Re:Why is Debian the way it is?
by rstuart4133 on Sunday October 08, 2023 @09:58PM
(#37816166)
> From the description, the Debian organization seems to be an anarchist one.
Then it mislead you. Anarchist organisations aren't typically characterised by large, long and complex sets of policies, constantly evolving, that are strongly policed. Often by bots.
I've been maintaining free software for 30 years so I've got a lot of experience with a lot of different tools, and I've rarely encountered anything that is as comprehensive and well-documented as all this stuff is.
This style of organisation is characteristic found in engineering organisations try to deliver high quality products, not anarchist organisations.
And while it's a flat(ish) style hierarchy, it has leaders (the DPL), a judiciary (the technical committee) and even behaviour police (whoever polices the conduct - it is policed).
Then it mislead you. Anarchist organisations aren't typically characterised by large, long and complex sets of policies, constantly evolving, that are strongly policed. Often by bots.
This is the reaction from one software engineer that stumbled into Debian infrastructure: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2023/09/msg00334.html
To quote one part of that email:
This style of organisation is characteristic found in engineering organisations try to deliver high quality products, not anarchist organisations.And while it's a flat(ish) style hierarchy, it has leaders (the DPL), a judiciary (the technical committee) and even behaviour police (whoever polices the conduct - it is policed).