Re: What's going on in there ?

[Philippe Troin <phil@fifi.org>]

On Wed, 19 Mar 1997 22:48:00 PST Bruce Perens (bruce@pixar.com) wrote:

> > 1) Bo was supposed to be frozen Feb 1st, tested during February, and 
> > released March 1st. Bo isn't frozen yet, and we're heading towards 
> > another rex fiasco.
> 
> I think Guy is having problems - maybe he or Brian should explain
> them. I don't see how we could do the release before the end of
> April at this point.

See point #2.

> > 2) The BOD was supposed to write a Debian constitution, and we've 
> > heard nothing from them (except people being nominated to various 
> > positions, with (IMHO) excessively pretentious titles (the _titles_, 
> > not the persons)).
> 
> The BOD passed a working draft, and are continuing to work on it.  I
> designated the officers when it became clear we needed them.  I'm sorry
> you don't like the titles, but they are trivial and you can live with
> them. After I add an officer it only takes about a month before I hear
> "now I understand why you wanted to quit". I think it's more important
> to do something about _that_ than a lot of technical matters.

It would be nice (while we're playing the big corporation game), to 
have some kind of (shall I say the dreaded word ?) status reports on 
what's going on with the BOD. We elected them a couple of months ago, 
and I have the feeling (I hope I'm not alone) that nothing's going 
on...
Maybe the BOD should post a message from time to time saying what 
they've done, what problems they encountered, etc...

If Guy has problems with the FTP archive, he should also post what 
the problems are, and maybe he could get some help...

> > 3) There's a trend to always add packages and packages while there 
> > are several packages that aren't actively maintained. We still have 
> > old a.out packages while everyone discusses and argues about the 
> > virtues of a new source format. Let's start by having _all_ packages 
> > actively maintained and compliant with the current standard.
> 
> OK. Phil Troin, you are appointed point man on the orphaned software
> problem.  Please coordinate with Sven Rudolph, who keeps the list of
> packages.  You report to Brian White. Your mission is to take charge of
> the orphaned packages, decide which should be put out of their misery
> and which should be kept, and then find maintainers for the ones that
> should be kept. You are authorized to harangue existing maintainers,
> use guilt as a motivator, and train current users to be maintainers.
> I will authorize any new maintainer you vouch for.

Thank you for not giving me a nice pretentious title :-)
I'll try to do this ASAP.

> > 5) Debian has been less and less fun lately.
> 
> OK. First, take some time for your life so that Debian is in perspective.
> Then, be a bit more patient with your fellows - I was driven up the wall
> by nasty, hectoring people and nobody's giving Quinlan any slack either.
> And also, take some time to see how successful we are - many of us are
> too close to the project to appreciate that. We can learn something if we
> look at what has worked and think about why it has worked.

I still enjoy working for Debian (despite by bf's feelings about it).
I truly believe being at your position must be a hell, and I hope my (too ?) negative message hasn't been taken personnaly by anyone.
I want Debian to be successful AND fun, that's all...

Phil.