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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.
Can I get a paper ballot? I don't trust their "electronic voting machine" thingy. What do these people know about reliable software?
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
It's tough to measure what the DPL does if you're not a Debian Developer. I've been using Debian since Potato and I still have no idea what the DPL really does. Should it matter to me? Not really, I don't vote, the DD's do.
We (as in users) depend on them to provide us with Debian the distribution, and as such they pick the DPL. The parent might see this effort as "nothing" but then again, why fix something that isn't broken? The only main problem with Debian is still the release process, which has been broken for years, some might even argue that it isn't broken at all, I guess it depends on your point of view.
All I know is that I've been using sid for years, and it has served me well, with over thirteen thousand packages working as well as they do, I hardly think anyone from the outside can call Debian anything other than a miraculous success.
Of course, those involved in the process can criticize all they wish, that's probably the reason it works so well in the first place.
"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.
Debian uses the Condorcet voting method, with Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping (SSD) as the tiebreaker method, and some modifications for supermajorities for use when voting on amendments to the Constitution, DFSG, and Social Contract. For people not familiar with Condorcet, the short explanation is that each ballot provides an ranking of the options, from most preferred to least preferred. The winner is the option that is preferred over every other option by a majority of people, meaning that a majority of people ranked that option over each other option.
Condorcet is far fairer than Instant Runoff. For example, Instant Runoff is non-monotonic, meaning that a vote for a candidate can make that candidate lose, and a vote against a candidate can make that candidate win. In addition, Instant Runoff generally eliminates "compromise" third-party candidates, even if they would have been preferable to the winning option. In fact, Instant Runoff Voting is the only option that is worse than the standard Plurality or "First Past the Post" system (one vote per person, most votes wins). This is primarily caused because Instant Runoff only looks at your top choice, and ignores the preferences below that, until your top choice is eliminated. This forces you to vote strategically, instead of honestly.
See electionmethods.org for more information on various voting methods (and some good criteria used to evaluate voting methods). In particular, read their article The Problems with Instant Runoff Voting. For more information on Debian's implementation of Condorcet, see the Debian Constitution.