The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.
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Re: dpkg issues

1.  It is ironic that the same day (more or less) that we saw a 
press release announcing the use of Debian on the shuttle, we
begin debate about abandoning dpkg.  IMHO the Debian system (like 
any operating system) is defined by a particular choice in the 
ease-of-installation vs. ease-of-maintainence curve, and that
choice is exactly what makes it so useful and applicable in 
critical applications.  That same choice will, by definition, reduce 
its popularity.

(OTOH, if the rpm system could be adjusted to have the same level of 
control that the Debian system has, then it would be hard to argue
that the two systems should be kept distinct.)


2.  I agree that the verbiage in the past couple of weeks has been 
extremely disappointing.  Ian's concerns about debmake appear to be 
shared by several thoughtful developers.  But there is an imbalance 
in his arguments because of a lack of appreciation for the development 
of a tool which makes package development easy and more standardized, 
and a lack of appreciation and respect for other contributors.  
While I appreciate, and am even intrigued by, Ian's caution that it's 
important to avoid tools that are so standardized that they constrained 
the project from achieving its potential, I also believe that:

   A. There is a _mistaken_ notion in the Debian project that there
is or should be a distinction between users and developers.  Speaking
from experience, I can say that the usefulness of a Debian system
goes up by ***orders of magnitude*** when one finally has the
freedom (or at least the feeling) that he/she can produce packages
at will.  I believe it is essential to develop (further) the tools
that allow ordinary users to build packages.

   B.  I think _any_ project is in trouble if/when there is some
perception that its key components can be developed by only one person.
Such a single-point-failure mode amounts to an admission that the
goals or rationale of the project have not been articulated.  That
is not so surprising; the goals of complex development projects evolve.
The challenge is to articulate those changing goals in real time;
without that, the project cannot be managed.  Put it another way,
if/when ever the goals are articulated, then it should be possible 
to break dpkg down into a suite of programs that can be maintained 
by an evolving group of people.


3.  I agree with Stuart's point that the simultaneous development 
of both dpkg and rpm is good for Linux and that we really are still
in the early stages of that development.


4.  My gut reaction is that Nick's idea to have a library is a good 
thing.

Susan Kleinmann


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