Manoj Srivastava resigns as Debian secretary

I can see a lot of people were unhappy with the ballot, and felt that Manoj unfairly biased the wording in parts. But as an outsider, I'm generally convinced of his integrity, and that if he has he would not have done so consciously.

He may have underestimated the pent up frustration for a project that desired to release in September (yes, getting towards 4 months ago) and has been frozen for a long time. The spectrum of thought about the firmware issue (and its importance) means that those who are comfortable with it would always have seen the vote as the most bureaucratic of further delays to an already frustrating and demoralisingly late release.

There is a real people problem now happening in Debian, where people simply cannot disagree relatively cordially (or at least neutrally). I think they have to realise that Debian is not about changing the world; it's important and a worthy goal, but not a life or death situation where every disagreement must be hashed and rehashed.

Russ Allbery's blog about this (http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/journal/2008-12/006.html) is also good; the meat of it is about simply making decisions so that people can move on.