Chris Lamb elected as Debian project leader

The 2017 Debian project leader (DPL) election has completed; Chris Lamb won, over incumbent DPL Mehdi Dogguy. Details of the voting can be found on the election web page. Dogguy posted his last "bits from the DPL" congratulating Lamb, filling the project in on what he has been up to over the last month plus, and more: "Serving as DPL for the past year has been a real honour and a fantastic experience for me. It also helped me to have a different perspective on the project and my future involvement. Last but not least, I wanted to confirm to other fellow Debian Developers that serving as DPL is not a traumatic experience and I am still as sane as I was one year ago :-) If you have ideas on how to make Debian a better place, project, OS, community, FOSS citizen, … please nominate yourself for DPL elections next year! Worst case scenario, you would contribute to the debate about Debian's future."

From:		Debian Project Secretary - Kurt Roeckx <secretary-AT-debian.org>
To:		debian-devel-announce-AT-lists.debian.org
Subject:		Debian Project Leader Election 2017 Results
Date:		Sun, 16 Apr 2017 18:48:53 +0200
Message-ID:		<20170416164852.rj3udggpb7wasit7@roeckx.be>
Cc:		debian-vote-AT-lists.debian.org, debian-project-AT-lists.debian.org

Hi,

The winner of the election is Chris Lamb.

His term will start on April 17th, 2017.

The details of the results are available at:
https://vote.debian.org/2017/vote_001

Stats for the DPL votes:
|------+------+--------+-------+--------+---------+--------+-----------|
|      |  Num |        | Valid | Unique | Rejects |      % |  Multiple |
| Year |  DDs | Quorum | Votes | Voters |         | Voting | of Quorum |
|------+------+--------+-------+--------+---------+--------+-----------|
| 1999 |  347 | 27.942 |       |    208 |         | 59.942 |   7.44399 |
| 2000 |  347 | 27.942 |       |    216 |         | 62.248 |   7.73030 |
| 2001 |   ?? |     ?? |       |    311 |         |        |           |
| 2002 |  939 | 45.965 |   509 |    475 |     122 | 50.586 |  10.33395 |
| 2003 |  831 | 43.241 |   510 |    488 |     200 | 58.724 |  11.28559 |
| 2004 |  908 | 45.200 |   506 |    482 |      52 | 53.084 |  10.66372 |
| 2005 |  965 | 46.597 |   531 |    504 |      69 | 52.228 |  10.81615 |
| 2006 |  972 | 46.765 |   436 |    421 |      41 | 43.313 |   9.00246 |
| 2007 | 1036 | 48.280 |   521 |    482 |     267 | 46.525 |   9.98343 |
| 2008 | 1075 | 49.181 |   425 |    401 |      35 | 37.302 |   8.15356 |
| 2009 | 1013 | 47.741 |   366 |    361 |      43 | 35.636 |   7.56155 |
| 2010 |  886 | 44.648 |   459 |    436 |      88 | 49.210 |   9.76513 |
| 2011 |  911 | 45.274 |   402 |    392 |      93 | 43.030 |   8.65836 |
| 2012 |  948 | 46.184 |   436 |    403 |      72 | 42.511 |   8.72589 |
| 2013 |  988 | 47.149 |   402 |    390 |      73 | 39.474 |   8.27170 |
| 2014 | 1003 | 47.505 |   412 |    401 |      61 | 39.980 |   8.44117 |
| 2015 |  986 | 47.101 |   364 |    353 |      39 | 35.801 |   7.49454 |
| 2016 | 1023 | 47.977 |   286 |    282 |      74 | 27.566 |   5.87787 |
| 2017 | 1062 | 48.882 |   327 |    322 |      57 | 30.320 |   6.58729 |
|------+------+--------+-------+--------+---------+--------+-----------|


Kurt Roeckx
Debian Project Secretary

Chris Lamb elected as Debian project leader

Posted Apr 17, 2017 12:57 UTC (Mon) by gerv (guest, #3376) [Link] (3 responses)

There are more Debian Developers than ever before, and yet fewer of them voted than ever before (except perhaps the odd 2001 election). This is despite the fact that it seems that this year's race was pretty close. Are Debian Developers getting less interested in who's in charge?

Gerv

Chris Lamb elected as Debian project leader

Posted Apr 17, 2017 14:40 UTC (Mon) by liw (subscriber, #6379) [Link]

https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2017/04/msg00065.html has statisics from past DPL votes.

This year didn't have quite the largest number of eligible voters, and also not also not quiet the lowest percentage of actual voters. But close.

As far as why fewer people voted, it's anybody's guess, until and unless someone goes to the considerable effort to ask Debian developer why they didn't vote.

My guess is that there's not enough conflict or danger to make voting feel important. Also the candidates this year were not all that dissimilar. But that's a guess.

For next year I may run on a platform that any Debian developer who can't prove they've made a backup in the past two weeks get forcibly retired from the project. Alternatively, it's acceptable to be quoted on LWN or participate in a flame war about systemd.

Chris Lamb elected as Debian project leader

Posted Apr 18, 2017 21:50 UTC (Tue) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link] (1 responses)

First, the Debian project lead is not a very powerful position, but more a representative one, both inside the project and to the outside. This, unfortunately, leads to low participation in general.

Second, esp. this election was not conflictive in any way. If one thinks, that both Mehdi and Chris are good for the job, why care? In the past, differences were a little bit stronger or more obvious.

Third, Debianites are all busy with the preparation of Debian 9 "stretch" - an important distrection from the election!

Anyway: Many thanks to Mehdi! Good luck, Chris!

Chris Lamb elected as Debian project leader

Posted Apr 20, 2017 14:33 UTC (Thu) by lamby (subscriber, #42621) [Link]

Thank you :)