Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Jeremy Blosser <jblosser-smgl AT firinn.org>]

On Jan 21, David Kowis [dkowis AT shlrm.org] wrote:
> We have two nominations that have been seconded and accepted:
> * Arwed von Merkatz
> * Jeremy Blosser
> 
> To quote our voting policy:
> "Accepting nominees SHOULD send a message to the list explaining why 
> they are running for the position and why people might want to elect 
> them." Nudge nudge

Ok.

To state the obvious, I clearly haven't been around much the last year.  If
I hadn't been nominated to do this again or if there was another nominee
who had been around a lot more than I have been who people wanted to do the
work, I wouldn't be writing this (no offense intended to Arwed; I think
it's just reality for both of us that we haven't been around as much as
we'd like in a bit).

However, I said pretty clearly last year when I was nominated that I
wouldn't have a lot of time in 2008[1], so I don't believe I have been
absent without leave.  And I do expect to have more time this coming year
again--that has already started a bit, as a few have noticed.

Regardless, I think it's worth noting that the processes I helped put in
place previously to get things on a more regular track are still being used
basically unmodified (stable grimoire releases, tarball generation, git
repositories, etc.) and there's not major call for changes to them.
There's still a lot that needs doing obviously but I consider it a feature
I helped get a lot of things moving but in the process did not make myself
a PL that is a major bottleneck for things getting done.

At least one of the things that's kept me away is a "new" job, which is
still busy but stabilizing some.  It's a very high-visibility environment
with a lot of uptime demands on it and SMGL runs almost all of it.  I'm
proud to use it here and I'm definiteley motivated to see the distro
continue to do well and stay healthy.

My goals with the distro remain what they have always been--to keep it a
distro the people who develop it want to use, and to help those that will
like the SMGL way to find it.  I've never thought we were a distro for
everyone or even a majority of people and I'm fine with that.  I don't work
on SMGL to be popular with linux people, I do it because I want a distro
that makes my life and work better.

While most of the routine stuff is pretty regularly maintained, we continue
to have the same problems with major projects being thrown around and never
moving much past the discussion phase.  This continues to be something to
work on, but the distro is apparently able to survive even without these
major changes.  The ISO also continues to retread a lot of the same ground
and discussions, but we all hope the current test series will get that on a
track that can finally be maintained.

A primary role of the PL in my opinion is still to try to keep things
moving and facilitate communication and help with prioritization.  A big
piece of that is regular developer meetings, which we haven't had in a
while but which I will schedule starting in February if you still want me
doing this (I would have set one up already, but don't want to look like
I'm just doing it for the sake of a vote).  From there I think the todo
lists remain pretty well understood, execution and time are the main things
needed.  If people have specific things they want to ask me about while
this vote is running, feel free of course.

Last, as noted before, one thing I don't want people to give too much
consideration too on this vote is the sysadmin work I've done for the
distro.  That's stuff I did before I was any kind of lead and is separate
from all of it, and I fully intend to continue with it as long as I and the
distro find it mutually beneficial.



[1] https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/sm-discuss/2008-January/017611.html

Attachment: pgpsaiw4urGFl.pgp
Description: PGP signature