Platform for Gustavo Franco

Introduction

I was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - some time ago. I work for a NGO called Information Network for The Third Sector - that is focused on strengthening civil society organizations and social movements, where I am coordinating the technology team, supervising the internet services from our own ISP and leading the development of a custom Debian distribution.

I've been using free software for ten years and Debian for seven years, during this time I give a lot of FOSS related talks across the country. Besides GNU/Linux, I have also used FreeBSD and OpenBSD operating systems. I like them and look forward to a Lenny release with kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64, at least.

Why vote for Gustavo Franco?

I've started contributing to the Debian project almost six years ago and waited for my account creation after recommended to the DAM for more than three years, it happened two years ago. During these two years I have done much more than before, and the keyword is: motivation.

I ask your vote to keep motivated people working to meet our goals, during my term. I'll cover these goals in detail below and if you share a lot of them, I think I am your candidate, otherwise if you share just a few of them I think you should rank me just below your preferred candidate. There's the possibility that I haven't outlined any common goal we've here, don't hate me instantly. Drop me a message privately and tell me about your goals into the Debian project. I'll do my best to point out at least one we've in common and work on it during my term, if elected.

I would like to inform that considering that we can't force volunteer work, people on key positions that are overloaded or unable to do volunteer work for some reason, will need to share their roles with others for the better of our universal operating system. Voting in me means that you respect people's legacy and skills but don't accept not well documented and immutable positions in our organizational structure.

History in Debian

After joining pkg-perl team and contributing into the group as a whole, including policy updates. I figured that we had not a similar project for python modules so I founded the Debian Python Modules Team with Guilherme Pastore right after we were joined by Raphaël Hertzog and many others contributors. I've also started the pkg-ltsp group after talking in real life with Otavio Salvador about the ltsp packaging status and how we lagged behind Ubuntu. Then I organized a online meeting with Ubuntu ltsp maintainers and Debian ltsp maintainers to discuss cooperation, as a result we've now almost the same set of features in unstable and Debian Etch can easily be used as a thin-client server.

I've also managed to glue: Debian Desktop development website, debian-desktop mailing list and debian-desktop project in alioth - including pkg-gnome, pkg-kde and pkg-xfce members to work around a real Debian Desktop with common artwork and set of features, during Etch development cycle. Also with cooperation from tasksel, debian-cd and debian-live project members, I think we've in Etch the best Debian desktop experience ever.

I'm also a member and contributed to the following groups: Debian web pages, GNOME Team, tasksel, debtags, Debian-BR, Ubuntu Backmerging Team and pkg-galago.

My platform

I plan to dedicate more time on the key topics below. I want to send monthly or as-it-happens updates to debian-devel-announce with the related bug numbers (if any) or report summary. I'll keep you informed about what I consider as key and others issues that I am sure will appear:

I will also tattoo a swirl in the end of my term. — stratus

Rebuttals

Wouter Verhelst

I'm sure he has some general ideas about how to solve some Debian problems and improve the situation, my problem with his platform is that he failed to make clear what he's going to do. I want a more communicative and transparent atmosphere and Wouter started failing as a lead right from his platform. He is a great contributor, though.

Aigars Mahinovs

Debian aims to be a Universal Operating System. A Universal operating system with no releases makes no sense from my point of view, but if Aigars wants something Debian that will never be released as is and actually is a trunk. He is free to use and advocate unstable (sid). There's no need to be DPL and change nothing.

Sven Luther

Rebuttal Coming Soon.

Sam Hocevar

Sam has a interesting platform, with some good points. It seems that we sit and write our platforms together, but we didn't. I don't know him, really. I just don't think that make fun of his own ideas will bring us to a better atmosphere. I hope he push to do a lot of stuff he proposed on his platform if not elected. It seems that his decision to not change any delegations will put him on a frozen state if elected.

Steve McIntyre

Steve seems to be a great person, and I had the pleasure to work with him while fixing Simple-CDD to work with the new debian-cd. Unfortunately, I fail to see where he as the 2IC during the last term, pushed to do what was on his and/or Anthony's 06' platform. I can't trust that he has enough motivation and commitment to his current platform then.

Raphaël Hertzog

Raphaël usually has good ideas from what i've seen. The DPL board isn't a bad idea and I wasn't expecting him to declare that a 8 person board would perform 8 times better than a DPL alone. My problem with his platform is that there are just a few ideas coming from him, and nothing from the other 8. Are they going to do something really? Why not bring more visibility to the technical committee and ask members advice, as I've proposed? There are 3 candidates listed as possible board members. Why these other three aren't writing about the DPL board on their platforms? Is this a trap? I hope not.

Anthony Towns

I think if he focused more on his platform from the last year he would be a better DPL. I feel sorry for so many critics he's receiving due to his legacy and skills into the project, really. Unfortunately, it seems that he failed again using his current platform to publish a sort of past year schedule than apologies for mistakes, consider what he did and wasn't evaluated yet and justify why he haven't moved on with the changes proposed on his 06' platform.

Simon Richter

Same deal as Wouter, with the fact that Simon wrote even less.