On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 7:04 AM, lee <l...@yagibdah.de> wrote:
> Bas Wijnen <wij...@debian.org> writes:
>
>> [Moving this to -project, where it belongs; please follow up only
>> there, not on -user or -devel.]
Uhm, might I ask, ${what}-project ?
Oh.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2014/10/
Is that going to be appreciated?
>> On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 06:18:01PM +0200, lee wrote:
>>> Why doesn't Debian just do a GR on this issue?
>>
>> Because for a GR, a member of Debian has to request it and it needs to
>> be seconded by at least 5 other members (constitution 4.2.1, 4.2.7).
>> This has not happened.
>
> I know, and I'm suggesting to omit this requirement.
>
>>> Considering that the users are Debians' priority, couldn't this issue be
>>> a case in which significant concerns from/of the users about an issue
>>> might initiate a GR?
>>
>> No. Debian is a very elitist organization. The members decide what to
>> do, and nobody else does. As a whole we rule over our users with
>> enlightened absolutism. The main difference with rulers of countries is
>> that our users can go away more easily. ;-)
>>
>> Debian is extremely democratic for its members, but it is utterly
>> undemocratic for its users. And there's nothing wrong with that, IMO.
>
> Then they shouldn't say in their social contract that the users and
> their needs are the priority.
>
>>> Wouldn't it speak loudly for Debian and its ways and for what it
>>> stands for, or used to stand for, if it was established procedure that
>>> issues arising significant concerns amongst the users can lead to a
>>> GR?
>>
>> I'll speak for myself here: I don't really care about the init system.
>> I am unhappy with the emotions that this debate is causing, but I'm not
>> very interested in the technical parts.
Are you a dev? If you are, it seems odd that you wouldn't be looking
into the technical issues of something that is causing so much debate.
>> From what I see on the mailing
>> lists, it seems that a few users are very unhappy and they keep bringing
>> this up. But if this would be a big issue for many people, then there
>> should be no problem finding 6 members to start a GR (our members are
>> users, too). That still hasn't happened, so I conclude that it isn't a
>> big issue.
>
> There can be many reasons for why there hasn't been a GR. Some of these
> may be that the devs/maintainers don't really care about the init
> system, or that they aren't aware of how far-reaching this issue is.
I'm inclined, seeing as I've watched political processes in committees
before, to believe that most of the devs are under the impression that
even having an opinion on the subject will taint them. Ergo,
peer-pressure from a lot of conversations, probably in BOFs,
"hackfests", and such, that are now lost to history.
When you are familiar with this kind of politics (referred to by some
in our community as social engineering), you recognize the
after-effects in the way people who are normally reasonable and
reasonably logical suddenly start saying things that are non-sequitur
and stopping too early at politically correct conclusions when the
tainted subject comes up.
I'm not accusing anyone of overt threats. I kind of like the term
"social engineering" (except that it's a bad reflection on engineering
disciplines, in general) for this kind of stuff. It's simply a matter
of respected, charismatic types, people who "should know about a
subject" mentioning off-hand in private conversations things like
Oh, gee, didn't you know that Doctor A. B. C. proved the
non-existence of NP-complete problems?
in a group of people who are sort-of familiar with the idea of
NP-complete problems, but not really equipped with the tools to say to
themselves
Huh? that's kind of like saying somebody found a way to defeat entropy.
and not really in a position to try to find anything written by Doctor
A. B. C. or about his work because they are out of the social network.
>>> I'm sure we could find quite a few supporters for having a GR amongst
>>> the users (here). And after all, we're all kinda stuck in the same
>>> boat. A GR might have the potential to make the gap between users and
>>> devs/maintainers a lot smaller. Otherwise, this gap will only continue
>>> to become wider and wider.
>>
>> There are many members. If you can't manage to convince 6 of them, we
>> don't consider it a big issue. You may disagree, but that's Debian's
>> rules.
>
> I think I don't need to convince 6 people on this list because there are
> already enough people convinced.
A while back, I thought I didn't like the idea of adding a registered
user level of participation in debian, but I'm thinking it may be the
only solution.
Users are, after all, testers, and if we registered ourselves as such,
we might be more willing to file bug reports and follow up on them.
The bad side to this would be that registered testers might be even
more susceptible to social engineering.
--
Joel Rees
Be careful when you see conspiracy.
Look first in your own heart,
and ask yourself if you are not your own worst enemy.
Arm yourself with knowledge of yourself.
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