Being Debian leader can be 'scary at times'

Sam Varghese
Friday, 08 August 2008 06:36

Opinion and Analysis

Having already finished what he deemed the most important task of his term as leader - carrying out a review of all teams within the project - and identifying areas of weakness and strength, McIntyre now says he has a few more things he'd like to do - and a priority is to have a conversation with the heads of Debian-derived distributions (like Ubuntu) on improving collaboration with them. 

He says he is convinced that there is a lot to be gained from working more closely with developers who use Debian as their base distribution.

The review he carried out received responses from 116 developers, representing 77 teams - which gives an idea of the complexity of the project. Most of them said they were still enjoying working in the project; some groups said they were communicating well while others expressed the need for more manpower and better leadership.

But the review also showed that some teams are barely functional. In some cases, only the leader was doing any work and in other cases there was stagnation and conflict.

McIntyre has identified several steps to improve these situation - for example, getting more people involved, organising face-to-face meetings for teams, publicising clearly the areas in which people could help the project and by project members being more verbose, both the pluses and minuses, to their colleagues.

He is unsure whether he will stand for office again next year. "Ask me again in six months," was his reply.