GR season

It seems to be the season to propose general resolutions. We seem to be having

  • Proposals to decide what to do with non-free material that somehow isn't software (but is software after all).
  • Proposals to decide what to do with our beloved DPL. Or not so beloved, apparently.
  • Proposals to stop proposing proposals.
  • And perhaps some non-finished and as of yet unproposed proposals, too. But I wouldn't know about that, oh no!

Personally, I've lost count as to how many proposals there are out now, and how many of them got the required amount of seconds and whatnot. Lucky me I'm not the secretary.

But know what, since it seems to be trendy to propose GR's these days, I'll add my contribution for today:

-----BEGIN PROPOSAL-----
The DPL, seen as how he's fairly important for our inner workings,
should not choose his job lightly; having a bad DPL might have a
detrimental effect on the project as a whole. Therefore, we must make
sure that we discourage our fellow developers from becoming DPL unless
they mean it. It is, thus, imperative to make the DPL job not a very
nice one.

In that light, the Debian Project resolves that:

When the DPL makes an important decision that will have an effect on the
project as a whole, he is only allowed to do so provided he balances on
his left hand, puts his right big toe in his left ear and has his left
toe point towards the ceiling, types the command with his right hand,
doing all this while poking his nose with his tongue. The help of a yoga
master in training for this procedure is allowed; the help of a yoga
master or anyone else while actually performing the procedure for real
is not allowed.

To prove that the DPL did in fact follow procedure, a video should be
produced by the DPL or any of his relatives which is GPG-signed by at
least the DPL and a second developer who witnessed the proceedings
first-hand.
-----END PROPOSAL-----

A nice side-effect of this is that there will be no more DPL decisions once this resolution passes. That seems to be what people want.

(oh, and for all you who take yourselves too seriously: the above is called "satire")