DPL vote

It's that time of the year again, the DPL vote is near. I've been thinking for a while about proposing a constitution amendment to increase the time where we have to vote from one year to (at least) two, as I think the yearly campaignings aren't exactly doing the release much good; but let's not go into details on that one right now.

As seems common on Planet Debian, here's how I voted: Matthew Garrett at one, NOTA at two; and I didn't order the others.

Why Matthew? I've seen Matthew at FOSDEM, and some people who know how he led another volunteer-based organisation based in the UK, and who had only positive things to say about him. They know who they are, I'm sure they'll speak up if they want to. Additionally, I read some of the campaigning on -vote, and among all candidates, his answers made most sense of them all, IMO.

I didn't place any of the other candidates above NOTA for a few reasons.

Jonathan Walter would surely have been first on my ballot had it been a vote for 'Who should we kick out of the project', but this vote is a different one.

Anthony Towns is a great guy with a lot of skills, but I don't think he's the perfect guy for a DPL; IMHO, the most important skill of a DPL is to be able to disconnect oneself from a discussion (even if they are interested in the subject), to post clear, concise summaries, and/or to try to steer the discussion away from flame and into 'the right' decision, whatever that may be. If Anthony has that skill, I surely never saw him use it—he especially seems to be prone to post long, entangled mails rather than clear and concise ones, which isn't exactly a good thing.

Angus Lees may think that he's perfect for the job because he hasn't really participated to discussion on many mailinglists before applying, but I do think a prospective DPL should at least be involved into Debian to more extent than that. Also, and this goes for some other candidates as well, I don't think it's healthy for a DPL to jump around positions as easily as they did on the SCC proposal; only a few days before that proposal, they express their opposition to the general idea of dropping architectures from Debian, but when a concrete proposal to do so is there, they agree to be listed as supporters of that proposal. How these two can combine isn't exactly clear to me, and it smells of 'no character'.

As to the two 'Project Scud' candidates, I'm not very fond of that idea. Having a small 'inner circle' of people who have no real powers according to the Debian Constitution isn't exactly a good idea in my view; I tried getting the position from the 'project scud' members on that point, but didn't get an answer to my satisfaction.

I find it especially unfortunate that I feel compelled to not rank Branden Robinson above NOTA. I have done so on all previous DPL votes where he was a candidate, because I think he has a clear view on what Free Software in general, and Debian specifically, should do to face the future; but there are a few ideas he supported recently that I do not want to see implemented.