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

[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

[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.

already covered

[CoughDropAddict]

There already was a recount.

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?

percent

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Not unless fractional votes are allowed.

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?