A solution?

[Peter Tobias <tobias@et-inf.fho-emden.de>]

Hi,

I've joined the Debian project quite a long time ago (about 1 month
after Ian officially started the project) and have maintained quite
a lot of packages since then. Back in the old days when Ian Murdock
was leading the project we didn't have such problems that we have
now. Ian (or someone else) suggested something and we all discussed
it and it simply worked. If there were problems the pros and contras
were summarized and a decision was made by all developers. If no
decision was possible Ian had the final word (and he said _why_ he
decided the way he did).

With the current system we have too much problems. Splitting the
distribution to avoid the problems is IMHO a bad way. Problems need
to be solved and not ignored. Splitting the distribution would give
us bad PR and won't solve the problem. Later we would be in a similar
situation again.

I can understand both the pro-Bruce and the contra-Bruce people.
Bruce has done quite a lot for the project (as well as other
people). But I can also understand the contra-Bruce people.

Bruce, you say that (for example) Mike could do something bad,
please imagine how other people felt when you DID something bad
for the Debian project (for example by removing the mailing list
stuff or by trying to remove people with "unwanted" opinions from
the project). You want to remove the unwanted people but the other
people think the same way (because you actually DID something bad)
about you.

To solve the problem and to get back to the real Debian problems
we should IMHO go back to the old way of managing the project
(with a small change). Because of the number of developers we
have and we will get in the future, the method mentioned in the
first paragraph won't work without changes. Discussions would
probably take too long.

IMHO the best for the project would be:
1. (VERY important things)
   - Bruce resigns as the president but stays on the board.
   - board members who have positions like vize-president and
     so on resign from this position too but stay on the board
     so we don't get a big hierarchy but a flat system where
     we have the board and the developers (and of course the
     users).
   - we DON'T elect a new president and other positions like
     that. IMHO we don't need them.
   - decisions should be made by the members of the board by
     vote (the board is the democratic representation of the
     Debian developers/community).

2. (Important things)
   - the board assigns officers for specials tasks (for example
     the webserver) and gives them limited power to decide
     some things (the board can overrule the officer by decision)
   - long term positions like the treasurer and so on should
     be assigned to persons outside the board. There should
     be only very few long term positions.
   - the board should maybe have 2 or 4 more members (I'm not
     sure about that)
   - the board sents a short report about the decisions to
     debian-private or debian-devel. The report has to include the
     voting result (for example 5x yes, 2x no and "1x don't know")
     and a short (1-2 lines) text why the decision was made (these
     mails should be stored somewhere so we can look at it later
     when a similar problem arises). If there is a 4 votes to
     4 votes situation let the people on debian-devel decide.
   - elections for the board should be held every 6 months.
     6 months is a long time. A short period makes it easier
     ensure that there won't be arrangements between the board
     members which would lead to a "one person decides" situation.
   - we could either let the board decide when it is time to
     make a decision about a topic that is discussed on debian-devel
     or we create a way to send "decision-requests" to the board
     (for example a given number of Debian developers have to
     express that they think that a decision by the board is
     necessary.


Advantages of this proposal:
- no decisions are made by a single person
- it's a democratic way of deciding about important problems
- ALL members of the board are responsible for a decision
  and not only Bruce
- people who don't like the current situation with Bruce's
  decisions could live with this proposal
- it would allow us to make decisions faster
- we probably have more fun working for Debian again

Disadvantages of this proposal:
- Bruce and Dan would lose their titles "president" and
  "vize-president"



I think this is a proposal that the majority of Debian developers
could live with.

Please let us discuss this proposal and decide about it SOON.


Thanks,

Peter

-- 
 Peter Tobias                                EMail:
 Fachhochschule Ostfriesland                 tobias@et-inf.fho-emden.de
 Fachbereich Elektrotechnik und Informatik   tobias@debian.org
 Constantiaplatz 4, 26723 Emden, Germany     tobias@linux.de