Martin Michlmayr Wins DPL

Strike writes "The votes for the new Debian Project Leader are in and the tallying is over, results here. Martin Michlmayr comes out on top, winning 4-0 going head to head against the other three candidates (with the fourth win being over "no candidate"). Last year's DPL Bdale Garbee came in 2nd, with Branden Robinson and Moshe Zadka coming in 3rd and 4th. Michlmayr's platform can be seen here."

Comments

Outcome

[Gortbusters.org]

The winner of the election is Martin Michlmayr.

I would like to thank Moshe Zadka, Branden Robinson and Bdale Garbee for their service to the project, for standing for the post of project leader, and for offering the developers a strong and viable group of candidates.

Total unique votes cast: 488, which is 58.60409% of all possible votes.

Pairwise elections won-lost-tied: Moshe Zadka 1-3-0 votes against in worst defeat/closest victory: 428

Bdale Garbee 3-1-0 votes against in worst defeat/closest victory: 228

Branden Robinson 2-2-0 votes against in worst defeat/closest victory: 238

Martin Michlmayr 4-0-0 votes against in worst defeat/closest victory: 226

None Of The Above 0-4-0 votes against in worst defeat/closest victory: 449



1 beats 5: 228 202 = 26
2 beats 1: 428 34 = 394
2 beats 3: 238 221 = 17
2 beats 5: 449 29 = 420
3 beats 1: 385 66 = 319
3 beats 5: 405 65 = 340
4 beats 1: 397 38 = 359
4 beats 2: 228 224 = 4
4 beats 3: 237 226 = 11
4 beats 5: 424 39 = 385

Re:Outcome

[electrician067]

moooooo?

Re:Outcome

[Anonymous Coward]

let me be the first to say: WTF?!?!
that's more confusing than a florida ballot.

while we're at it, what's up with not being able to post while browsing at -1? my karma is excellent, and i always browse at -1 (not logged in today since i'm not on my machine).

Re:Outcome

[Ponty]

If you can install Debian, you can probably get through the ballot. Once the software/leader is in, it's all easy from there, but getting to the point where it all works is half the fun and effort in learning. :-)

Re:Outcome

[sellout]

Actually, the ballot is quite clear -- you just rank the candidates from 1-5 (with the extra one being for "no candidate"). This is a standard preferential ballot. If you like three of the candidates, but hate one, you would probably vote like

1. My fave guy
2. that other guy who's cool
3. this guy ain't bad
4. no candidate
5. Satan

This kind of ballot can be used in a number of voting methods, like the Borda Count and Plurality. In this case Pairwise Comparison was used.

So, basically, the ballot is simple. The calculations might be a little complex, but that complexity isn't exposed to the voter, which was the problem with the Florida ballot -- the calculations were simple, but the ballot was complex.

Re:Outcome

[Ed Avis]

The election process you describe is called single transferrable vote (STV) or instant runoff. But if they were using that system, why the weird presentation of results? Normally in an STV election you just give the results of voting 'rounds':

Round 0: candidate A 45 votes, B 40 votes, C 15 votes. Eliminate C.

Round 1: candidate A 55 votes, B 45 votes. A wins.

I've never seen this weird tabular format with simulated one-on-one contests between candidates. Does anyone pay attention to that data?

Re:Outcome

[jas79]

They are looking how often a candiate is higher on the list than an other candiate.

the one who wins the most compares wins the election.

Re:Outcome

[Ed Avis]

Is that method of selection equivalent to conventional STV or can it sometimes produce a different result?

Re:Outcome

[jas79]

different results of course.
Take for example

acb
acb
bca
bca
cab

with stv A would have won.
but with pairwise(or whaterver it called) C would have won.

It makes sense for a project like debian since it won't be good to have projectleader who isn't the liked by a large part of the developers.

Re:Outcome

[cperciva]

It can produce a different result. For example, if

11 people vote A,B,C,
10 people vote B,C,A, and
9 people vote C,A,B, then
A beats B (20-10),
B beats C (21-9), and
C beats A (19-11), resulting in a deadlock.

Single Transferable Vote would give
First round: A-11 B-10 C-9
Second round: A-20 B-10, resulting in A winning.

However, as with almost all cases where vote counting methods give different results, such a set of votes would be very unlikely to actually happen; in practice you'll almost always end up with the same result regardless of how you count the votes.

Re:Outcome

[rcw-home]

The election process you describe is called single transferrable vote (STV) or instant runoff.

No, Debian uses Condorcet voting.

The ordinal ballot, however, is identical to IRV.

Re:Outcome

[Anonymous Coward]

geez, ok... I thought debain was one of the linux distributions that folded due to disinterest/lack of money...

so if they are back alive, can anyone tell me what kernel they are up to? is it 2.4-based? will the next release have a recent KDE 3 release?

Re:Outcome

[CentrX]

Well, if it makes sense for Debian because it wouldn't be good to have a DPL who isn't liked by a large part of the developers, then it would be good for any voting system for any purpose, as it would minimize outcomes where a large part of the voting population doesn't like the elected person or option.

debian political parties vs. a national ones

[absurdhero]

This guy has an interesting and in depth platform. I wish our real world politicians would go at it with this kind of vigor and detail. He is well educated and has been working actively within Debian for the past few years and has real purpose and usefuleness. I wish i could say the same about bureaucrats.

Re:debian political parties vs. a national ones

[$carab]

Maybe I'm just being stupid, but I think the pairwise system of voting for national elections would be pretty cool. Completely infeasible, of course, but still cool.

I imagine the 2000 Presidential candidates would be:
GW Bush
Al Gore
Pat Buchanan
Ralph Nader
No One

It would require each voter casting 4+3+2+1=10 votes, so of course it wouldn't happen, but I imagine that the "No one" option would probably finish very strongly, perhaps even winning the election. (I think Scott Adams discussed that if one of the major parties nominated a bag of lettuce, it would capture 40% of the popular vote because it "has good character").

Where this sort of voting might actually useful (if voters wouldn't mind) would be in primaries, where definitive preferences for certain candidates would be shown, and other candidates would find out if their campaign will go anywhere much faster....maybe. Then again, this would require voters being well informed about each candidate, and we all know that isnt gonna happen.

Re:debian political parties vs. a national ones

[timotten]

You clearly haven't tried reading one of the platforms chosen by the Democrats, the Republicans, the Reform Party, the Greens, the Libertarians, or any of the dozen other groups that run national candidates.

These are not trivial documents, and they're chosen at the same time as the party's official candidate (at the national convention). The candidates themselves also publish volumes of press releases and opinion papers. These papers might not be quite as pleasant the DPL platforms, but they cover more material on more difficult issues, and they're influenced by many more people. But then, given the development model of any national organization, could you really expect them to be as nice?

Re:debian political parties vs. a national ones

[Galvatron]

10 votes? No, I don't think so. You would simply rank canidates, 1 through 5. In the pairwise comparisons, you simply look at who is ranked higher. And I highly doubt that "no one" would win, given how few write ins are cast in any election.

Australia uses a system not dissimilar, whereby people rank their choices in canidates. Everyone's first place choices are examined, and the canidate with the fewest 1st place choices is eliminated. Those that voted for the least popular canidate have their votes reassigned to their second place choices. The process is repeated until one canidate has over 50% of the vote.

Re:debian political parties vs. a national ones

[Anonymous Coward]

We just talked about this in history class! This was already tried in renaissance Italy. It does not work, because people are selfish. They will try to maximize their influence by not voting fairly. For example, someone who supports Bush would be best off putting Bush first and Gore last even if Gore is their second choice. By putting Gore last, they help Bush by giving the expected second place candidate less votes.

Re:debian political parties vs. a national ones

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, my guess it would be just the opposite --

48% would vote Gore first, Bush second
47% would vote Bush first, Gore second
5% would cast a feel good vote for Nader/Buchannan and rank Bush/Gore second.

The major candidates just have massive media superiority, and for a largely non-ideological electorate, it wouldn't make any real difference at all except to make some folks feel better about going to the polls.

Re:debian political parties vs. a national ones

[cymen]

Immediately I'm thinking of politicians having heart attacks because well coordinated media blitzes are no longer functional! This would be awesome but definately perturbing to the general populace.

Re:debian political parties vs. a national ones

[swillden]

We just talked about this in history class! This was already tried in renaissance Italy. It does not work, because people are selfish. They will try to maximize their influence by not voting fairly.

Actually, the Condorcet method used by the Debian project is pretty much immune from manipulation, in contrast to our current system which *strongly* discourages people from voting "honestly" if their preferred candidate isn't one of tha major parties.

The Condorcet method is less than 100 years old, and the proofs the show exactly why it has the characteristics it does rely on some fairly modern mathemetics, so you can be certain it wasn't tried in the 15th century.

For example, someone who supports Bush would be best off putting Bush first and Gore last even if Gore is their second choice. By putting Gore last, they help Bush by giving the expected second place candidate less votes.

Pairwise evaluation makes all of that irrelevant, because the absolute positions you choose in the ranking list have no effect: what matters is the *relative* order. So if Bush is higher than Gore on the ballot, that ballot ranks Bush over Gore, regardless of whether they're one step apart or 10.

For more information about Condorcet and other methods, look here.

Re:I

[pVoid]

I Vote G.W BUSH.

Hah hah.... I can just see the presidential debates for that:

Martin Michlmayr: I propose a 3 tiered attack onto terrorism. Using the latest advancements in XP (Extreme Power) we will have this baby delivered on time on budget... unlike Bush over here who's going to be many many months past his deadlines, and billions off his initial cost estimates...

Congratulations to the winner ...

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

of an incomprehensible voting system. Now all that remains for Martin Michlmayr is to -

1. Destroy the Debian budget by not cashing donation checks from the wealthiest donors
2. Hire a press agent who can say "GNU/Linux" with a straight face
3. Imprison without accusation developers on those suspicious BSD-licensed projects
4. Declare war on Red Hat (damn commies!)

Re:Congratulations to the winner ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why imprison BSD-licensed developers? You can just take their code and GPL it.

Re:Congratulations to the winner ...

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Dispite being a "Red" hat, I believe Debian would be the communists, while Red Hat would be the capitalists.

Re:Congratulations to the winner ...

[The_Dougster]

No, Debian are Anarchists. "Everybody does what they think is right, to their own eyes."

Total Anarchy... and It's great!

Re:Congratulations to the winner ...

[DarkVein]

I'm pretty sure you're being facetious, but I'll bite, For Educational Purposes. :)

France had an interesting problem, before a popular political reform. They had 7+ candidates in one presidential election, most likeable, with a few unpleasant and one racist downright-unlikable person. France, at this time, used the same voting system we do, called plurality voting. I bet you can guess who won. Of all the voting systems known, plurality is the most likely to give a false representation of voter preference. France no longer uses plurality voting in presidential elections, though they don't use Condorcet's Method either.

Debian uses Condorcet's Method. In this method, voters rank all candidates in their order of preference, and candidates can even tie for nth place on the ballot. The system considers which candidate is prefered over whom, and not their actual "rank" on the ballot. That is, if you tied four candidates for first place, and a fifth candidate for second place, you are only voicing that you prefer any of those four over the fifth candidate.

The election is resolved by running every candidate against every other candidate. That means, given n candidates, (n^2)-n "pair-wise" elections are held. Given 5 candidates, 20 elections. Given 8 candidates, 56 elections. Think of it this way: Given Bush or Gore, who would you pick? Given Bush or Perot, who would you pick? Given Bush or Sharpton, who would you pick? There can be multiple ways to chose the winner of the election. The candidate with the most victories is considered the winner. The candidate with the fewest losses is considered the least disliked. Most of the time, there is not a tie, and these two are the same candidate.

Tallying the votes is a little more obtuse. The easiest way to manually tally the votes uses a grid. From top the bottom and left to right, list the candidates. The rows will be the runners, and the columns will be the opponents. Going left to right, top to bottom, mark each box where the runner was prefered to the opponent. If they were tied, do not mark the box. Do this for each ballot. You will then add the grids resulting from each ballot. Consider each mark a '1', and each unmarked box a '0'. The result is the "Sum Grid".

From the "Sum Grid", you can draw a number of conclusions. Each grid shows the number of voters that prefer the runner to the opponent. Compare the runner's votes to the opponent's votes. The runner with the most victories can be considered the most popular. When there's a tie for first place, the candidate with the least losses could be considered a good choice--the least disliked. You could also add the numbers from each row for an indescriminate popularity vote. The popularity choice doesn't draw any useful conclusions, and can be any candidate except the one with the most losses. There are other possibilities. Condorcet's largest problem is resolving ties for first place.

"None" could be an option.

Re:Congratulations to the winner ...

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

Thanks! That's a lot clearer than the Debian page.

Re:Congratulations to the winner ...

[FsG]

Given 8 candidates, 56 elections. Think of it this way:
Given Bush or Gore, who would you pick?
Gore.
Given Bush or Perot, who would you pick?
Perot.
Given Bush or Sharpton, who would you pick?
Sharpton.

..Get the drift yet? I don't think running all 56 elections will be necessary.

Come on were geeks

[Billly Gates]

enum DPL {Martin_Michlmayr =1, Branden_Robinson,Moshe_Zadka }

DPL result;

result =rand(time(0)) % 4;

This is how it should work.

Re:Come on were geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when the result of rand(time(0)) % 4 is 0?

Re:Come on were geeks

[Billly Gates]

shit

correction

result = rand(time(0)) % 3 + 1;

I forget there were 3 not 4 candidates and since the enumurator started at 1 then I would need to add 1 to prevent the results from being off by 1.

Re:Come on were geeks

[Istealmymusic]

What happens when the result of rand(time(0)) % 4 is 0?

Recount.

Re:Come on were geeks

[Billly Gates]

Actually in c/c++ rand() started at zero and ends and 4 is my case would be the scaling value. This means all numbers are cut off starting by 4. So 0-3 would result.

If you look at my reply rand(time(0)) % 3 + 1 would add 1 to the 0-2 to make it 1-3 which would equal the numbers assigned to each set of characters in in enum.

Re:Come on were geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

If you a true ge ek you could design a whole linux distro with dd and /dev/random.

Re:Come on were geeks

[Emil Brink]

Now, that is a needless mistake you opened your code up to. You could have easily avoided it by taking the (admittedly rather weak) help the compiler can offer you. Simply add a "sentry" value to the enumeration, that holds the number of distinct values. This is simple and "natural" when you start indexing at zero, not at one like you did. Code:

enum DPL { Martin_Michlmayr = 0, Branden_Robinson, Moshe_Zadka, DPL_CANDIDATES };

DPL result = rand(time(NULL)) % DPL_CANDIDATES;

Note how I do not explicitly assign a "proper" value to the DPL_CANDIDATES sentry value, that is the point since now the compiler automatically assigns the correct value. The initial =0 assignment is optional, but nice for extreme clarity IMO. As you can see, this also removes the need to add 1 to the result, since the modulo operator will now work as intended. Um. Apologies of course if you already knew all this, I just felt like geeking out a bit. :)

Re:Come on were geeks

[tdvaughan]

Were geeks? This would be the new breed of human that changes into a geek during a full moon, then.

How did he REALLY win?

[Rumbler]

"...Moshe's intention is to do nothing at all..."

"...Bdale speaks of communication... community at large was not well informed at all of what was going on..."

"...I didn't see many new thoughts in Branden's platform...he has had (pointless) arguments with virtually anyone in the project who is doing important stuff...I doubt he would be an effective leader..."

The true secret to success... clever condescending trash talking.

Re:How did he REALLY win?

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the wide world of political science. I'm sure you will find it a rewarding career.

Re:How did he REALLY win?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...Moshe's intention is to do nothing at all..."

Did you read that guy's platform? It really is to do nothing at all!

Re:I am so great

[Anonymous Coward]

don't be so dumb! we don't want fuckers like this spewing their lame crap on /.

Recount!!

[solman]

He won by four votes and there were 23 spoiled ballots. Shouldn't somebody be looking for chads or something in the digital signatures?

Re:Recount!!

[AgentUSA]

"NO, CHILDREN! I'VE RECOUNTED A HUNDRED AND SIX TIMES NOW AND I KEEP COMING UP WITH SEVEN TO SIX, except in the one incidence where it came out seven to five, and one where it came out twelve to fourteen! IT'S OVER! IKE IS CLASS PRESIDENT!"

already covered

[CoughDropAddict]

There already was a recount.

Time to celebrate!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll start by dancing a jigdo.

choke on your mom's cock

[Anonymous Coward]

these kinds of posts are the very heart of slashdot

without them, it would just be a bunch of GNU/morons ranting about the latest microsoft security hole.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh... But does Martin have the butterfly ballot on his side?

I rest my case.

percent

[Anonymous Coward]

Total unique votes cast: 488, which is 58.60409% of all possible votes.

Not unless fractional votes are allowed.

Re:percent

[j3110]

He must be using one of those original pentiums to calculate his numbers eh?

Re:percent

[edinho]

Let's see this simple ficticious scenario:

3 possible votes.
2 votes were cast.
2/3 = 33.3333333%

Conclusion: WTF? Which moron cast the fractional vote?

Go back to school and pay attention in class this time.

Cheers,
e.

Re:percent

[Paradise Pete]

Go back to school and pay attention in class this time.

You miss the point entirely, edinho sweetie. But don't you worry your pretty little head; I will explain it to you. 488 is not 58.60409% of any integer. So unless fractional votes are allowed, 488 cannot be 58.60409% of the total.

It's been like this for a day or two

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking idiots, why are we even using Slashcode?

A choice of lesser evils?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reading this guy's platform, and honestly having trouble figuring out why he won. He seems to go on and on about his experience, but everything he says about his actual plans seems kind of vague and disjointed, about the only concrete proposal he makes is to get rid of orphaned packages and inactive maintainers.

So it seems like the main reason he won would have to be disillusionment with the other candidates. With Bdale being the incumbent and responsible for whatever has seemingly gone wrong over the past year, Branden being widely seen as too argumentative and controversial, and Moshe being clearly a "protest' candidate stating in his platform that he does not believe he will win, I guess it makes sense that a good number of people would not put any of them as their first choice. If that is what the high-level debate in the community comes down to, I don't think it bodes well for the future of the debian project, though.

Re:A choice of lesser evils?

[squisher]

While reading the platform I came across a few more things that he does mention he would like to do:
- He says Debian needs leadership and coordination, this is where he sees his main role. IMHO something that sounds good to me
- He wants to find a solution to the release cycle problem
- In fact, most of the issues he lists are of organizational value and are less technical, maybe that's why you seemed to have overlooked them?

I have to agree though that he does spend a great deal of time talking about his personal experience / education, which is not that important IMO. However, it's not that bad either, because some people in the outside world actually care if you have a degree in your pocket or not.

Neato Keen

[blitzoid]

I'm glad to see free software projects being managed so well, with organized heirachies and the like.

I personally prefer Gentoo over Debian, but Debian is still a damn solid distro and I hope they continue to do well.

IN SOVIET DEBIAN

[The Bungi]

Martin Michlmayr wins the election by a 99.9% margin, his opponents misteriously disappear and martial law is declared.

*ducks*

Re:Yup

[legLess]

Well, I hate to throw any fresh meat under the bridge, but ...

I hold a Master degree in Philosophy and have recently completed a Master of Science in Psychology.

Yup. I'd say that this guy pretty much fits the Debian mold.

I suspect that someone like Linus would simply ignore the long, drawn out threads on licensing that the Debian team loves so dearly. ("Well, *this* package should be in nonfree because it depends on another package that is dual-licensed but has all new contributions donated only to the nonfree license version...").

That's one of the stupidest ad homonems I've ever seen on Slashdot, and that's saying something. If you'd studied philosophy you'd realize that your pithy little personal attack is not only completely irrelevant, but nonsensical. If you'd studied any psychology you might see that a deep understanding of your fellow human beings is important if you're going to manage a large group of them.

If there weren't a number of geeks very concerned about things like licensing we wouldn't have Linux in the first place. We might have a nice kernel, but that's a long shot from a Free OS.

Debian's view is pretty simple: "If the software we use isn't Free, then someone can legally ask us to stop using it. Therefore, our operating system and its tools will always be Free, and no parts of it will ever depend on any software that is not Free." If that's not important to you keep using Red Hat, or Gentoo, or rolling your own. But for fuck's sake spend a little time researching who writes the tools you use before you try to make lame jokes about them. I suppose you're the type to bitch about the ACLU being a bunch of extremists but posted a "Microsoft sucks" comment when they try to censor Slashdot, eh?

Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

It saddens me to no end to see how Martin won the election. If you just ignore Moshe and remove the "None of the above option", which was beaten by all candidates, the results are:

2 beats 3: 238 221 = 17
4 beats 2: 228 224 = 4
4 beats 3: 237 226 = 11

which translated to English means that Bdale won over Branden by 17 votes and Martin won over Bdale by 4 votes and over Branden by 11. That's *fscking* close for this kind of voting system.

Bar Moshe, Martin is probably the worst DPL candidate we've had in a long time: no clear ideas about the direction the project should go, no real technical skills, high visibility in the HR department but irrelevant elsewhere, failure to comunicate effectively at the technical level. The conspiration theorist in me is screaming that he won thanks to recently added developers (there was a surge of new people in the last 6 weeks or so, but it has stopped otherwise). New people have had contact with him and his name is probably still fresh in their minds while Bdale and Branden are more in the background at the moment.

Looking at the tally, I also see there's a lost of people who haven't understood how the voting system works. Next time, if you don't want someone to come out as leader, RANK "NONE OF THE ABOVE" OVER THE UNWANTED CANTIDADES, DAMMIT!

Re:Sad

[DavidNWelton]

Bdale is a very smart guy, and has been a good leader - but he has tended to stay out of the limelight, which maybe hasn't helped him in the eye of the 'electorate'.

Hopefully, Martin will do some visible leadership, leading to real accomplishments, and not just be an "evil catbert";-)

Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you see this guy's resume? He's a modern fucking Leonardo.

What a tool.

Re:Yup

[Brymouse]

Bullshit.

Stuffing the ballot box...

[Embedded Geek]

Let's see if I have this straight:
1) Leaders for open source projects are elected.
2) The election is held electronically.
3) The server recieving and tallying those votes is running open source software.
4) Thus, the firewalls, auditing utilies, and other security measures on that server are possibly written by the very same people who are doing the voting or perhaps even the candidates themselves.

With that in mind, can we really be sure Michlmayr received all those votes or is he just really good at coding back doors?
</tongue firmly planted in cheek>

(In all seriousness, though, congrats to Martin and all the other candidates. You've got a lot more courage than I, taking on a task that big. Best of luck!)

Re:Keeping up the Debian tradition

[Kurt Russell]

"Continue work on crappy text-mode installers that don't detect or setup anything useful"

WTF.. All that gui shit on install is just eye candy.
I like text mode installers.
If they start showing pics of some sexy ass chicks on install!
Then I am all for gui.. Hmmm or just gui. oooH

Re:Yup

[DavidNWelton]

The problem is that, to my knowledge, no one in the Debian project is really qualified (a law degree, or significant experience in the field) to make these kinds of legalistic judgements when it comes down to some of the really weird cases.

I like very much that Debian is about free software, but I am at best ambivalent about all our "legal experts".

Re:Yup

[Gantoris]

ahh, good to see a nice, coherent, well thought out rebuttal....

slashdot in 100 words or less

[Anonymous Coward]

beowulf clusters + hot grits + natalie portman (naked and petrified) = classic slashdot linux karma whoring RC5/SETI cracking machine (running a Transmeta CPU)

Re:Yup

[0x0d0a]

That's one of the stupidest ad homonems I've ever seen on Slashdot, and that's saying something.

Frankly, I think a lot of people would hardly see that as an insult. If I say "most rabbis love long, complicated arguments about interpretations of religious law, though most people don't care in the least about such questions", I think you'd find a lot of rabbis and theologians that would agree. So?

Obviously, I really am not interested in spending hours of my time arguing over the particular classification of a package. It's pretty obvious that my viewpoint is not that of these folks. I'm simply pointing out that people on the Debian ML do do this, and that most people wouldn't. This guy is obsessed with the ideology, rather than the tech. You really can't argue that point.

If there weren't a number of geeks very concerned about things like licensing we wouldn't have Linux in the first place. We might have a nice kernel, but that's a long shot from a Free OS.

Besides the fact that that's completely irrelevant to what I said (I don't believe I said that people obsessed with legalities shouldn't exist), I think most people wouldn't care. What if FreeBSD was the big, popular, multi-distro OS that Linux is today. Would most of us *care* whether the kernel was BSD-licensed instead of GPL licensed? I sure as hell wouldn't.

Since it looks like this is getting into ideology, and you feel arguing ideological technicalities is fun, I'll play the game. I'll take ESR's viewpoint. ESR thinks that Open Source is better because it's *works better*. RMS thinks that Free software is better because it's ideologically distasteful to use non-Free software.

Logically, if open source software is superior, closed-source attempts to compete with it should fail (we'll assume perfect consumer information...naive model, but unless you really think that open source can be toppled by marketing...). So if MS takes the BSD kernel and tries to make a superior fork (closed source), they should lose out to the open source fork.

Therefore, I claim that the only people who claim that the GPL is necessary (rather than the BSD license) are those who (a) feel that open source software is inferior to closed source software, (b) feel that open source is so marginally better than closed source software that a simple influx of marketing will forever bar open source software from the market, or (c) are irrational.

Chew on that.

Debian's view is pretty simple: "If the software we use isn't Free, then someone can legally ask us to stop using it. Therefore, our operating system and its tools will always be Free, and no parts of it will ever depend on any software that is not Free."

I'm pretty sure that's *not* their view. If it is, it's wrong. There are plenty of non-Free licenses that someone cannot ask you to not use. Suppose you have to redistribute non-distributed modifications? That's incompatible with the GPL, so of course Stallman gets twitchy and calls it non-Free. But no one can ask you to "stop using the OS".

If that's not important to you keep using Red Hat, or Gentoo, or rolling your own.

Yeah, because Red Hat is just so anti-Free software.

I suppose you're the type to bitch about the ACLU being a bunch of extremists but posted a "Microsoft sucks" comment when they try to censor Slashdot, eh?

Actually, yes. You can't justify the ACLU's extreme viewpoints by arguing that the particular (IMHO egregious) case of MS censoring Slashdot is out of line. You're taking a slippery slope argument ("well, you don't support the ACLU, so you must support Microsoft censoring Slashdot").

There, that ideology-arguing enough for you?

Good !

[Anonymous Coward]

I voted but ballot was rejected. It said that it had problems with my gpg public key. I did submit the key to the server..humm ..oh well it is good Martin won I am sure he will do a good job.

myXtie

Re:Yup

[platypus]

Therefore, I claim that the only people who claim that the GPL is necessary (rather than the BSD license) are those who (a) feel that open source software is inferior to closed source software, (b) feel that open source is so marginally better than closed source software that a simple influx of marketing will forever bar open source software from the market, or (c) are irrational.

See, that is why philosophers are needed there. You are clearly not one, so you forgot to add the 200 pages where you define "superior", "inferior" and "irrational" in the context of your school of thought - and other things I don't see because I'm also not a philosopher.

Seriously, there are really flaws in your thesis, because first, open source is said to be superior in the long run, not immediately. Second, there's irrationality (read emotions and motivation) involved in programming, and since microsoft would indeed be able to deliver a superior xBSD in the short run (superior defined here as market share, maybe also technical) because they could throw vast resources at the task, this might demotivate (some) developers and hurt development of the free alternative. That would be at least my practical argument for gpl over the bsd license.

Re:Yup

[1qa2ws3ed]

> What if FreeBSD was the big, popular, multi-distro OS that > Linux is today. Would most of us *care* whether the > kernel was BSD-licensed instead of GPL licensed? I sure > as hell wouldn't. in fact no. bsd license is not a problem with debian. maybe you should read the dfsg, that originally inspired the OSI (http://www.opensource.org). there are even (early) debian version based on the netbsd and freebsd kernel. so, you are terribly wrong.

Re:Yup

[0x0d0a]

See, that is why philosophers are needed there. You are clearly not one, so you forgot to add the 200 pages where you define "superior", "inferior" and "irrational" in the context of your school of thought - and other things I don't see because I'm also not a philosopher.

If you want rigorous definitions, you'll be working entirely within an abstract system. If you want to do anything that at all interacts with the real world, you have to fudge your definitions at the lowest level. I can take the Cartesian and Humean skeptic approach, and pretty much make real-world arguments impossible

Also, if you think that a philosopher is, by definition, someone who appends 200 pages of definitions to their posts and that this is what the Debian project needs...well, reductio ad absurdum.

first, open source is said to be superior in the long run, not immediately

Fine. It still must be, on average, superior in the short run to be superior in the long run.

Second, there's irrationality (read emotions and motivation) involved in programming, and since microsoft would indeed be able to deliver a superior xBSD in the short run (superior defined here as market share, maybe also technical) because they could throw vast resources at the task, this might demotivate (some) developers and hurt development of the free alternative. That would be at least my practical argument for gpl over the bsd license.

So the reason you prefer GPL instead of BSD is that Microsoft might come out with a better product for a short period of time, during which time some developers might become demotivated and the open source developers would become demotivated?

So what about the years upon years that open source products have been the underdogs, and people kept chugging away?

Word is, in the opinion of most people, a lot *better* than any open source alternatives, yet people keep chugging away on them.

Excel? Gnumeric doesn't seem to be in too much pain, and it hasn't caught up yet.

Windows? Hell, WINE will definitely *never* catch up to Windows by definition of their goals, yet they keep going.

So I'll try and argue your part. Perhaps we have irrational developers that are only discouraged by having a better product and then being overtaken by Microsoft. Despite the fact that their product *would* have won out in the long run, they become discouraged, and give up before they catch up. They are not affected by being the underdog already and having MS trounce them.

I mean, yes, it's possible, but it's sounding *damn* thin by this point.

Actually, there are a lot of assumptions that might *reasonably* be said to not be justified in my argument, but this isn't kuro5hin, so I doubt anyone will call me on them.

Re:Yup

[0x0d0a]

in fact no. bsd license is not a problem with debian. maybe you should read the dfsg, that originally inspired the OSI (http://www.opensource.org). there are even (early) debian version based on the netbsd and freebsd kernel. so, you are terribly wrong.

I wasn't talking about Debian's views. I was responding to the very specific claim of the parent:

If there weren't a number of geeks very concerned about things like licensing we wouldn't have Linux in the first place. We might have a nice kernel, but that's a long shot from a Free OS.

As it happens, I was wrong -- both of the BSD licenses are considered "Free". I can pretty much say "what if your whole OS was under the Open Public License?", which *isn't* considered "Free". Again, I really wouldn't care, and I don't see how it would prevent an open source OS from existing. Oh, there'd be a few submissions scripts to write to maybe smooth over a couple of requirements, but there's a bunch of crap in the Linux kernel right now to deal with GPL requirements. [shrug]

None of the above

[urdak]

> I've proposed before, as well as now, a "none of the above" option.

The 1985 comedy, "Brewster's Millions" took this idea to its peak, when a wacky millionaire determined to lose all his money starts an ad capaign asking for people to vote for "none of the above" :)

Re:Keeping up the Debian tradition

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting a GUI installer with complete hardware detection to work on 11 (yes, that's "eleven" - as in 7 more than the total amount of toes you have), 11 different architectures, this would require the contribution of the entire open source community. It is a job that doesn't really bear thinking about.

If you want a GUI h/w no-brainer installer, install SuSE, Mandrake or MS Windows. Don't tell me that Gentoo Linux is any easy to install.

Re:Yup

[1qa2ws3ed]

so, if in the (extremely..) long run (because of the superiority of opensource) everybody will be writing opensource software, we will make a favour to microsoft not letting them to take some free code an putting it in their closed product, because they will understand it earlier. gpl was born long before someone tried to convince the business world that opensource software is better than closed source (i believe in this btw), and is independent of this being true or false. if opensource is better than closed source, with either gpl or bsd in the long run we will see only (or mostly) opensource software, so i don't see a very big difference in using gpl or bsd licence (but i would still prefer gpl in most situation, because for example i wouldn't want to see my code used by someone that erroneusly thinks that closed source is better or by someone thant in the short run can make money from it), and i see most complaints against bsd or gpl (like your) completely useless. but if opensource is not better, with bsd license in the long run we will see only closed source software. instead with gpl we will still see opensource software. maybe you wouldn't be interested in opensource if it turns out to be inferior, but i sure would be interested even in this case. because for me it is NOT a mere technical question.

Re:Yup

[platypus]

If you want rigorous definitions, you'll be working entirely within an abstract system. [...]

I really should have put a smiley at the end of my first paragraph. This was meant to be an ironic jab against the verbosity which seems to often occur both at debian-legal and in philosophic circles. Sorry. In fact, I really think you are very right esp. with the first two sentences of the post I answered to.

So the reason you prefer GPL instead of BSD is that Microsoft might come out with a better product for a short period of time, during which time some developers might become demotivated and the open source developers would become demotivated?

Searching on google indeed shows that some developers themselves think that (not all links there, but I found two with a quick glance on the summary texts). There are at least some developers not wanting to have *big company* use their code in proprietary products.

And yes, I really think this is a big difference to the case where a group of developers starts an open source project in order to catch up with an existing proprietary product. Again, I'll use google for some empirical evidence.

I'm not a GPL zealot. I also prefer practical solutions and see the problems with zealotry in any camp. One example is debian and QT/KDE after the Kde Free QT Foundation was founded, which btw. still exists today! Another is linux-kernel and bitkeeper, or Bruce Perens and his GPL/linux diatribes. But I also think that in dealing with legal stuff (i.e. licenses) one has to be careful and consequent.
My main point is that indeed there's irrationality involved, and this has to be taken into account for the best success of any project.
So your claim (paraphrased):

People who think GPL is necessary are (a) [...] or (b) [...] or (c) irrational.

is always true, therefore not very significant.

slight clarification

[Trepidity]

In standard Condorcet, the only clear winner is one who wins every single pairwise election, not just the one with the most victories. That is, he is preferred to every other candidate, so there is no way you could argue that another candidate would be better suited for the job.

While having the most victories is a possible gauge, one major problem (among others) is that it doesn't weigh victories by importance. For example, if Bush is preferred to 12 minor candidates, and Gore is preferred only to Bush and Buchanan, Bush wins, because he has 12 victories versus 2, which is clearly not good.

Another possible tie breaker is to first find a victory cycle; that is, a set of candidates who are all preferred to every candidate outside the set, but among whom there is no single candidate preferred to all others. Then among this cycle, the tie is broken by some method; a common one (and what Debian seems to be using) is to prefer the candidate with the smallest loss margin. The rationale here is that we'll have to make at least one "wrong" choice (whoever we pick will lose a head-to-head matchup with at least one other candidate), but we should pick the candidate who makes this choice the least wrong. For example, if one candidate loses one head-to-head matchup 90-10, and another loses two matchups, each 55-45, we should prefer the 55-45, because he comes closest to winning all the matchups.

The end result of all this is someone who is either preferred to all other candidates or at least the closest to that that's possible.

Re:slight clarification

[ChristTrekker]

While having the most victories is a possible gauge, one major problem (among others) is that it doesn't weigh victories by importance. For example, if Bush is preferred to 12 minor candidates, and Gore is preferred only to Bush and Buchanan, Bush wins, because he has 12 victories versus 2, which is clearly not good.

But you're then making the assumption that Gore is somehow inherently "better" than the 12 minor party guys for some reason. Why is the Gore victory "more important"? Why are the terms "Democrat" and "Republican" better than the other party labels? Why not just let the parties compete fairly on the basis of their views? Isn't that the whole point? If the Democrats (in your example) can't beat any other candidates on the strength of their own merits, maybe there's a good reason for that!

My solution to that:

[dark-nl]

If a programmer can't figure out whether or not it's free, then it isn't. Anything else is impractical.

Alcohol

[NoTildeQuestionMark]

I get the feeling his suggestion of getting drunk with other developers helped. ~

Chewing... bah, yuck, tastes bad.

[dark-nl]

You seem to have missed the main argument (and the original reason) for the GPL. If we have FreeBSD and MSBSD, then any improvements made on FreeBSD can be easily incorporated by Microsoft, but not the other way arund. This makes it an uneven competition, and FreeBSD could only win by having a vastly better development process, rather than by having superior software.

Re:Chewing... bah, yuck, tastes bad.

[0x0d0a]

That's assuming that MS can maintain a completely different branch of code (which is superior), and still simply merge in any FreeBSD changes.

It's hard enough merging in changes to *existing* OSS repositories if other people are constantly checking in new things to CVS (I remember one weekend I spent revising my patches three times because the CVS maintainer kept adding other patches that broke mine by the time I got my patches up to date with his four-hour-old code.)

Re:Yup

[mcgroarty]

Debian's view is pretty simple: "If the software we use isn't Free, then someone can legally ask us to stop using it...

I have never seen that put better! Thank you!

Re:Yup

[mcgroarty]

The problem is that, to my knowledge, no one in the Debian project is really qualified (a law degree, or significant experience in the field) to make these kinds of legalistic judgements when it comes down to some of the really weird cases

It's all iffy. Has the GPL ever been put to the test in the courts? I don't believe a case has gone to trial yet.

Urban Legend

[Dictator For Life]

that complexity isn't exposed to the voter, which was the problem with the Florida ballot -- the calculations were simple, but the ballot was complex.

Hogwash. The "problem" with the Democrat-designed, voter-approved Florida ballot was not "complexity". As was demonstrated repeatedly in the aftermath, children as young as 8 had no trouble using a butterfly ballot. Here's at least one summary. If anyone had problems with that ballot, it was through gross incompetence, and a total unwillingness to ask for assistance.

I didn't vote for Bush, but the only problem with the Florida ballots was that Democrats could not get the vote count they lusted after.

Re:Urban Legend

[Anonymous Coward]

As was demonstrated repeatedly in the aftermath, children as young as 8 had no trouble using a butterfly ballot.

sure, but don't forget these voters are americans... they can't even tell when their government is straight out lying to their faces about a middle eastern "dictator" they armed and supported for years, how will they be able to fill in a vote ballot?

Re:Urban Legend

[gowen]

I didn't vote for Bush

Don't forget to play again next week on "Spot The Libertarian"...

Democrats could not get the vote count they lusted after.

Deciding an election by counting the votes? Thats kooky talk...

Re:Urban Legend

[Dictator For Life]

This is an argument for removing universal suffrage, and quite honestly I agree. There need to be some greater qualifications for voting other than "Yes, I am a living, breathing human being (or, to account for the voting dead: "a formerly living, formerly breathing human being" ;-)

People have the strange idea that pure democracy is the best of all possible political systems. It isn't, unless you happen to share the majority's opinions. Otherwise, it may be just as tyrannical as a Stalin.

Re:Urban Legend

[Dictator For Life]

Don't forget to play again next week on "Spot The Libertarian"...

Clever, but no.

Re:Urban Legend

[gowen]

Thank you, and I apologise.

Re:Yup

[Telex4]

I couldn't agree more. Whilst I don't use Debian, because I just love Gentoo too much and I'm naughty like that;), I completely agree with their approach, and I agree with your analysis. I too get fed up of people dismissing the principled stand the FSF and Debian take.

I also get fed up of being harassed for doing philosophy ;)

So anyway

[Pflipp]

Rock beats scissors, I won!

clarification to your clarification

[robla]

While having the most victories is a possible gauge, ...

Yup, there's actually a name for that: Copeland's method. Not nearly as well known as Condorcet's, but is nice in that the tiebreaker is more intuitive to those that are used to sports matchups.

Rob Lanphier
(who is looking for an excuse to plug Electorama, a site about electoral reform)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Your momma has one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, just cos yours does, doesn't mean others mom's are trannies also.

Re:Yup

[TKinias]

scripsit 0x0d0a:

Therefore, I claim that the only people who claim that the GPL is necessary (rather than the BSD license) are those who (a) feel that open source software is inferior to closed source software, (b) feel that open source is so marginally better than closed source software that a simple influx of marketing will forever bar open source software from the market, or (c) are irrational.

The main problem with your argument here, if I may be so bold, is that you're ignoring the workings of the market. Of course, the vast majority of the population has a fundamentally flawed understanding of the market, because they uncritically believed what they heard in high school econ classes, viz. that consumers are rational actors. People are not rational actors, and the real market is not even slightly transparent, but is characterized by serious assymetries of information. Therefore, a superior product can very often lose to an inferior one, because of many irrational factors -- which could be marketing (we prefer what we're told to prefer), regionalism (we prefer a locally-made product), aesthetics (we prefer a green computer), or whatever.

In short, GPL ensures that free software will remain free, even if the imperfectly functioning market chooses inferior and more costly proprietary software.

Re:Keeping up the Debian tradition

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo Linux is easier to install.

Re:Keeping up the Debian tradition

[d_i_r_t_y]

Post constant drivel to Linux advocacy sites about the total superiority of your distribution in all areas. Maintain staunch arrogant composure even in the face of massive irrelevance to the Linux community at large, and generally declining interest even in key geek userbase.


this is so right on the money. i'm sure that 50% of debian users use it because they were deluded into thinking that using debian made them l33t. it's all linux people! a case in point, at my work we've had mandrake users help out debian users get their hardware or RAID working, shock horror!

Re:Keeping up the Debian tradition

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, this pretty much fits with the observations I've made in my workplace too. The Debian users (isolated in a specific software development group) mainly concentrated on 'macho' posturing about the hardcore-ness of their distribution and their general superiority above the other users, and then quietly relied on the RedHat running sysadmins to continually come and fix up all the fuckups they'd made to their configs, or to get Debian installed and running on their laptops etc etc.

There's nothing funnier than seeing Debian wielded in the hands of an elitist techno-primadonna, but without the requisite technical skills. While I'm sure this isn't the case across the board, the only people I've seen using Debian (in 6 years of using Linux myself in both commercial and academic settings (Slackware, RedHat, Mandrake, Gentoo, and cleaning up fuckups on the aforementioned Debian systems)) fall into this category. It does seem to attract a pretty strong fuckwit element.

Re:Keeping up the Debian tradition

[Anonymous Coward]

This is remarkably similar to my circumstances as well, especially the techno-primadonna reference. Like the original poster said, it's all about perception - this guy's (who's thankfully not my boss) convinced that any other linux distro than debian is for morons and is "chronically unstable". This is in the face of the fact that our company has been running on a bunch of mandrake servers for several years now (they were debain, but an upgrade to software raid 1 for the root partition proved too difficult for stated dipshit, his merry band of debian zealots, and their beloved debian). Not that i think all debian users are this ignorant/arrogant, but there certainly are some rampant debain zealots out there who need a serious reality check in the jaw.

Debian supports terrorists

[Anonymous Coward]

You are partially correct. Debian did undergo a severe financial crisis after September 11th 2001, when it was revealed that al-Qaeda was a major contributor to the Debian project. Interviews with al-Qaeda fighters captured in Afghanistan made it quite clear that Osama bin Laden had been pumping massive amounts of cash into the Debian community in order to place Western economies, increasingly dependent on Linux for critical enterprise functions, well behind their competitors in terms of features, performance, and decent installers. By making sure that release after agonizingly slow release of Debian was always running an old kernel, using old compilers, and lacking even the most rudimentary usability features, it was bin Laden's plan that American companies would be left behind in the technology race, forced to pay staggering amounts of money for socially malformed, unwashed bearded 'Debian GNU/Linux' consultants to run apt-get all day to keep the distros limping along.

Although the FBI has now purged the Debian community of suspected terrorist links, the basic tenets still remain in place. It still sucks, and will bring your business down like a 767 slamming into the side of the WTC if you try and roll it out in any critical role.

Thank you.

Re:Yup

[x00101010x]

One of the producers at my gamedev co. has a degree in psych. Believe me, it helps a lot with keeping things running smooth with the in house development team as well as getting the publishers to pull their heads out of their asses (which needs to be done often).