Debian Project Leader Candidates' Platforms Online

An anonymous reader writes "The platforms for the Debian Project Leader candidates are now available here with more information about how votes are tallied. The candidates this year are the incumbent DPL Martin Michlmayr, and developers Branden Robinson, and Gergely Nagy (but if you vote for him, his tamagotchi will sit on you.)" Nagy's platform is interesting reading.

Re:Martin Michlmayr

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it's fair to say that Martin has done nothing. I think he's done a lot. You may still prefer Branden, and that's fine. I probably do too. But I wouldn't characterize Martin's work this past year as "nothing."

Re:Martin Michlmayr

[Bronster]

"My name is Martin Michlmayr, and I hope that you will re-elect me as your Debian Project Leader" -- I had to double-check, thinking he might not be a native English speaker

Funnily enough - he isn't, though he did a good enough job when I met him.

I think it's interesting how democracies tend to change every so often as we dwell on the failures of those in leadership and forget to notice the quiet advances those same people have made. Interesting how the new one never seems that much better.

Branden would certainly have a different focus - and the question is which area of focus is better for Debian at the moment, Branden's strict constitutional interpretation and "from the ranks" approach as a very active package maintainer, or Martin's more relaxed interpretation of the constitution and behind the scenes / package process support approach.

If you read past the initial PhD section of Martin's bio, you'll notice that he has worked intensively in the Quality Assurance and New Maintainer areas. Ensuring that bugs get dealt with and that new people are coming on board to maintain packages is just as important as maintaining the packages yourself.

Branden does make some very good points however, that without a constitution a government is nothing.

I'm not a developer, just a very avid user who should have got off my arse ages ago and become a developer. Oh well. If I was voting, I would vote for Martin as project leader on the basis that I believe Debian has plenty of maintainers and not enough QA (check the release critical bug count some time), but I would ask him politely to respect the constition or start the process for it to be changed. I don't know the background for the disputed 'delegates' situation, and I don't know if the best solution is changing the constitution or delegating the specific people Branden names.

And, AC. Maybe you should be aware that being active on development mailing lists is not the only way of doing anything.