Re: Draft resolution formalising Debian's Associated Project status

On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 07:53:12AM -0700, Bdale Garbee wrote:
> I've had some
> interesting conversations with developers on three continents in recent
> weeks about the power of a vocal minority to influence, distract, and
> even disrupt a community operating largely by consensus. My personal
> take is that as long as the DPL is actively trying to build consensus,
> and acting in accord with the majority of developers, *the system is
> working*.

I'd have to disagree, insomuch that when the vocal community makes it
extremely difficult for a DPL to do something new, and given the
proven difficulty to determine consensus *until* a recall election is
forced where the vocal minority was definitively shown to be a very
small minority indeed, that there is something badly broken in
Debian's governance model.

But Debian's dysfunctions aren't SPI's problem --- except that I would
strongly urge the SPI board to work extremely hard to get drawn into
Debian politics. This is something the SPI board should stay very,
very far away from, and the best way do that is to have a single
designated project representative. SPI should not stick its nose or
try to interpret the politics of any of its projects; Debian is just
one very good example why it shouldn't have anbything to do with a
project's internal politics.

- Ted