Joerg Jaspert: debadmin delegation - should I accept or deny it?
As you might have read on debian-devel-announce lately, Sam delegated the ftpmaster rights to me. Steve, our new DPL, did state his full support in an IRC query minutes later.
Now I got a query from someone who is, pretty strongly, argumenting that I should decline this delegation. Mostly on the grounds that it is not nice to force new team members into an existing team, and that it is not a good environment to work in, if a DPL can do that if he feels like proving a point.
Leaving alone the fact that delegations are one (central) part of the DPL job, and that the constitution leaves a way if you do not like those delegations (GR), I’m now unsure what to do.
(Just for the record - i once was bitten by a DPL using his powers in a way I absolutely did hate (and still do). Some of you might remember the fun around the DebConf7 venue decision).
I could do
- decline the delegation, stay ftp assistant only. Which I am for a long time now. Possibly see some flame on the lists when I do this.
- do nothing, ie. accept the delegation. That will get at least one of the long time ftpmasters upset, possibly more of them. Maybe with a resign from that job. Or Debian. But it would enable me to do the work only ftpmasters can do, like changes to the code, changes to the archive directly, etc. Without delays while waiting for a master to comment on something I prepared. Good example here is the current situation with the release teams transitions: They are 90% done and merged, just one little more merge is waiting to happen before they are ready to use… And whenever I tried to get a master (mostly Aj, as he was working with me on this) to do the final steps I got nothing but silence back, even when he was otherwise active…
We escorted Sarge to its last home. 3.1r8 is done, thanks to all the
people who made it possible. A big thanks goes to James Troup, our
ftpmaster of the day doing all the grunt work of getting a new point
release out of the door.
To bring in a more personal feeling of who makes this all possible,
here is a list of people contributing uploads to 3.1r8 (mostly
people from our fabulous Security Team):
Fundamental fact: non-technical people can't or won't read mail bounces.
They (the bounces) are far too technical. Most people, even if they could
understand them intellectually, most won't even try to read them. Their input
channel gets jammed, their parser shuts down, whatever you want to call it.
Obviously, this is extremely frustrating, especially because I take care that
my spam filter never drops mail but always rejects it so that the sending mail
server can generate a proper bounce.
Proposed solution (and don't tell me this can easily be scripted in mutt.
The people I'm talking about wouldn't even recognize mutt as an email program
if they'd ever see one): Index all outgoing Message-Id's. When a bounce comes
in for a known message, don't display it but display some kind of locally
generated, friendly substitute with a direct 'correct address and re-send'
button and a clickable link to the original message.
I received a glossy mass mailing today from “Axe Flix,” enclosing a DVD for a film supposedly entitled “A Diary.” (I haven’t loaded the DVD). The promotional copy:
I wrote an essay several years ago called 
I am looking for a charity to receive regular donations. I would
like to support the environment and wildlife, rather than people
directly, and the 
