Re: Hrm...

[George Bonser <grep@oriole.sbay.org>]

Well, the cracks started forming with the birth of the debian-dissent
mailing list and the rucous that surrounded that. The developers, from
what I could see on the outside, not subscibed to deban-private, divided
into two camps.  Well, actually three.  Those who were willing to fall in
behind Bruce who is kind of autocratic, those who wanted more of the old
Ian Jackson style of development by committee, and thirdly, a few who just
wanted to complain about anything anyone proposed.

Bruce was perfect at the time.  The committee method was stalled and
development languished because it seemed that everyone was sitting around
talking about things and picking each other's ideas apart.  Debian needed
a strong leader to finally get it out in release.  Heck, it has only
officially been released for what, a year and a half, but has existed for
nearly 5.

Bruce's time may be past.  It might be time for someone else.  The dselect
problem is almost gone, the glibc "recompile the world" crises is over,
the 2.1.90 kernel plugs nicely into debian 2.0.  It looks like the next
few releases are simply going to be cleanup. They probably do not NEED a
stong leader and a more anal stickler to details of package files and such
might be best.

I dunno, we'll see.  If he IS going to Red Hat, I suspect that there is
more than meets the eye.  Maybe some kind of Red Hat / Netscape thing?
Also, Bruce seems to have gotten really edgy right after the great Pixar
pay scandal.  I wonder if he is looking for a different job?



On Wed, 18 Mar 1998, Erik Walthinsen wrote:

> Yeah, I wondered the same thing.  He's invested a lot, but I think he's 
> going in the wrong direction now, and he's starting to realize it.  I do 
> think it's been a little screwy recently, starting (from my context) with 
> his bullheadedness on the list propsal idea, then the "come over to Debian, 
> it's better here" thing, then the 'deity' debate, which turned into this 
> thread.  Things have basically gone downhill, and he has more than enough 
> enemies as of now to justify his leaving...
> 

George Bonser 
Just be thankful that Microsoft does not manufacture pharmaceuticals.
http://www.debian.org
Debian/GNU Linux ... the maintainable operating system.

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