Software Cooperative News

I’ve been AWOL for most of the debian project leader election campaigns this year, but I still want to vote, so I’ve been dredging the emails on the last day. Maybe someone still has to vote and reads this, or maybe it’ll help someone to interpret the result.

What I’ve done this year is to make a quick tally of platform points and campaign answers that I liked and disliked for each candidate, then total them up to get an order. If anyone gets a negative (more dislikes than likes), then I’ll rank them below NOTA.

Platforms: Margarita Manterola, Stefano Zacchiroli, Wouter Verhelst, Charles Plessy.

Some of the questions:

• Do you plan on taking on a “2IC” or a team? No – SZ, WV, CP, MM
• What do you think are valid goals to spend donated money on? How would you think is a valid way to thank (hardware) contributors? What qualifies a “Debian Partner”? Spend on what we cannot receive by donation – CP. Partner is defined on website – CP. Spend on maintenance, development, contributions, use – MM. Spend on keeping the project running and emergency reserve – SZ. Partnership programs usually require an yearly subscription fee – SZ. No specific spending list – WV. No formal list of partners – WV
• How much time do you currently/would you devote to Debian? Couple of evenings per week and a couple of days per month – CP. A daily hour, more in future – MM. 1-2 hours/day + 2-4 hours/week – SZ. Varies – WV.
• infrastructure to finance Debian related projects? Why not use other infrastructure? – CP, MM. Don’t – SZ, WV.
• Please finish “In ten years I’d like Debian….”to still be thriving as the Universal OS – MM. to be *THE* renowned distribution in terms of freeness and democracy – SZ. to be mainstream – CP. to still be the distribution I consider to be the best one out there – WV
• Do you think current frequency/amount of heated discussions is acceptable for the Debian project? What would you do to reduce those? too agressive, use social pressure – MM. Acceptable? No. Normal? To some extent, yes. DPL must set a good example – SZ. Stricter policies – CP. No amount of ad-hominem attacks is acceptable, see platform – WV.
• Which project and external Debian-related communications media do you follow? and contribute to? lists, IRC, planet – MM, WV. lists, Planet – CP. lists, IRC, planet, DN, identi.ca – SZ.
• How, as DPL, you would (or even could) address the social issues around releasing? add manpower – MM. status reports – SZ. public disappoval of bad behaviour – WV. reshape the archive – CP
• should we try to coordinate our release process with Ubuntu’s? Yes – MM, SZ. Why not – WV. More info – CP
• Will you withdraw delegations of DD not behaving correctly? On recurrence – MM, CP. No(?) – SZ. No – WV.
• Is there any part of Debian that should be restricted to a small subset of developers? Yes – WV, CP, MM. No except security reasons – SZ.
• Personal mentoring? Good idea – MM. Recycle NM process – CP. Use teams – SZ. NM already is mentoring – WV.
• Standardization, large scale changes, innovations – valuable questions, but the responses are too complex to summarise here, sorry.
• How would you enforce Debian Community Guidelines? wouldn’t – SZ, MM, WV. No clear answer from CP.
• is planet.d.o a good thing? Not necessarily – WV. No clear answer from SZ, MM. No reply from CP.
• How do we face the challenge to do more every year? improve our way of working and get more people to help us do our jobs – MM. open Debian’s door wider – CP. have enough people to work on Debian – WV. use our communication media – SZ

Make of that what you will. It surprised me which way the scores came out, but there was one answer with such a massive problem (in my opinion) that I ranked its giver equal with the next candidate down anyway.

If you’re a debian developer (DD), have you voted yet?