Re: Questions to candidates
* Marc Haber <mh+debian-vote@zugschlus.de> [2004-03-05 08:48]:
> I would like to ask what you have done in your past term to find out
> overworked core roles, and what happened to ease the work load on
> these core roles.
I stay in constant contact with a wide range of people involved in
core team. Just to give two examples, I'm in regular contact with
Matt Zimmerman (security) and Pascal Hakim (listmaster), but the same
goes for other people and groups. By staying in regular contact with
those people, I have a very good understanding of their work, of their
problems, and know how to help them.
In the case of security, I promoted Matt to a fully security member
soon after becoming DPL which improved the situation significantly
(just look who's doing most security updates these days); however,
this is not enough. I've been working with Matt to find more
volunteers for the security team, and we have been discussing a
security database which will allow more coordination within the
security team. As to listmaster, I regularly give Pasc advice on
procedural matters, and we also talk about problems with man power.
Joe Nahmias has recently been added as a listmaster, and we're
discussing whether another addition is required. I worked with the
DAM to find out how his job can be made easier, and certain changes
led to major improvements.
There are also other things that needs to be done with are not
directly related to work load. For example, Joey Hess complained that
it takes him a long time to test debian-installer, so I talked to a
hardware company to get a laptop on loan to him. In the buildd
situation, I found out that some MIPS hardware became unavailable, and
so arranged for a new MIPS machine (which is currently being built
up).
> Are you satisfied with the success of the measures you took?
Yes, I think good progress has been made, but much remains to be done.
As I say in my platform
(http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/platforms/tbm), "While progress is
being made, much remains to be done." I intend to give special
attention to this issue - please see my platform.
> From a few of the flamef^wdiscussions about important roles in the
> past, I have learnt that the project also has a history of rejecting
> people wanting to help.
As I argue in my platform and in various mails on -vote, I think this
is often because of bad communication. Since I know how the core
teams work, I know fairly well what exactly they need and how to get
people involved with these teams.
See e.g.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2004/debian-vote-200403/msg00025.html
for more information on this.
> I am quite disappointed by the project's handling of - for example -
> people who would like to contribute additional buildds for
> architectures that notoriously lagged behind.
There were good reasons for rejecting that offer, even if they were
not communicated well (for example, the machine had a slow CPU and not
enough disk). Again, I think communication is often a problem, and I
can help because I'm in a position to interact with a wide range of
people. As a matter of fact, another MIPS machine is in the process
if being set up - this shows that offers are accepted, if they are done
in the right way (and the machine also fulfils the requirements for a
buildd).
--
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com
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