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: Debian structure

On Wed, 26 Feb 1997, Dan Stromberg wrote:

> Chris Fearnley wrote:
> > >My proposal calls for the creation of departments, in the style of an
> > >internet organization which I have seen it develop from day one. Those who
> > >do not like departments, will be called "consultant" and their life in
> > >debian stays the same.
> > 
> > Can people stop trying to turn Internet based projects into a corporate
> > entities?  We need new models of organization that take into account
> > the volunteer nature of the project and the existence of our
> > independent lives spread as they are all around the Planet.  The
> > corporate model won't work here.
> 
> The only thing "corporate" here is a very mild overtone of the word
> "department", and your perception of it.  They needn't be called
> "departments" to have their beneficial effects.  In fact, some people
> call them "mailing lists" or "newsgroups".  Or "departments" or "teams"
> (like in XFree86).  These are all mechanisms for dealing with the same
> problem.

Whatever you call it, it's compartmentalizing. If it walks like a duck...
The problems with this idea is it tends to divide the cohesiveness of
the group. I remember consulting for a company that was divided into only
two groups; hardware development, and software development. The two
departments had a long history of antagonism. No matter what the problem,
the hardware folks blamed it on poor software and the software folks
blamed it on the poor hardware. (almost never were either side correct)
As I got along just fine with both the hardware types and the software
types, I was actually able to help the situation. (consultants are not
always allowed to "actually" provide service)
Dividing up into smaller groups certainly helps management keep control,
but it tends to kill the creativity of cross polination and certainly
blocks communication between groups. Isolating segments of the system from
each other (at the developer level) only adds to the potential for "poor
interactions" between packages of different groups.
There has to be a better way of managing anarchy than divide and conquer.

> 
> The proposal was a very reasonable suggestion for dealing with the
> inherent problems of communications overhead, which are not limited to
> corporate structures in the slightest.
> 
> A...  oh, for example, "county fair" would need the same sort of
> simplifying assumptions, to avoid being crushed under its own weight.
> 
> Please, let's not dump a good idea, just because someone didn't like the
> word choice.
> 
What's in a name? A rose by any other....

Dwarf

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aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

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