Re: elections

[Youcef Rabah Rahal <rahal at arabeyes dot org>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Salam,

[Obliged to reply since my name is cited twice in this email ;-) Wow !]

On Friday 01 October 2004 15:26, Abdulaziz Al-Arfaj wrote:

[...]

> Just having elections doesn't mean anything will change. For all we know,
> we might have the exact same core members after the elections as we did
> before the elections. As for Youcef who resigned of his own choice, I
> really wish I could put a gun to his head and force him to stay, but I
> can't ;)

Heh. Take it easy man ;) But I think even that won't change my decision. More 
below.

[...]

> We can't expect someone to be part of core forever. People do have their
> own personal lives... Having elections is the best way to regulate when
> people go into core and when they leave. Youcef's decision to leave was a
> sad one and a shock to us all and the timing too was bad for Arabeyes as a
> whole. An elected member, however, will feel obliged to serve his full
> term.

[...]

Sorry that my decision shocked you (and others). But believe me, it is for the 
good cause (on the contrary, you should have been happy to hear it !). 
Carrying a dead weight is not good, for the core team and the Arabeyes 
project as a whole. I won't elaborate why it's not good, since I believe you 
already have an idea about that (but I can enumerate a lot of reasons if you 
want ;). And to be honest, I have been acting as a dead weight for a few 
weeks now. So I prefer to leave before it's too late. The elections is a very 
good oppurtunity for that (actually, I wanted to leave before that, but... ;)

I also believe that bringing new blood is vital. I remember when I first 
joined the core team I was motivated as hell :) Now the motivation has faded 
a bit. I think it's mostly due to a lot of boring stuff that the coreites are 
supposed to do (yup, those who think being in Core is easy, you should change 
your minds before it's too late !). When I joined Arabeyes, it was mostly to 
code and learn funny Linux stuff and help of course. Actually I learned a 
LOT, especially since I joined the core team ! And it was fun most of the 
time. But the boring stuff, even if it's a small fraction, can become very 
annoying and in my case, it started to become a serious hurdle to do anything 
else. I consequently think being one year in the core team is more than 
enough. You'll see (hopefully) that the next core team will do wonders and, 
again, this change is more than needed.

I also think that that Arabeyes should function more as a community. The core 
team has now a lot of responsabilities that could be delegated to other 
members. The community members should bring more initiatives rather that 
waiting for an OK from core or something like that. If you want to do 
something, just DO it !

And like I said it in another post (core list archives), I'm still here 
anyway. Even if I'm not in core. So, it is likely that you won't notice any 
difference ;) I wanted just to have more time to work on Bayani. Now it seems 
that I can't even find time for that either. But it's a matter of one week or 
two, just to find a balance, and I'm back to action !

In short, changing the core team (but hopefully not entirely) is becoming 
vital. The consequences can only be good !

Salam,

- -- 
Youcef R. Rahal
Arabeyes.org
http://www.arabeyes.org/~rahal
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFBXZYxHDRR6Cd0eSYRArg0AKC9t4ORdng61N/v0D8rBlQF5MI74QCbBaCV
RYrGbohUOsj5MP93Q4WvXIM=
=QWo1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----