iTWire: An entity, be it a project, organisation or even a country, generally does not reward any leader with anything more than two terms in office. How confident were you of winning a third term as leader?
Stefano Zacchiroli: Country-like organisations rarely allow for more than two terms in a row indeed. But those kinds of terms have lengths in the five-year range, whereas DPL terms are one-year long. As the DPL is a volunteer position, like any other position in Debian, terms are that short to avoid asking candidates a time commitment that would sound scary to most. One-year terms also allow an easy way out if, say, an incumbent DPL burns out or get struck by real life circumstances.
I believe I’ve done a decent job in my two years as DPL and during this year’s campaign I felt several Debian members were ready to acknowledge that. But at the same time it is natural to wish for a change and see how things could go with a different DPL “style”. All in all I didn’t indulge much in election forecasts myself, because both election outcomes would have had positive effects. Had I lost, I would’ve had a lot more free time to go back to hacking!