Proposals, discussions and announcements

Sune Vuorela | 11 Mar 2013 09:30

trying to do awesome and risking to fail

Hi candidates

So, over the last years I have seen a Debian where it among the people
is much more important to avoid to fail than trying to do awesome stuff.

But doing awesome stuff is where the fun is, and also where the
possibility to be awesome is. Where the possibility create something
new. To reach for the stars.

Focussing on not failing is helping ensuring to stay mediocre. And not
doing awesome.

So, how can we make debian do awesome stuff?

/Sune

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Gergely Nagy | 11 Mar 2013 10:45

Re: trying to do awesome and risking to fail

Hi!

Sune Vuorela <nospam <at> vuorela.dk> writes:

> So, over the last years I have seen a Debian where it among the people
> is much more important to avoid to fail than trying to do awesome
> stuff.

While I subscribe to the 'avoid failure whenever you can' school of
thought, I do not wish to hold on to that thought at all costs. We do
need to risk it at times, and that may or may not result in falling flat
on our face.

If we do fail - so what? We'll learn. Care *must* be taken though, that
if things are going to fail, let it do so early, when it hurts less. Or
better yet, if it looks like it's going to end badly, look back and see
what were wrong, and correct the course. We have tons of eyes in the
project, if even a fraction of them cares about a particular project,
we'll have quite many opinions, viewponts and ideas, we'll see and know
where things go wrong.

In short, failure will happen, we have to take that into account, but
that should not stop us from doing awesome stuff, whatever that awesome
stuff would be.

> Focussing on not failing is helping ensuring to stay mediocre. And not
> doing awesome.

While I believe one can do awesome stuff and not stay mediocre even when
trying very hard not to fail, that's a rare thing indeed.

(Continue reading)

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Lucas Nussbaum | 11 Mar 2013 14:27

Re: trying to do awesome and risking to fail

Hi,

On 11/03/13 at 08:30 +0000, Sune Vuorela wrote:
> Hi candidates
> 
> So, over the last years I have seen a Debian where it among the people
> is much more important to avoid to fail than trying to do awesome stuff.
> 
> But doing awesome stuff is where the fun is, and also where the
> possibility to be awesome is. Where the possibility create something
> new. To reach for the stars.
> 
> Focussing on not failing is helping ensuring to stay mediocre. And not
> doing awesome.
> 
> So, how can we make debian do awesome stuff?

Given that the main upstream awesome developer is a DD (Julien Danjou),
I think that we can say that Debian already does awesome.</bad joke>

More seriously, I fully agree with your POV. I suppose you went through
my platform, that addresses your question, I think. Do you have more
specific questions, maybe?

Lucas

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Moray Allan | 11 Mar 2013 22:42

Re: trying to do awesome and risking to fail

On 2013-03-11 11:30, Sune Vuorela wrote:
> Focussing on not failing is helping ensuring to stay mediocre. And 
> not
> doing awesome.
>
> So, how can we make debian do awesome stuff?

I think we have many people around in Debian who think they have 
awesome ideas and don't mind if they fail, but as a mature organisation 
we can end up discouraging experimentation.

As DPL, I would certainly try to be open to new ideas, even if I didn't 
personally think they sounded like they would work, and I would 
encourage others to respond to new ideas in the same way, as part of the 
attitude of openness I mentioned in my platform.  Where we have people 
wanting to experiment and try out new things, we should support it.  
This doesn't mean I would stop teams from protecting themselves by 
providing technical means for experimentation without breaking existing 
things[1], though in many areas of Debian there's no need for that.

For experiments in our processes, it's a bit trickier, as others don't 
have the choice just to ignore the experiment and wait to hear the 
results.  So we should be open, and avoid criticising people for 
suggesting new ideas, but we need more general agreement that an 
experimental process is worth trying before it goes ahead.  But if we 
are too conservative, we will certainly find that we lose volunteers to 
other projects and are overtaken by them.[2]

Sure, often the naysayers will turn out to be right, but, even when 
ideas fail, the people involved will normally generate better new ideas

(Continue reading)