Running a vote usually is a bad signal. It often means someone is trying to push an issue which is doesn't have wide enough support. Ideally, we would have consensus.

Anyway, the results for the votes are in, and most are pretty clear results. For example the recall vote with 48:277 - the proponents would have barely made the quorum (48 is the minimum quorum).

At the Google Summer of Code, there was a talk on "Poisonous people" (blogged about by others before) - and while many big voices in this discussion clearly are top contributors, they show a couple of signs for "poisonous people" (which often are just drop-bys).

So if you're now leaving the project because of the vote - so be it. The discussion is over. We'll just go on doing our Debian work as before, because we're still Debian, and Debian is still us. That hasn't changed. So if you thing we've changed radically (which I doubt we have), you're as free to leave as you've always been. If you think we're still the same, please remain with us, and help making Debian what it has always been: a volunteer effort.

[Update: there was one vote 2-, which is the same as 12, but maybe he meant it to be 21 instead? Then the 'recall' people would even have missed the quorum!]

[Update #2: I'd like to share this quote with you (from LWN comments):

Debian is indeed a more balanced 'organisation' than it appears to be from its mailing lists. That doesn't actually surprise me, but it's nice to have it affirmed.

Yes, many of us don't just care this much about politics, but about our users and Debian itself. Being free is a highly valued ideal; getting a release "as free as possible while still being useful" is the real goal we're after. On an somewhat related note, icedove just replaced thunderbird.]

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