Re: Bits from the release team and request for discussion

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 1:10 AM, Bernhard R. Link <brlink@debian.org> wrote:

* Marc Singer <elf@buici.com> [090812 03:12]:

> 2009/8/11 Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org>
>
> > [deletia]
> >
> > I do not trust a majority of people ? regardless of the people ? to make
> > an appropriate managerial decision. We have people in charge, who take a
> > lot of time to remain informed of the status of various subsystems in
> > Debian so that they can make informed decisions. If we replace them by a
> > majority?s vote, you can expect the decisions to be wrong.
> >
>
> It is also challenging to get a large group of people well enough informed
> to make a decision worthy of the effort.

While it is challenging to inform a large group of people, that is in my
eyes rather a reason to make it a vote: If you do not inform people well
enough so that they would vote for the best solution, they will not
recognize the best solution as that, so they will be unhappy with those
doing the decisions and be frustrated, leaving or working against the
solution.

So if you cannot get the people affected by the decision to back up the
decision (and if it is only in a way of "X I trust, X said Y") then not
doing a vote is the wrong way to go: Better risk a suboptimal decision
and people supporting that to having decided an optimal solution that
cannot work due to lack of support or even no longer having people doing
the better solutions in charge as noone likes their decisions.

The claim that "...noone [sic] likes their decisions" is hardly defensible.

Whether or not there is a GR, the point is that it is difficult to assess the benefit
of a recommendation made by the membership as it has everything to do with
the question asked and the depth of their knowledge of the issue. Perhaps
the fundamental issue is whether or not the membership is willing to trust the
decisions of the release managers.

Cheers

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