Re: A Solution

[Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>]

On Fri, 28 Mar 1997, Martin Schulze wrote:

> Good morning folks,
> 
> Peter Tobias made the following proposal.
> 
> It contains all the ideas that I had have for the leading of the
> Debian project.  I really would appreciate that the BoD and Bruce
> would accept this proposal and we could get back to work.
> 
> | IMHO the best for the project would be:
> 
> | 1. (VERY important things)
> |    - Bruce resigns as the president but stays on the board.
> 
> This would end the situation we have at the moment.  Bruce decides
> strange things without discussion with developer (maybe without
> discussion on the board, too?  I don't know).

Please let's wait until the vote we're going to have soon. Though I don't
agree with everything Bruce said in the last days I don't know someone
else in the project that could do the hard job equally good. (I really
prefer to have someone that can make decisions over a "system" were
people only discuss things but don't get something done.)

> |    - 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).
> 
> All members of this consortium (I prefer that name) have the same
> rights.
> 
> |    - we DON'T elect a new president and other positions like
> |      that. IMHO we don't need them.
> 
> True!!  Many of us thought that the board would be _the_ consortium
> that makes the decisions.  Unfortunately they/we misinterpreted it and
> Bruce still has all the power and can make decisions on his own.

Where did you get your information? As I understood the only intention of
the BOD was to have an elected group of people that define a constitution
for Debian and that choose the leader, as well as other important people.

I can't understand the way most developers are fighting against the BOD
and against Bruce. The BOD does not exist very long so far so IMHO we have
to wait a little longer (say one year) until we can see if the BOD helps
us with our problems or if we don't need it.

> |    - decisions should be made by the members of the board by
> |      vote (the board is the democratic representation of the
> |      Debian developers/community).
> 
> Proposals from developer that don't come to a decision have to be
> discussed in the consortium, too, to get a decision.
> 
> Brian White wrote:
> > This is fine for matters of policy, but you need to have a group
> > of people that actually get things done.  Removing the existing
> > hierarchy will only leave people not knowing who is doing what.
> 
> In former times this worked.  People made a proposal and finally
> implemented it.

So what's your point? Do you think this has changed? Just look at the
technical discussions in debian-devel. IMHO most of the decisions are
made this way. But there are some questions where we don't get a solution
with our discussion and that's the point where we need someone to make the
decision.

> Partially our structure has to be reverted.  We IMHO need a public
> available todo list.  It explicitely has to contain a detailed list.
> So everyone who has some spare time or would like to do some
> organizing, programming, documentation could try to fulfil one task.
> (just like winni modified the init procedure which is much smarter
> than the actual one, or like I modified adduser to support shadow
> passwords)

I agree. Such a list would be a good thing. But how does this interfere
with our discussion?

> Your list is an important step into the right direction.  I don't know
> why you have never fulfilled my request to putting it on the
> ftp-server - I even don't remember an answer...
> 
> The called group will exist.  I for myself am kind of sick of
> maintaining packages that I don't want and never wanted to maintain.
> I'd be happy to give some of them away and fulfil some of these tasks.

So what's the problem? Just tell the people on debian-devel that you want
to give some packages away and tell Sven to add this to his list.

> | 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)
> 
> These managers have enough power and rights concerning this task to
> fulfil it.  Again, important changes should be discussed with the
> consortium, if the answer is "no" they have to skipped.

Well, this is exactly what we have now.

> I have come to the oppinion that it is bad idea to make one person
> responsible for the whole project.  Partially it is too much stress
> and too much responsibleness.  If it is only one person only one
> person is flamed for his decisions.

I think _everyone_ on the project agrees to this point. And that's why
Bruce nominated the other "Managers".

> |    - 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)
> 
> I believe 8 ppl are fare enough.

Well these things have been discussed some time ago.

[lots of stuff deleted]

I think the whole troubles we are in right now is a _lack_ of
organisation. This was the reason to elect the BOD and to nominate some
Managers. I would really appreciate it to keep everything as we have it
now. You can't know after a few months if this change was good or bad. If
you implement your proposal of "democracy" right now, that's a step in the
wrong direction since it would undo all the changes we did in the last
three months.

So I would suggest to wait until the vote if the people trust Bruce. If
not, we should find another leader. If the people do trust him (that's
what I expect) than we should keep everything the way we have it now and
wait some more time (say one year) until we make any further changes to
our organisation.

Now, please lets stop these endless political discussions and get back to
work. We have a release to get out! 


Thanks,

Chris

--          _,,     Christian Schwarz
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