Wichert Akkerman's Leadership Platform
I hereby declare my intention to run for project leader. I have been with Debian for a couple of years now (end 1995, beginning of 1996, I'm not really sure). In that time I have seen the project grow and prosper. More importantly, after seeing lots of discussions, flamewars, success stories and romances (okay, maybe not the last). I think I have gotten a good `feel' for the project. I've learned a lot while being here and seeing things happen or fail to happen. Would I be a good project leader? Frankly I don't know. I do not intent to be as dictating and vocal as Bruce was, but neither as silent as Ian was the last year. Both have done a good job, but things are not what they were. Debian has grown to be too big for Bruce's style of leadership, and Ian has lain a great foundation for a new period by giving us the constitution. This also means the role of project leader is now very different: most functions have been delegated, leaving the leader to act as a kind of benevolent overseeing person who nudges the project in a good direction. For the obligatory free-software statement: of course I support free software. I think it is great and everyone should use it. If I felt otherwise I would not still be here. The recent advances of free software make me feel good, but there is also still a lot of confusion about what free software really is and people are muddling the free software ideology pool. The Debian Free Software Guidelines are a great method to help both us and others to focus on really free software. But I am not a fanatic who tries to convince everyone free software is the one and only true way. There are already others who are doing a great job with that, and I do not see it as the role of project leader. My plans for the next year: generally speaking we are doing fine. With the growing popularity of Linux I think we will want to focus on some interesting new projects. Most noticably configuration management, which will make installation simpler and make it possible to manage clusters and labrooms more efficiently. Another important aspect is dpkg: development there has been close to non-existant for too long now. There are additions that we really need, such as a new source format to support multiple patches and source tarballs. I am looking forward to see Ian work on dpkg again. I do not think we need to change anything in the organizational structure of the project. We have just ratified the constitution and it will be interesting to see how it works out. It introduces a bit of official rules and politics, but I think it will allow us to work as a the sort of organized anarchy that we have always used while adding some much needed safetynets. Please note that I do not intend to run as president of SPI. In my opinion SPI is doing a good job and should continue to grow further, and having the Debian project leader automatically on as SPI president would not be beneficiary to SPI as an independent organisation. I would be very happy if Ian Jackson would continue his task of president there. Some of you are probably wondering who am I and what I usually do. Currently I'm a 22 year old CS student (23 in 9 days :) ) trying to get his MSc in 1999. I've worked for 20 months as systems administrator at the Math & CS department of Leiden University where I setup and managed a network that grew from 0 to about 120 Linux machines. I have also done a couple semi-commercial programming projects in my spare time. I've been involved in organizing and leading a couple of things at a local student club (1437 members currently and still growing). Wichert.