APT for DPL Candidates

(Note: Updated table in 2019 for the new election, the rest of the article remains unchanged and is still as true as it is provocative)

Today is a special day for apt: 20 years ago after much discussion in the team as well as in the Debian project at large "APT" was born.

What happened in all these years? A lot! But if there is one common theme then it is that many useful APT features, tricks and changes are not as known to the general public or even most Debian Developers as they should be.

A few postings are unlikely to change that, but I will try anyhow and this post is the start of a mini-series of "APT for …" articles showing off things: For the first installment I want to show nothing less but the longest running vote-rigging scheme in the known free (software) world. But lets start from the beginning:

Humans pride themselves having evolved over simple animals following their instincts by having a mind of their own to form decisions. On this concept, humans hold votes to agree upon stuff, including the Debian Project Leader for the next year.

DPL candidates are encouraged to provide a platform and a discussion between the candidates and the voters ensures that everyone can form a well informed opinion on the candidates in question and based on this information choose a candidate with their own free will.

Or, That is at least the theory Debian Developers want to believe in.

The following table tallies each leader vote since 1999 with the information if the candidate (68 over all, 37 unique) had contributed to APT (31/13), dpkg (29/17) or both (18/9) for cases I could identify (if I missed anything feel free to get in touch). The candidate in bold has won the election in the given year, candidates in italics won a later election:

We can see directly that until recently it was nearly mandatory to have contributed to apt or dpkg to be accepted as a DPL candidate. The recent no streak before Chris entered the table gets doubly weird if we factor in that I joined Debian and the APT project around 2009… We might get to the bottom of this coincident in the future, but for now lets get back to the topic at hand:

DDs have no free will

It is hard to accept for a human, but the table above shows that DDs aren't as free in their choice as they think they are; they follow a simple rule:

If at least one of the candidates contributed to APT, an APT contributor wins the election.

You can read this directly from the table above (20 votes total, including 6 votes without an apt candidate). Interestingly, the same rule for dpkg does not hold at all. In fact there are years in which the defining difference for the winning candidate is that he¹⁵ hasn't contributed to dpkg but only to apt (e.g. 2002).

Praying via bugreports and sacrifices in the form of patches in the Pantheon of the Supercow, the deity@ mailinglist, can have profound effects: Take the very first elections as an example: After being an unsuccessful candidate in 1999 and 2000, candidate Ben implemented the rsh transport method for apt and as a result became DPL in 2001.

And as if that wouldn't be enough, being on good terms with Supercow has additional benefits:

Contribution beats Re-Election

While it seems like DPLs are granted a second term if they wish the recent 2017 election shows that contributing to APT is stronger. Two other non-re-elections are on record: In 2003 where the bugreporter Bdale lost against the patchprovider Martin, so contribution size and recency seem to play a role as well, but that might not be everything there is to infights between contributors as shown in 2007 where Anthony lost against Sam in the biggest vote so far with 5 out of 8 candidates supported by apt (including the present and future DPL in this year).

The "Super" rubs of on the DPL

Many DPLs run for two terms, but only a single one managed to run a third time: After unsuccessful campaigning in 2009 Stefano not only worked on apt in 2010 and the following year(s) but also consulted with a certain highpriest of the Supercow netting a record three-year stint as DPL as a result.

It is to be seen if intercession of a highpriest is needed for long DPL terms, but it certainly doesn't hurt – and I make myself of course selflessly available (for a reasonable monetary offering) as said highpriest should a DPL (candidate) be in need of my divine bovine help (again)…

Every contribution matters – for real!

No contribution is too small, everything counts & supercow sees everything. Even "just" downgrading the severity of a bug counts¹⁰. Supercow values all contributors: Join their rank today and win the next DPL election in 2019!

Of course, supercow likes big and groundbreaking patches as much as the next project, but while other projects are just talking about how they like testers, bugreporters, translators and documentation improvers we in the apt project have the election-rigging data of 20 years to proof it! Supercow really cares for its contributors!

So to all past, present and future DPL candidates: Thanks for your contributions to APT (and Debian)!

That… this… what the f…edora?!?

Look at the calendar: Its not only easter sunday, its also the beginning of voting period for DPL 2018. What better day would there be for some fun about humans, genesis, elections and the 20th birthday of apt.

I promise that future installments in the series will be more practically useful but until then enjoy the festive days (if applicable) around apts birthday, have fun, take care and make sure to contribute to apt!

Mooooo!