Raw Matter

Russel pointed me to Andre Pang's blog entry.  Yep, I share this annoyance.  Especially because I recently received an email with a 3 or 4 line disclaimer at the top of the email, and an additional, longer one at the bottom.  Occasionally, I use that one:

The content of this message may or may not reflect the opinion of me, my
employer, my girlfriend, my cat or anybody else, regardless of the fact
whether such an employer, girlfriend, cat, or anybody else exists.  I
(or my employer, girlfriend, cat or whoever) disclaim any legal
obligations resulting from the above message.  You, as the reader of
this message, may or may not have the permission to redistribute this
message as a whole or in parts, verbatim or in modified form, or to
distribute any message at all.

(Daniel Baumann: Please note the spaces I've added in this post, extra for you!)

Now either I'm really astonished or somebody has seriously strange metrics. I suspect it's the second. According to Aleksandar Vasovic (working at the university of Köln (Cologne) in Germany):

[...] we analysed the debian mailing list archives, especially the debian-devel mailing list, as it is a good representation of the whole network. [...] we identified the 100 main actors and therefor came across your email address.

So, somebody who talks quite a bit on the mailing lists, but really only maintains one package is already one of the top 100 "actors" in Debian? I seriously doubt it. (And yes, receiving the mail I quoted and seeing that the questionnaire is not online yet(?) does not improve my impression either.) Now (more talk) of course the right thing to do would be to define as many metrics as possible and see how often I am in the top 100. Anyway, when I feel I have to say something I will continue to do so, and otherwise just thank the (at most 99 ;-) people who do more for Debian than I for creating and maintaining all the cool stuff I can use for free. And, obviously, I also have to mention the upstream authors who make Debian possible in the first place.

Still, metrics got me thinking. One metric I'd be really interested in is a weighted "I respect person X" one: everybody submits rankings of people who (s)he thinks do a very good job in Debian and who tend to do the "right" things, both in technical matters but also regarding community or organisation stuff. Then, from these rankings, a overall ranking is calculated, but with a twist: have the opinions of people high in the overall ranking count more than those with lower rankings - after all, the latter are inclined to trust the former people's judgement.

Now, the obvious thing to do would be to elect the DPL with this ranking. But it could go further: maintain the ranking continuously (i.e. let people adjust their ranking at any time) instead of only polling once a year, publish the ranking (or perhaps just the top 20 or top 50?), let the top 5 be a leadership team instead of having a single DPL, adjust the leadership team as often as necessary as the top 5 of the ranking change (minimum terms of 3 months and only change the team when somebody falls out of the top 5 for at least a month or so to keep things from boiling over too quickly).

Obviously, rankings have their problems, and this approach wouldn't suddenly solve all of the project's problems and would probably also introduce new ones, but I feel the continuous monitoring by the project's members might make those leaders more realistic when stating their goals by eliminating the campaign frenzy. #include stuff about people not actually wanting to be part of the leadership team and stuff about requiring some regular confirmation from the electorate to weed out people who just recorded a ranking at some time but don't follow events anymore.

Ok, now this was absolutely in the Talk Is Cheap™ category.

So I'm not the only one who thinks Microsoft might have gotten the greasy end of the stick in its recent deal with Novell. (Yes, I know, it's not Novell vs. Microsoft right now. Technically.) Well, we can't but wait and see. And help Novell by making Linux better, of course.

The fight against terrorist has been mostly abandoned in favour of the fight for terrorist fighting money from the federal (U.S.) governement. And, it appears, the fight for the biggest silliness. But they still tell me the Ministry of Silly Walks doesn't exist...

[...] a mathematical value purporting to represent the square root of terrorist intent. The figure appears deep in the mind-numbingly complex risk-assessment formulas that the department used in 2006 to decide the likelihood that a place is or will become a terrorist target [...]

Needless to say, locations with more likely to-be-attacked locations get more money. And, as it turns out, frequently have more republican politicians.

Completely changed all categories on my blog. I hope nothing has broken.

While I like nanoblogger because it's quite simple, I really can't wrap my head around the logic of its commandline syntax. And thinking about categories: perhaps I should switch from categories to tags and do a nice tag cloud. I started blogging only after 80 year old grannies did it, so there's some time yet...

Daniel Burrows writes about Samsung embedding DRM in (some of?) its DVD drives. While I must say that I'm not surprised (not because it's Samsung, but because I expect DRM to be embedded deep in hardware more and more to counter software-based attacks won't work anymore), it will now make me feel bad about buying a Q40, which I'm thinking about doing: it's a really slick sub-note, only a bit more than 1kg (with the small battery) and running up to ca. 5 or 6 hours with the (included at no extra charge) high power battery (as per specs). Good display, too, from what I could see at the shop, and it has an Intel graphics chip. Memory stick/MMD/SD card reader included as well, so I'd have something to look forward to when kernel 2.6.48 or so comes out and these readers will finally work. And, opposed to what IBM/Lenovo produce, they actually have some competent designers^W^W^W^W^W^WI actually like how it looks.

DRM: I think this battle will have to be fought in politics. Battling the vendors is fine, but will be endless, the real goal should be to anchor a broad right to tinker in the bill of rights which also extends to non-commercially used information. (Adding the “non-commercial” bit in here because authors do have the right to be reimbursed when somebody earns money with their creation.) What I do in private with the DVD I legally bought, or with the satellite signal that is sent to my home for free (and I can't even opt out) is non commercial use.

Update: The problem is that Daniel is a doofus. (in his own words.) So Samsung's reputation is safe for now. But I have to agree with him, still: it is a realistic expectation in these days that the hardware supports DRM in some way.

Sam Hocevar is wrong when he says:

Suppose for instance that you stopped contributing to Debian months ago [...] You are obviously not only directly responsible for Etch being late due to your lack of involvement, ...

“You” are not responsible for Etch being late. The Debian project has picked an official scapegoat for Etch being late and for everything else in Debian that just doesn't work how it should. So everybody can now relax: no Debian developer is personally responsible for anything.

It's really convenient if some people group together and do something that other people don't like and then give it a name. You can blame the new thing for everything you don't want to do or don't like, without actually having to name the people behind it or thinking about constructive ways to improve matters. It's always “them”.

Yes, I'm pissed by the attitude of some very vocal people. Dunc Tank is not an official Debian project, so I still fail to see how it's different from Canonical, Progeny, Credativ etc. hiring people. Dunc Tank even pays people to work directly on Debian, it doesn't pay them to do Debian-related work that might eventually benefit Debian, too. As a private employer, Dunc Tank is free to pick who to employ and who not to employ. Yes, Dunc Tank and some Debian project roles do overlap, but stuff like this can't be avoided, especially in time consuming volunteer projects doing stuff that can also be done for money. Debian is not a charity, but a project competing directly with commercial products, so its members shouldn't be surprised when the question of money comes up every now and then.

(And just to make it clear: I'm not arguing against Sam, who blogged about a totally different topic. The part I quoted just got me started.)