Confusions about board activities.

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

Since my last outcry at Joey, I have been keeping silent and just
listening to the discussion. I am going to stop doing that and go back to
working on things that I can do something about (like testing Bo), but
before I do that, I would like to try to clear up some confusion about
what the board has done and what it should be expected to do.

My memory (using my few remaining active brain cells) of the reason for
the existance of the board is that we were elected for the sole purpose of
"creating" an umbrella corporation for the Debian Project and appointing
appropriate "managers" for the various tasks defined by the corporate
constitution.
There was no intent, from what I can tell, that the board in any way
"manage" the distribution. We were certainly not given the power to decide
on technical issues.

Since the inception of the board, we have been vilified for being
"secretive". The "closed" nature of the board is appropriate and the fact
that "nothing" has been heard comes from the fact that we haven't yet
satisfied our "prime directive" and thus have nothing to report.

Since its beginning, the board has voted on some 4 major issues. Two of
those votes were about whether or not to support the activities of Bruce
as Project Director. Both of those votes were heavily in favor of
supporting Bruce's actions, first as a general statement, and second as a
specific endorcement of his actions with respect to moving the mailing
lists. Both of these votes were reported to the group at large. The other
two votes were directed toward our primary task. We have voted on and
accepted a "procedural and voting policy" which took up large amounts of
time, and we have voted on and accepted a format for the constitution.
This is not a trivial exercise and, although we have a "very" rough draft,
we are quite far from a finished product.

In reaction to the objections to Bruce's activities, Bruce instituted,
with full board approval, the appointment of other folks to take over
various tasks that had previously been solely in Bruce's hands. In stead
of satifying those who were complaining, it escalated the complaints (Who
gave Bruce the power to appoint THESE people?).

I have heard, from several quarters, an expectation that the board would
take over the "control" of leadership and somehow replace the Project
Director. I don't think that this was the task that I signed up for, and I
think most others on the board would agree (I'm sure we will hear from
those who don't ;-). Technical leadership was not supposed to be a task
for this board.

One thing that is quite clear from the current political discussions is
that we are much better at software development than we are at politics.

With that in mind, I have a suggestion to make:

Let's table all discussions on this matter until after the release of 1.3
and focus on what we do best...building a superior distribution.

It is my intention to put no more effort into the political issues until
after the release, and I encourage everyone here to do the same. We have
already pushed the release date 2 weeks farther into the future because of
this flame full conversation. There are still bug reports comming in and
we need to deal with them more than we need to deal with "leadership
issues".

Let's get back to work,

Dwarf
-- 
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aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

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