Re: There is no leadership vaccumm.

[Guy Maor <maor@ece.utexas.edu>]

Your problem, Christian, is that you're just too nice.  Bruce
sometimes suffers from the same problem.

It's very easy to rule by fiat.  You just do it.  If people disagree
with you, you listen to them for a bit to see if they have any good
ideas.  If it turns out that they don't, you ignore them.

Doubtful?

Every couple of months somebody comes up with a new way to organize
the ftp archive.  There's the typical frenzy - free vs non-free, DFSG,
encouraging software authors, blah, blah, blah.  Posts from me are
conspicuously absent.  Pretty soon the thread dies down, and I'm still
running the archive how I please.

Ian was once growing exasperated so wrote something along the lines
of, "I'd have more time to write code if I didn't have to reply to all
this email."  So don't reply.

The recent flame-fest over the logo?  How boring.  How many hundreds
of hours were spent composing essays over a little scribble, as if
somebody would actually prefer a distribution because they had a more
attractive logo.  Bruce should have simply ignored them, or said "I'm
the boss, and that's the logo I want, and it when all comes down to
it, one logo is just as good as another."

Christian, you're the policy manager.  After a particular item has
gone through some discussion, and the result seems reasonable, you're
done.  Write it up as policy.  Naturally there will be some ass who
has to have his way in everything.  Ignore him.  Don't answer his
email.  You'll be amazed how well this works.

On to specifics:

Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de> writes:
> _It's unacceptable to me that a project leader, who doesn't have much
> time himself, spends the little time he has for making the job
> harder for his managers._

Unfortunately Ian is a perfectionist, not a pragmatist.  He did have
some good (and some awful) ideas in his platform though.  Chief among
his good ideas is that we should lower the responsibilities of the
project leader.  Currently the leader is the arbitrator for
everything, and there's lots of things that need arbitration.  The
leader should appoint managers, each of which has absolute authority
over their domain.

> The past has shown me clearly that this "aid" will only be objections when
> you did something wrong ("wrong" in the eyes of the comittee or the
> project leader). Compared to the time committement of the policy manager
> and the new project leader, this is an unacceptable situation for me.

No, that won't be the case.  The technical comittee will help you
write the policy because you will have appointed them.  If one of
technical comittee members becomes hot-headed, fire him.  Is this a
cabal?  Maybe.  People that form a cabal are interested in getting
things done, not talking about getting things done.

>   1. Splitting the archive into one "basic" part and several "add-ons".
>   2. Cutting down the number of developers to a reasonable amount again. 

Little did you realize, this has already happened.  Make a list in
your head of the core developers.  Now make a list of the important
packages in the system.  Funny, the same people are on both lists.

>   3. Getting more people to do the "management" jobs. (Not less, as
> proposed by the people who want to have more "democracy".) These new
> "managers" need to have the power to make decisions after
> considering the opinions of the other developers....

Obviously I completely agree with this.  What you didn't realize,
Christian, is that you already have this power.


Guy


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