[[!tag debian]]

The nominations for Debian Project Leader elections for 2011 are open. As always, I'm tempted to nominate myself, but after thinking about it, I again conclude that I shouldn't.

If I did nominate myself, there's a couple of things I'd like to push for.

  • re-think the new maintainer process: if you are known among existing members of the project to do good work for the project, and to be trustworthy, then you should be offered membership, and that means voting rights (upload and login rights are less important)
  • in general, attract more new contributors to the project
  • more rotation for key positions: it is good for the project if positions like DAM, DSA, secretary, etc, get new people into these positions, so that the knowledge and skills get spread out more
  • improve how we deal with conflict, especially internally: we've reduced general flame levels a lot over the past fix years or so, but we still have problems dealing with conflict or disagreements
    • this should probably include a more explicit consensus on what is acceptable and what is unacceptable behavior within the project (lists, irc, bts, etc), and how this should be enforced
    • this could also include education and training of how to deal with conflict; perhaps even about dealing with cross-cultural issues
    • could also include neutral "ambassadors", "diplomats", or "hostage negotiators" that step into a heating situation and attempt to defuse it before it blows up
  • regular online training sessions, e.g., for packaging in general, packaging of particular kinds of applications, etc
    • Debian Women has run a number of such sessions over IRC, and Ubuntu runs such sessions regularly
    • both popular and useful
    • realtime access to a teacher is qualitatively different from reading books or web pages

The DPL position is inherently a political one, which is why nothing in the list above is technical. On the other hand, I want to concentrate my Debian time on doing stuff that is fun, and right now that means writing code. I want to write code for Debian.