dimanche 22 mars 2015

Running for DPL

Every year, Debian organizes a DPL election. Around end of March, one waits for the beginning of the DPL campaign. Everyone can ask questions to nominated candidates on debian-vote. This year, and for the first time, I nominated myself as a candidate for the 2015 DPL election. You can read my platform here.

Over the past few years, I've followed DPL campaigns on debian-vote reading questions and replies from candidates. It didn't seem easy to keep up with flood of questions and find the right wording while replying. Intuitively, you may think that a question is the first mail of every thread and replies follow... but, not at all :-) Questions can be asked in any mail. So candidates have to read every single mail posted to the list :-) The campaign ends within a week (or so) and it is still time to ask more questions.

Following discussions on debian-vote is a very good opportunity for newcomers to understand, for example, how Debian works and where help is needed. It is also a good place to see what are the main current issues (as perceived by contributors) and read a list of proposals to fix them. I invite anyone interested in Debian in reading debian-vote's archives.

While preparing my platform, I've also realized how much writing down thoughts and ideas was important. It really helps to put things into perspective and re-evaluate priorities. It may sound obvious but I think we are not used to do this often. I really recommend everyone to do this as an exercise, and for any perimeter (personal, team, project-wide, ...).

Last but not least, I'd like to thank all those who helped me to polish my platform and to prepare my candidacy. I am sure they will recognize themselves :-) (whatever the outcome of the election may be)