RE: Senseless Bickering and Overpoliticization
David Bristel writes:
> Now, while my input means absolutely nothing in the grand
> scheme of things, I SUGGEST that we reorganize things a bit.
> Perhaps with one person to organize each part of the distribution.
> Base having one, Optional having one, Important having one.
> While this may seem like it will fractionalize the distribution,
> what it does is gives a smaller group of maintainers who
> might be able to work together. The project leader would then
> work with these "leads". People would still be able to work
> together, but it would cut down on the bickering, since
> the leads could then work to decide policy.
>
I hate to continue to invoke the model of the US government in
an international body like Debian, but David makes some interesting
points. The framers of the US constitution realized that a
system in which every person had equal say in every decision would
rapidly devolve into sensless quarrelling and fruitless argument,
not unlike what we see in Debian today.
Instead, they devised a system of representative government, in
which people elect representatives who are charged with making
the day-to-day decisions regarding many issues. Very important
issues are thrown back to the people to vote on in some cases.
We really need a system of representative decision making in
Debian. We are too far into the Bazaar mentality, such that no
decisions are ever made, and there are no responsible parties to
decide when argument has been exhausted and *SOMEONE* needs to
say "this is how it will be." While that may be distasteful to
the true anarchist/libertarian types, the increasing length of
time between releases and the overall slow grinding of our
organizational gears shows that something needs to be done.
We should probably elect various persons in our group to be
in charge of various activities or sections of the archive.
These people would then be a smaller subset of "arguers", and
consensus should be more readily reached.
I think this would streamline things tremendously. I for one
could care less if we use /usr/doc vs. /usr/share/doc, etc.,
and would just like to know how our distribution wants to do
it -- and then get on with the business of building the greatest
distribution out there.
Why do we waste so much time on all of this minutia? It doesn't
amount to a hill of beans.
-Brent
Reply to: