None that I know of - except Sam Hocevar who won the recent election for leader of the project. One among eight who put forward their cases to the 1043-odd developers who are eligible to vote, Hocevar modestly puts his election down to "luck."

He says it is a vote for change: "People mainly voted for me because I had a very positive and hopeful platform, and against me because I have had an aggressive stance against the previous leader and the release team back in October."

The previous leader, Anthony Towns, began a project called Dunc-Tank to pay the release managers of the project in a bid to get the then pending release, Etch, or version 4.0, out in December as scheduled. It failed; some developers took strong objection, arguing that it created a two-tier system. Etch was finally released on April 8, about 21 months after the last release, Sarge.

I interviewed Hocevar by email; one could have paraphrased all that he said but I think his words better explain what his hopes, dreams and fears are as he begins a job that is, to put it mildly, challenging. His term of office began two weeks ago.

Why do you feel you won the election?

Luck. Only luck. Had 4 people voted differently, I wouldn't have won.

People mainly voted for me because I had a very positive and hopeful platform, and against me because I have had an aggressive stance against the previous leader and the release team back in October.
(A total of) 135 developers out of 482 put me as their only first choice while at most 83 did so for other candidates, yet I only won by 8 votes, which means ballots that did not have me as their first choice penalised me far more in average. That probably makes me the "controversial" candidate (as opposed to the "compromise" candidate).

How does it feel to be leader of a 1000-plus team? Is there some element of trepidation as you begin your term?

I certainly feel a bit lost because of the amount of information I need to synthesise, but I'm really not afraid of the number of developers. I lead them, true, but I don't command. They're already organised in smaller teams, I'm mostly here to give them the proper tools and power for their projects. More than half of them didn't even vote and probably don't care much about our politics, which is not necessarily the most insane position one may have.