Anthony Towns Elected New Debian Leader

daria42 writes "Australian developer Anthony Towns has just been elected Debian Project Leader starting 17 April. In his platform for election, Towns said the most important issue for Debian was 'increasing its tempo'. 'We've been slow in a lot of things, from releasing, to getting updates in, to processing applications from prospective developers, to fixing bugs, to making decisions on policy questions, and all sorts of other things,' he said."

Slowness

As the old saying goes, "Hell freezes faster than Debian Stable". Good to see that Towns intends to take action.

Good Move

I guess things will heat up for debian now....

Re:Good Move

What makes you think that? I mean, sure, he stated that he wants to get releases out quicker, but that doesn't necessarily mean he will be able to. I imagine that has more to do with the independent, unpaid Debian developers rather than the project leader. It's rather likely that the previous Debian project leader also wanted a shorter release cycle.

This is one of the problems with free software. If developers are less accountable, fixed release dates are more difficult to achieve. On the other hand, almost all proprietary software seems to be facing the same problem, and sometimes to a greater degree...

Best intentions...

I'd have to agree with you. One of the main reasons Debian has been slow to update has been the range of architectures and applications they attempt to simultaneously support. Other distros update faster, but most of them take one of two paths: a) limit supported architecture (usually to the x86 and x86 64) or b) support only a small subset of applications.

Really, as much as I'd love to see Debian update faster, I'd hate to see them take one of those expediencies to get the job done.

Joke

For those who were wondering, voting started in 2001. He was elected today because the commitee wanted to make sure the candidates were 'stable'.

Re:Joke

You forgot to mention that the candidates were also frozen for bugfixing. Towns has only lost two fingers to frostbite; the debian-privates e-mail list suggests that another candidate lost something more personal and delicate.

Debian?

What is this "Debian" you speak of? Is it more like Ubuntu, or Fedora?

(yes, it was a joke)

Debian bites off too much

They should remove 99% of the packages from the core distribution and go with a simple small set of base packages for each release. Then switch to a 6 month release schedule like many other projects are using. All those other packages can go into an "extra" repository or something.

I think even Ubuntu tries to put too many packages in the base release. They should take a hint from the BSD distros which use this method with the base install and ports. Hell, Windows uses the same method. After installing Windows there isn't much functionality other than the OS, you can then install whatever applications you want. Note I'm not advocating a ports-like source "build it yourself" thing, I'm just saying that 99% of the packages that are currently in a Debian release don't need to be part of the core.

Worst idea ever?

Why? I'm a Debian user, and I appreciate how well EVERYTHING works. I'd hate for them to sacrifice the quality of most of the software I use just so they can release twice as often.

I don't really trust distributions that guarantee a release every 6 months, because I get the impression they must be rushing things. I'd prefer something quality, even if it's usually "behind the pack".

Re:Worst idea ever?

I would definitely agree. It is unusual (in the Linux world) that Sarge took two and a half years to release, but I think that the benefits of the Debian QA process are very apparent. Taking the time to sort out bugs as well as they do -- on a very large number of packages -- makes a Debian release worth waiting for.

The slower release cycle is offset by two things. If you know you need a fresher system, and are willing to sacrifice some stability for updated packages, you have as many choices as you can handle: adding a few packages from testing to your stable system, directly tracking testing or unstable, some mix of any of the three, or even adding packages from experimental if you really want to go out on a limb.

The power of Debian is not only in APT, but in Debconf, the configuration system. Configuration changes are pretty much a given on a system that's directly tracking sid, but are unheard-of (and perhaps even forbidden?) in the stable release. The ease of administration that comes with knowing that changes Debian stable will consist only of backported security patches makes it worth the wait.

Lastly, a system administrator does not want to have to go through a major operating system upgrade on numerous heterogenous servers every 9 months. Knowing that it will be somewhere around 18-36 months between Debian releases means spending a lot less time migrating and fiddling with systems just to keep up with supported releases.

Other distributions do release every 6-9 months. It's not for me... except when it is, and I use testing/unstable in those cases :-)

Deslyxia.

there's-a-new-sheriff-in-town dept.

I can see I'm not the only one who read that as, "Anthony Debian Elected New Town Leader."

-Loyal

Brandon replaced after only 1 year?

I don't really follow Debian politics much. But, I remember seeing just last year that Brandon Robinson had been elected project lead (he too was planning to put Debian on a faster release cycle last year as I recall).

So, did Brandon resign the post, or did the Debian voters just decide that 1 year of Brandon was enough? I presume that Debian must elect a new leader annually? Are incumbents allowed to run for a second term? Did Brandon run again? Can anyone provide a post-mortem of Brandon's year - was it generally considered that he did a good job in the post?

Re:Brandon replaced after only 1 year?

Annual term as DPL, Branden decided not to stand for a second term.

Re:Brandon replaced after only 1 year?

LWN has a pretty decent interview of Branden, but he's kinda vague about interesting details. Link here [lwn.net].

Changes

There used to be a time when a new Debian leader election would not have been relegated to a sub headline on Slashdot. I agree with others on this thread that excess architectures need to be dumped, and a firm timeline needs to be put in place. I say putting out a new Stable release every 12 months is the way to go. Debian has an excellent reputation for it's performance and stability. Six months is too soon to keep up that reputation. A new Testing release would be available every six months. With security updates on Stable being current version minus one (i.e. Debian 3.2 comes out, Debian 3.1 will still be supported, but 3.0 no longer will be).

Re:Debian

I have to disagree totally. Ubuntu does have newer software for it's main distro. Debian Testing has just as new software cept it works better. For example, Ubuntu is still using firefox 1.0.7. Debian testing is at 1.5. Ubuntu's latest dapper flights are basically Debian Testing with new artwork that says Ubuntu.
I like a ton of distros but I seem to always come back to Debian. For a bunch of guys that can't get their act together, they still make the others looks bad.