These are some random thoughts based on a not very thorough reading of
candidate platforms of the
DPL Election 2007, and my
subjective view of the candidates based on the mailing traffic I remember
reading.
Wouter
Verhelst: Has quite a
broad
Debian-background, the platform also seems to share quite a bit of my view
of where Debian's problems are at the moment. Doesn't propose a course of
action right now, not sure how to judge that. Not sure if I remember Wouter
being heavily involved in flamewars, but I do remember reading quite a few of
his emails in discussions with interest.
broad
Debian-background, the platform also seems to share quite a bit of my view
of where Debian's problems are at the moment. Doesn't propose a course of
action right now, not sure how to judge that. Not sure if I remember Wouter
being heavily involved in flamewars, but I do remember reading quite a few of
his emails in discussions with interest.
broad
Debian-background, the platform also seems to share quite a bit of my view
of where Debian's problems are at the moment. Doesn't propose a course of
action right now, not sure how to judge that. Not sure if I remember Wouter
being heavily involved in flamewars, but I do remember reading quite a few of
his emails in discussions with interest.
broad
Debian-background, the platform also seems to share quite a bit of my view
of where Debian's problems are at the moment. Doesn't propose a course of
action right now, not sure how to judge that. Not sure if I remember Wouter
being heavily involved in flamewars, but I do remember reading quite a few of
his emails in discussions with interest.
Aigars
Mahinovs: Quoting from his platform: “My goal of running for
DPL is not to be DPL, but to get a few concepts closer to real life.”
So don't run for DPL, but start doing these things you're thinking about. Not
being DPL has the advantage that you don't have to spend time on DPL stuff that
would detract you from these goals. Speaking about your goals: (i) No
release: I've thought about that, too, but I feel this would quickly make
Debian irrelevant. (ii) $HOME configuration files organisation: take it up with
the upstream developers of all the application. I think this is a very good
idea, but
freedesktop.org would be a
better platform. (iii) Old Maintainer Process: Idea looking for a problem.
(iv) Dropping Trademarks: not sure what to think about this.
Gustavo
Franco: Some focus on the desktop, and a constructive attitude towards
Ubuntu, both positive in my book. (The first one primarily because on servers
Linux is already quite well established, while the desktop is where more work
is still to be done. Not because servers are less important.) His goals: (i)
Core teams: as with Wouter, he sees that people and what goes on between them
are where the problems are. (ii) Release goals: I think building the release
based on release goals could be a driving force, but this is more RM area than
DPL. (iii) Adding features to the bts doesn't need DPL powers. (iii) New
developers: certainly an area that still needs attention, but the intended
course is not entirely clear to me. (iv) NEW queue: same. (v) CTTE: Not sure
what the idea behind this is. (vi) Groups: yes, but again not entirely clear
what and how. (vii) Backports: yes, new versions of some software should go
into Debian (stable) faster. Officially supporting backports or something
else, I don't know, but this is an area where a DPL could pull together the
RMs, security team(s), backports.org people etc. (viii) Universal OS: is this
about more media coverage or about more face to face meetings? Both are good,
but we should set clear goals beforehand. (ix) Much work is needed, especially
in the area of buildd management (meaning: the processes and people behind
it!). Does Gustavo have previous involvement here? (x) Vendors, Website,
Publicity: This is more or less all about media coverage and popularity. Much
needed, but as Debian as it is will never be able to commit to a public
official opinion of anything, we'll need to think hard about what to do here.
(xi) NMU: I don't see a great need for action here, personally. Overall: this
platform contains too much material, I fear trying to tackle all these areas
will lead to a burned out DPL within three months and little actually getting
anywhere.
Sven
Luther: It's true that it always needs at least two people for a
flamewar. But having a DPL who is always ready to provide one side of an
argument is not a good idea.
Sam
Hocevar: Everything is high-level on his platform. Both good and bad.
Not sure how to rate this platform, but I see myself nodding along. Learn from
other OSs is good, but I hope he also means active cooperation and not just
passive let's see how they do it.
Steve
McIntyre: Should have won 2006. Certainly did a lot of both
behind-the-scenes work and some good communication. The platform lacks mention
of relations between Debian and the outside world, which is an area where I
feel some work is missing (and where the DPL as the only person with a official
role also known outside Debian can make a difference), and also lacks mention
of legal problems (trademarks and patents) where I'm not sure how solid
Debian's work is. Additional argument in favor of Steve: Having a 2IC and
promoting him to DPL the year after might be a good idea overall. Maybe we
should actually elect the 2IC and only have a confirmation vote to promote him
to DPL?
Raphaël
Hertzog: I like the DPL board idea. I also like how Raphaël
focuses, in his platform, on the DPL board idea and some selected problems. On
the other hand, the platform is wholly focused inward, outside relations are
important, too !
Anthony
Towns: Not sure what to think of the current DPL. I think he had good
ideas, and I still think the original “spend Debian funds for the
release”-idea was not that bad, but seeing how it all worked out was
very, very painful for too many people. The platform seems pretty much empty,
so I guess ajt won't have my vote this time.
Simon
Richter: Maybe I miss something, but I only see “don't repeat the
dunc-tank flamefest” in his platform, which seems a bit thin. His
observation that the real power of the DPL is to get everybody's attention may
be partly true, though, even if this power will be spent as soon as a DPL,
trying to mediate, lets himself be drawn into the flamewar instead (I don't
accuse Simon that he ultimately will do this, but I fear that it happens all
too quickly).
Now what? I really don't have the time to thoroughly follow the
campaigning, but I'll certainly have a look at the rebuttals, and perhaps
somebody will do some summary. So the ballot below will certainly change.
(You might also be able to buy the vote if you're rich enough ;-)
[ 1 ] Wouter Verhelst
[ 5 ] Aigars Mahinovs
[ 3 ] Gustavo Franco
[ 6 ] Sven Luther
[ 3 ] Sam Hocevar
[ 1 ] Steve McIntyre
[ 2 ] Raphaë Hertzog
[ 5 ] Anthony Towns
[ 4 ] Simon Richter
[ 5 ] NOTA
I am starting to wonder why every single bit of hardware that deals with wireless networks is utter crap.
Really, I'd pay good money for an access point that doesn't crash when the firmware on the ipw2200 sends out a malformed packet while crashing because I used all the transmit buffers in the card.
The zd1201 is no better, I've managed to have its firmware crash on me twice now, and unlike the ipw2200 which will at least admit that there has been a firmware error and reboot the card it just silently retries for an infinite time.
The latest version of d2x-xl works quite well, so I've started packaging it. Since it needs the data from the commercial game to work, it will probably end up in contrib.
The interesting thing is that there is another project, Into Cerberon, working on a Doom 3 mod with free game data -- it would be interesting to see whether both projects could be combined in order to get a completely free game. Difficulty: Into Cerberon is planning for a triangle based engine while d2x-xl thinks in cubes.
Update: Into Cerberon use the Doom 3, not the Quake 3 engine. Thanks "zulu9" for noticing. Also, Josh alerts me of some interesting (cough) licensing issues around this code. As I'm still busy wading through the uclibc source compiling a proper list of attributions and licenses (ftp-master thinks a blanket statement "If you link against this, the LGPL applies to you, if you look at the files, please see each individual file" is not enough -- I can somehow see their point, but it takes ages to do that) that will have somewhat lower priority. I know why I rewrite things from scratch rather than fix them these days...