Re: Candidate questions/musings
On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:48:51 +1000, Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> said:
> Yes, it is. And Debian's response to that was unpleasant enough that
> Bruce decided to leave two or three times.
Hmm. You make it sound like the lack of people willing to give
up heir ideas of right and wrong to be herded like sheep is the
problem. Traditionally, this is known as failure of leadershipt; You
know ehat they call a leader with no followers?
> That other people don't want to put up with that degree of
> unpleasantness and choose to "coordinate" instead of "lead"
> shouldn't be particularly surprising.
As far as my recollection goes, Bruce gave as good as he got
(speaking as a lablled "bad apple" who was a disgrace to the
project). I still have his parting message to us, which does still
remain near the pinnacle of of unpleasant, rude, and offensive
messages.
> Seriously: you say you want to be lead; but are you willing to
> follow?
Speaking personally, only when I feel I have a worthy leader
to follow. A leader needs have qualities that convince people that
following him/her would be a good idea -- that would further whatever
the followers are wont to do, and frequently, convince the followers
that the leaders vision is better, even when it contradicts
previously held notions of the "follower". For me, it is being able
to trust the judgement of the leader better than my own, which
requires a bit of a track record.
Winning an election is rarely enough to satisfy these criteria.
> It's often said that people get involved in open source development
> because of the reputation they can build up -- doing stuff as DPL
> seems to result in nothing better than "nice, competent
> guy". Motivating, no?
One should realize that the OP's view on these people is far
from universal.
> But you really don't need to look any further than the "non-free"
> debate to find examples of people standing up for what they think's
> right, and trying to lead the project in that direction, and being
> shot down for being a bigot, a hypocrite, at odds with Debian's
> purpose or whatever.
A leader is not a dictator. A leader has to get people to
follow him -- if you do not have followers, well, I guess it is easy
to blame the followers.
Were it not for you stupid people out there not willing to be
my followers, I would be the supreme god-king out there.
> How, exactly?
Someone who can convince most of us to trust their judgement?
Someone who can come up with ideas, visions, and solutions that
further the agendas of most people, enough so we go along with
tangential tasks? Someone who inspires one, and motivates one to be
part of their vision, and pull our wieght as a part of his team?
> The "Bruce" lesson is a pretty easy one IMO: if we want to encourage
> people to take leadership roles and actively develop and push
> agendas to improve Debian then we need to make sure we don't have an
> environment that makes leaders like that throw hissy fits and quit
> the project.
Ah. It was the environment, not the person. A leader can't
always get handed things on a silver platter, you know.
> AFAIK, I'm yet to see anyone willing to give up anything much in
> order to change that though. See the "chicks in Debian" thread we
> just had on this list, eg, which was pretty much used by every
> single participant to advance their own agenda, rather than trying
> to work out a single direction we can all choose.
Perhaps there isn't a single direction we call all choose.
manoj
--
What has roots as nobody sees, Is taller than trees, Up, up it goes,
And yet never grows?
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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