.]
[*] People are going to be unhappy with technical committee decisions.
This is fallout from only dealing with really bad issues. It's also
fallout from having override power on the normal decision making
processes, and only being authorized to use that power in contentious
circumstances.
[*] In general, an inactive Technical Committee is a good thing.
A "stale technical committee" means that there aren't any really bad
issues to be dealt with. However, to improve response time when there is
a bad issue it probably would be a good idea to occasionally do something
-- the problem is finding something that isn't just a waste of time.
Superficially, it might be nice to "see that the technical committee
is doing something". But, really, other than dealing with things that
shouldn't have happened in the first place, and bureacratic tail chasing,
what is there for the TC to do?
One answer, perhaps, would be to maintain a section of the web site
explaining past decisions and issues. If someone did a good job putting
something like this together, and then also expressed an interest in
participating, and the other TC members agreed with me that this would
be a good thing, I'd be happy to step down in favor of that person.
More generally, if you have good ideas for the TC [general "you", not
specifically Martin], it would probably be a good idea to act on them.
Discuss if in doubt, or if you need help or cooperation, of course,
but ... what's disappointing is seeing people criticize the TC, over
and over, for doing what it's supposed to be doing. Maybe if it had
been called "Technical Garbage Service" instead of "Technical Committee"
people who can't be bothered to digest what the constitution has to say
about it would have a better idea of what it does.
[Also, for people who haven't read the relevant bits of the constitution:
it's not the member stepping down that chooses new members.]
I do recognize that my own financial and technical situation [which
has resulted in me not maintaining any packages -- and which currently
means that I'm not in a position to sign anything [again]] isn't the
best thing for the TC, but I hope that the above gives a bit of an idea
of where I stand on the issue of "improving the technical committee".
[Further aside: I currently have a machine which I've designated as
a debian development machine. It can sign packages. However, to
communicate it either needs to use pppoe [and the pppoe package I have
installed isn't working] or a router [and I appear to have a problem with
my kernel where the only kernel version that will talk to the router has
some other serious problems]. I don't know enough about the situation,
yet, to know whether this is a hardware problem, a kernel problem, or
a bug in one or more debian packages. But it's just a matter of time
until I find out.]
Thanks,
--
Raul
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