Re: [BALLOT] Leader Election 2000

[Wichert Akkerman]

Previously Darren O. Benham wrote:
> heck if I know.. I just woke up one night with a bright light shining in my
> eyes telling me that I had to add three hidden options to the ballot and if
> I didn't, my cat would not suffer any accidents...

Hmm, I pity your cat.

Wichert.

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Typos (Brief. Concludes letter series)

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

I'd like to correct a few typos in my previous letters. This
will really be the conclusion of this series of letters.
If anyone's interested in this matter of how to solve circular
ties, then it wouldn't make sense not to correct the typos.

A. When discussing my example, using debian's current circular
tie solution, the example where the middle candidate, B, gets
eliminated: When I said that A beats B pairwise, I meant to
say instead that A beats C pairwise.

B. Typos in "Criterion compliance demonstrations":

1. Neart he bottom of the 3rd page of the letter, under the
heading "Why SSD meets BC:", there were typos. I meant to say:

"If Z beats B, and B has no beatpath to Z as strong as B's defeat
by Z, then every cycle containing B & Z has a defeat that's weaker
than B's defeat by Z."

That's the only typo in that demonstration. But I should add
that an alternative to this demonstration that SSD meets BC is
the demonstration in my last letter "Why SSD is a Cycle Condorcet
method". When SSD has been shown to be a Cycle Condorcet method,
then, since the Cycle Condorcet methods have been shown to meet
BC, that means that SSD meets BC. I personally prefer that
line of demonstration, since it includes SSD in a larger general
category, so that a separate proof for SSD isn't needed (not needed,
but included under "Why SSDS meets BC").

C. Typos in "Why SSD is a Cycle Condorcet method":

1. In the 2nd paragraph of that letter, I said "That's the same
as saying that no member of the Schwartz set has an unreturned
beatpath to him, meaning that if A has a beatpath to B, then
B must have one to A."

Though that's a correct statement of what it means for B to not
have an unreturned beatpath to him, that isn't what I meant to
say. I meant an unreturned _defeat_, an unreturned _one-step_
beatpath. Though it can be shown, using only a little more space,
that no member of the Schwartz set has an unreturned beatpath
to him, I don't need that result here, and I prove the weaker
result that no member of the Schwartz set has an unreturned
defeat. In other words: If A beats B, then B has a beatpath to
A.

2. In the last paragraph on the 1st page of that letter, there's
a typo: The clause "...since neither B nor any S2 member beats
A or any S2 member." should be replaced by:

"...since no S2 member beats any S1 member."

3. In the middle paragraph on the last (2nd) page of that
letter the phrase "unreturned beatpath" should be replaced with
"unreturned defeat". As I said, saying that any candidate in
the Schwartz set can't have an unreturned defeat means that if
any B in the Schwartz is beaten by some A, then B must have a
beatpath to A.

That means that any defeat in the Schwartz set is in a cycle, and
the rest of that page is correct.

***

Sorry about the typos, and the necessity of writing again to
correct them. Now this series of letters is truly concluded.
But let me know if there are any questions, objections,
disagreements, etc.

Mike Ossipoff




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Re: Leader Election 2000

[Anthony Towns]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2000 at 12:45:38AM -, Debian Project Secretary wrote:
> CALL FOR VOTES
>   (2 of 2)
> Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC Mar 9, 2000

Aiee. I have no idea who to vote for.

We've got Wichert `More of the same' Akkerman, Ben `Reformed fascist'
Collins, Joel `Pyscho boy' Klecker, and Matthew `I don't IRC (!)' Vernon.

I mean, at least last year I could dump the candidates into `no way in
hell am I voting for him', and `oh yeah he's cool', and just ignore the
left overs. But this time when I try that, I get Joel in both groups,
and all the other candidates as leftovers. It's so unfair.

When Ben nominated, I at least expected some fun flamewars about how
he was a dictatorial control freak like we had last year, but nooo.
He's decided to try to be reasonable instead. Where's the fun in that?

And Wichert? What's he doing nominating again? He's meant to be a burnt
out husk! He obviously didn't work hard enough as DPL the first time,
why should we think he'll do a better job this time? Ha!

And Joel's just a freak. Sure, he thinks he can threaten us because he
maintains libc6, but, hey, soon enough the Mad Release Manager'll remove
it from the distribution because it's buggy, and that'll be that. The
end of his misbegotten power.

Which just leaves Matthew. And *he* doesn't even maintain any packages in
base! I mean, how much of a newbie must that make him, huh?

I dunno about the rest of you, but this DPL election thing isn't as
entertaining as it ought to be. The candidates haven't even bothered
running smear campaigns against each other! Have they *no* respect for
due process? It's like they're not taking this seriously at all. Maybe
they're all just Cabal [TINC] members, and they figure they'll just keep
all the power to themselves no matter who wins, so none of it matters.

So if any of the candidates feel like answering just one more question,
here you go:

- Why would you be a better DPL than Wichert?

Flame! Be confrontational! Make a statement!

(Wichert, I'm particularly interested in your answer to this)

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG encrypted mail preferred.

 ``The thing is: trying to be too generic is EVIL. It's stupid, it 
results in slower code, and it results in more bugs.''
-- Linus Torvalds


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Re: Leader Election 2000

[Marcelo E. Magallon]

>> Anthony Towns  writes:

 > Aiee. I have no idea who to vote for.

 [LMGOL!]

 > So if any of the candidates feel like answering just one more
 > question, here you go:
 > 
 >  - Why would you be a better DPL than Wichert?
 > 
 > Flame! Be confrontational! Make a statement!

Last year's elections were a bit more agitated and confrontational,
weren't they?  This year, even the debate was reasonable, modulo Espy
who was conviniently abducted at the time...


Marcelo

Re: Leader Election 2000

[Ben Collins]

>   - Why would you be a better DPL than Wichert?

I don't think I will be "better", I'll just be very "different" :P

PS: I hope this was confrontational enough. I know how everyone feeds on
flames and self-centered opinions. Maybe we should take Wichert's
suggestion and just all four of the candidates meet at a bar and start
drinking. Last one standing (or atleast sitting, or at a very minimum,
holding up the table), wins the election. We could even call it "DPL fest
2000" :)

-- 
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Re: Leader Election 2000

[Wichert Akkerman]

Previously Ben Collins wrote:
> Maybe we should take Wichert's suggestion and just all four of the
> candidates meet at a bar and start drinking. Last one standing (or
> atleast sitting, or at a very minimum, holding up the table), wins the
> election.

So, does that mean your answer is `I'm a better drinker than Wichert' ?  :)

Wichert.

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Re: Leader Election 2000

[Ben Collins]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2000 at 04:03:14PM +0100, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Ben Collins wrote:
> > Maybe we should take Wichert's suggestion and just all four of the
> > candidates meet at a bar and start drinking. Last one standing (or
> > atleast sitting, or at a very minimum, holding up the table), wins the
> > election.
> 
> So, does that mean your answer is `I'm a better drinker than Wichert' ?  :)

You bring the spiced rum and we'll have a good go at it :)

-- 
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Re: Leader Election 2000

[Anthony Towns]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2000 at 09:42:33AM -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> > - Why would you be a better DPL than Wichert?
> I don't think I will be "better", I'll just be very "different" :P

FWIW, I was actually serious with that question. Let me expand on it
a bit. When I joined the project was sometime a bit after the start
of IWJ's tenure, and everyone was very pleased to have him as DPL,
since they were sick of Bruce's dictatorial style. Then, when Wichert
got elected, everyone was really pleased, because everyone was fed up
with Ian taking too long to think things over and actually say anything.

This has actually been a pretty good way of picking (I'd almost argue that
"making" is a better word, to some degree) a better DPL, IMO. Bruce (who
was before my time) seems to have been great when the project was small,
but had scalability issues. IWJ was a lot more scalable as differences
in opinion increased, but perhaps wasn't too great for interactive use.

But, annoyingly, I don't think anyone's actually sick of Wichert.

(And if that's not glowing praise, I don't know what is)

Now, if you really want us to vote for someone other than Wichert (and,
personally, I'd *really* like to see someone other than Wichert in the
role; nothing to do with Wichert personally, but I'd like to see how other
people handle the job, and how else a DPL could handle things. It's like
languages, C and Perl are great, but learning Haskell, and Prolog, and
Scheme, and Python broadens your horizons and even if you decide later
to go back to your old favourites, you're still better off for having
tried different things. I think the DPL is like this a bit: we don't
really know the best way to cope with an essentially anarchist project
with this much visibility, and this many members, and whatever else,
so I figure we owe it to ourselves to try as many things as possible and
to be as informed as possible about what works and what doesn't. But one
thing you don't want to do is decide, yeah, a change'd be interesting,
I'm going to program solely in Intercal and Befunge for a year...

Where was I?

Oh, yes. ")".

If you really want us (me) to vote for someone other than Wichert, you
need to tell us (me) what Wichert's done wrong in the past 12 months,
and how you'll handle similar things better.

(And, like I said, I'm particularly interested in what Wichert thinks
he's done wrong and how he'll do stuff differently. I haven't noticed any
glaring faults in his reign, but maybe there's been something interesting
I've missed)

Or was Wichert the perfect leader? Was he maybe a local maximum: maybe we
can't do any better by incremental refinement, just taking what he's done
right and keeping it, and taking what he's done wrong and doing it right?

I wouldn't have thought so: he seems more like our (and forgive the
comparison) Windows 3.0 compared to the previous 1.0 and 2.0 releases. I
want to see an incremental improvement. I want to see Wichert 3.1, or
3.11 for Workgroups, not throw out all he's achieved and start more or
less from scratch again, with a whole new learning curve and a whole
new set of bugs to be fixed. I want a service pack, not a rewrite. I want
an upgrade, I don't want to switch to VMS or OS/2 or NT [0].

Obviously, what I'm asking is: Ben, if elected, will you run all my old
DOS programs?

Cheers,
aj, ``I'll take that metaphor shaken, not stirred, with a twist of lemon,
and some incoherent rambling on the side, please.''

(Hmmm. At this point, even I'm not sure what I'm on about. But you
lot are the ones running for DPL: discerning method from madness is
pretty much one of the major job requirements, as I understand it...)

[0] Working out who's who is left as an exercise to the reader. There may
be more than one correct answer. There may be less. Changing Windows
to Unix, and the alternatives to some subset of BeOS, EROS, NT, Hurd,
or so might make more sense, too, although the version numbers don't
necessarily match as nicely.

-- 
Anthony Towns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG encrypted mail preferred.

 ``The thing is: trying to be too generic is EVIL. It's stupid, it 
results in slower code, and it results in more bugs.''
-- Linus Torvalds


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Re: Leader Election 2000

[Lalo Martins]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2000 at 06:21:00PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> 
> It's like they're not taking this seriously at all. Maybe
> they're all just Cabal [TINC] members, and they figure they'll just keep
> all the power to themselves no matter who wins, so none of it matters.

Have you noticed how long it took for the nominations to
appear? Of course, the Cabal was deciding who were the best
figureheads.

[]s,
   |alo
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Re: Leader Election 2000

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

On 25-Feb-2000 Ben Collins wrote:
>>  - Why would you be a better DPL than Wichert?
> 
> I don't think I will be "better", I'll just be very "different" :P
> 
> PS: I hope this was confrontational enough. I know how everyone feeds on
> flames and self-centered opinions. Maybe we should take Wichert's
> suggestion and just all four of the candidates meet at a bar and start
> drinking. Last one standing (or atleast sitting, or at a very minimum,
> holding up the table), wins the election. We could even call it "DPL fest
> 2000" :)
> 

as a warning, don't let the drink be beer, Wichert has an uncanny ability to
not be obviously drunk.  In New York I was actually trying to get hammered, and
eventually did (-: but I never really saw Wichert off his kilter.

Re: Leader Election 2000

[Seth R Arnold]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2000 at 01:57:00PM -0800, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:
> 
> On 25-Feb-2000 Ben Collins wrote:
> >>  - Why would you be a better DPL than Wichert?
> > 
> > I don't think I will be "better", I'll just be very "different" :P
> > 
> > PS: I hope this was confrontational enough. I know how everyone feeds on
> > flames and self-centered opinions. Maybe we should take Wichert's
> > suggestion and just all four of the candidates meet at a bar and start
> > drinking. Last one standing (or atleast sitting, or at a very minimum,
> > holding up the table), wins the election. We could even call it "DPL fest
> > 2000" :)
> > 
> 
> as a warning, don't let the drink be beer, Wichert has an uncanny
> ability to not be obviously drunk.  In New York I was actually trying
> to get hammered, and eventually did (-: but I never really saw Wichert
> off his kilter.

This could be a wonderful opportunity to explain to the public why free
beer is different from Free Software, in the Open Source sense of the
word! I can see it now, all four candidates, doing their utmost to
spread the word: "Free beer is good, but it isn't Free Software."

:)

-- 
Seth Arnold | http://www.willamette.edu/~sarnold/
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