The 2005 Debian Project Leader election

The Debian Project Leader (DPL) election is fast approaching. The nomination period ended on February 28, and the campaigning period runs through March 21. The field of candidates is much broader than in recent years, with six serious candidates vying for the role of Debian Project Leader. Current DPL Martin Michlmayr is not running for re-election.

The candidates, and their platforms, for 2005 are Matthew Garrett, Andreas Schuldei, Angus Lees, Anthony Towns, Jonathan Walther, and Branden Robinson.

We sent a list of questions to each candidate to find out where they stand on issues facing Debian in 2005. The first question we posed to the candidates was how they would help to ensure that Sarge would be released this year, and if too much emphasis was placed on a new stable release.

In his platform, Walther endorsed the idea of a six-month release cycle, borrowed from the OpenBSD project, saying it could "turn Debian into a monster powerhouse of software goodness". In his response, he added that he was unsure of the limits of the DPL's authority, but would do "everything in my power to get Sarge out the door immediately, as-is, and formalize the OpenBSD/Ubuntu/Xouvert 6-month release cycle."

Towns responded that there were a variety of reasons that Sarge had been delayed, and that "the release team currently have a handle on them". He also said that releasing Sarge is "the highest priority for the project at this point, and the highest priority of the DPL is to do everything possible to ensure that the release team and those working on resolving the remaining issues have the support and resources they need to do their work quickly and effectively."

Lees pointed out that the DPL "is not a position with direct control over Debian's actions" and that the DPL "is there to provide a single point of contact with the outside world and to ensure the relevant groups within Debian coordinate effectively". He also said that he is confident that the Sarge release would go out this year without intervention from the DPL, but "would of course try to ensure that the relevant technical teams have the resources they need to avoid any further delays."

As for the importance of stable releases, Lees said that the stable releases are necessary to provide "a static fork to provide security fixes against and a known minimum point from which package maintainers must ensure smooth upgrades". The ideal release point, according to Lees, would be "around the 1.5-2.5 year point, so shorter than the Sarge release cycle - but not by much."

Garrett noted that Sarge is close enough to release that "anything the DPL does is more likely to slow things down than speed them up."

He also said that slow releases not only cost Debian users, but development effort as well.

Robinson told LWN that he would work closely with the Release Management team to find out what they need and "try to get those needs satisfied, whether they involve hardware for build daemons, additional personnel for the security or debian-installer teams, or simply general encouragement (some would say whip-cracking) to get the release-critical bug count down."

He also said that Debian is compared "unfairly and unfavorably to the bleeding-edge nature of some distributions" and could "greatly mitigate that criticism by establishing a more predictable and regular release cycle.".

Finally, Schuldei said that Sarge should be in "deep freeze already" by the time the next DPL takes office on April 17. Schuldei also said that regular releases "are important for Debian and are one of my priorities."

The next question we posed to the candidates is whether Ubuntu had hurt Debian by drawing away development effort, how Debian should work with projects derived from Debian and if Debian was "infrastructure" for other projects.

Schuldei responded that Ubuntu "cherry-picked from Debian's most active developers."

Schuldei told LWN that Debian "should more actively incorporate the good things that it sees other distributions" do and that if Debian "managed the 'taking' as well as the 'giving' [to other projects] there would be little limit to its potential."

Robinson says that Canonical Ltd. (the company that sponsors Ubuntu) is a "mixed blessing."

He also said that Debian has to be "frank about it" and accept that some developers may be drawn away from Debian.

Garrett pointed out that Ubuntu "has taken some effort away from Debian, but it's also contributed a lot back."

Providing employment for Debian developers is "a good thing" according to Lees, though he notes that "some inevitable divergence between Ubuntu and Debian as Ubuntu strives to differentiate itself."

Towns said that the only way Ubuntu draws developers away from Debian "is by providing a better environment for hacking -- whether that be by paying for the work, or being more fun, or being more satisfying, or all of the above."

According to Walther, projects like Ubuntu or Knoppix help Debian rather than hurt it. "Because of our licensing, we can always fold things back in from other projects that work out well."

We also asked candidates if they had any idea why so many people were running this year, as opposed to past years that saw only a few candidates.

Walther quipped, "because the incumbent decided not to run for re-election."

Schuldei told LWN "some of the candidates clearly believe that Debian is in need of their special knowledge or ability. I myself believe that my vision for Debian and my experience in implementing change in social groups will help the Debian Project to reach new heights and strength."

Robinson said that "people are getting a better idea of what they want out of a Project Leader."

Garrett said that he can't speak for the other candidates, but "I'm standing because I think Debian has problems that need fixing, and I think being DPL is the best way that I can help fix them. Perhaps our problems are more obvious this year than in the past?" Lees told LWN that he has no idea why so many people are running for DPL, and that he's running "at the insistence of several other Debian developers, probably in response to some of the more radical factions that are gaining influence within Debian". Towns said that there have been "a lot of fairly controversial questions raised or decided...and in the midst of all this the next release of our operating system has continued slipping. It seems plausible to me that the range of candidates represent the range of different views within the project of how to approach these issues."

Another topic that comes up frequently when discussing delays for Sarge is dropping architectures. We asked the candidates if they thought Debian should drop any of its architectures in order to release on a more timely basis. There was not a great deal of enthusiasm for this idea among DPL candidates. Walther is against the idea of dropping architectures altogether. "I see no need to drop any architecture, but I do see it as a good thing to release each architecture separately. This prevents the lowest common denominator from retarding the distribution as a whole."

Towns said, simply, "That's a decision for the release and archive teams to make." Lees said that there was "no correlation between the number of architectures and any delay in release", as far as he could see. Schuldei said, "yes, that's one possible option."

Garrett told LWN that dropping architectures would not speed up the release, and would "undoubtedly reduce the quality of our distribution. There are whole classes of bugs that only show up when you port to a wide range of platforms."

Robinson said that the idea that dropping an architecture would benefit the release cycle "seems to meander between a vague notion and an article of faith." He also said that he has yet to see a proposal that explains how it would benefit the release cycle, and that he needs "more convincing...to support such a dramatic step. For some architectures, Debian is the only modern option for a GNU/Linux installation. It'd be a shame to give that in exchange for an unproven benefit."

Finally, we asked the candidates what the biggest challenge facing the DPL would be. Schuldei told LWN that scalability was the biggest problem facing Debian.

Garrett sees communication as the largest hurdle for Debian:

Lees told LWN that Debian "basically works" and said it was difficult to sort out a minor issue to highlight as a problem. He also touched on communication as a problem, and said VoIP would be an "interesting way to improve the quality of communication...since email seems to bring out the worst in people. I would hope that improving the nature of the communication would make it easier to address other issues that arise within Debian."

Towns said that the biggest single issue was "getting Sarge out the door, but that's primarily an issue for the release team to handle". Robinson didn't respond directly to the question of the biggest challenge for Debian, but also pointed out in his responses that "the collective psyche of the project gets antsy when a release process has dragged on for too long."

Walther also told LWN that the release cycle is the largest problem for the project.

Debian Developers may begin voting for DPL on March 21, through April 11. The voting procedure is described in section A of the Debian Constitution. We'd like to thank each of the candidates for responding to our questions, and wish them good luck in the election.