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Our Blogs Open Sauce - A GNU perspective New Debian leader aims for better communication
Our Blogs Open Sauce - A GNU perspective New Debian leader aims for better communication | New Debian leader aims for better communication |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Friday, 18 April 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 5 One of the priorities listed in your platform is the improvement of communications within the project. What are the areas where communication has been a problem in the past? We've had problems in the past with communications between some of the core teams. It's all too easy for some of us to get so bogged-down in actually doing a job that we don't spend any time telling other people what we're doing, or (more importantly) how and when they could help us. I'm a great believer in the benefits of positive communication: the more that people talk about what they've achieved, the problems they've solved and the cool stuff they've developed, the more other people will be encouraged to join us. That's a philosophy I want to try and share with more people in the project. There has been some discussion in the community about the need for Debian to attract corporate sponsors - not to pour money in directly but to hire developers so that they will be able to spend more time on Debian. You seem to have some talent in this direction as well so will you be taking up initiatives like this? To be honest, I'm not very convinced that this is a useful place for the DPL to get involved. Quite a number of DDs are already employed by various Debian-friendly companies around the globe: I know a lot of them at well-known companies like Google, Nokia and HP, and more again working for consulting companies like Credativ and Univention who offer commercial development and support for Debian. Many of these companies end up pushing back their improvements over time, and of course that's useful to us all. Lots of places are hiring Debian people already; there's not much more I could or would do to push that even further. Do you support initiatives like that which Anthony Towns came up with - the Dunc tank, or paying some developers to get a release out on time? On the whole, how do yo rate that particular initiative? I was a part of the original Dunc Tank project along with Anthony, in fact. At the time, it seemed like it was a worthwhile experiment to try. In some respects, it was successful: the added effort available in the Release Team was very useful. However, overall I think we must admit it was something of a failure. Fundamentally, we did not release on the exact schedule we had aimed for. More time was probably spent arguing about it than was gained directly. I would not try a similar idea again myself. |
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