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

[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

[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.

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

[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: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 ...

[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.

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

[Istealmymusic]

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

Recount.

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.

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.

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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.

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?

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: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".

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.

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.

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