[gentoo-dev] Re: [QA] Official support for migrating ebuilds out of games.eclass

[Duncan]

Rich Freeman posted on Thu, 30 Jun 2016 20:24:43 -0400 as excerpted:

> In this case I can assure you that people were frustrated that it took
> as long as it did to end up with a decision, and it largely was because
> we recognized the controversy.  There were multiple rounds of meetings
> and numerous opportunities to provide feedback.  Ultimately, however,
> providing feedback does not guarantee any particular result.

Indeed.  

This bit of the previous discussion has been missing from this round so 
far, but FWIW, one of the big frustrations from the council side and I 
think from most looking on (certainly me) was that they /begged/ games 
team to step up and present a reasonable defense of their policy and 
provide some sort of presumably opposing viewpoint from which to work 
toward a compromise somewhere in the middle.

And they begged games team to work with them to let other devs on the 
team and help get them up and running with policies, etc, as bugs were 
piling up.

But the problem was, games team was pretty much MIA, in terms of any form 
of communication whatsoever.  While some individual games team members 
were still maintaining their individual ebuilds, /nobody/ was willing or 
able to speak for the team, and to help with other ebuilds that were 
effectively left rotting, because games team, at least as an actually 
working /team/, simply /wasn't/, any more.

There were volunteers who /tried/ to get on the team.  No ack from the 
lead or anybody to speak for the team.  Nobody to bring them upto speed 
on policies, etc.  And nobody answered council or QA questions about why, 
and what could be done to fix it.  And the eclass was left rotting as 
well, an area that's definitely QA's territory, again seemingly with 
anybody willing to reply apparently vanished from earth.

Meanwhile, games were flourishing in overlays, because games in gentoo 
itself had become a toxic wasteland with the absent games team asserting 
control, but with nobody willing or able to do anything about it.


So eventually, after repeated /begging/ from both QA and council with, 
essentially, crickets in response...

Council had to act to bring back some sort of sanity.  Including working 
to finally close a long open security bug on at least one game /because/ 
of the way gentoo was handling things -- it wasn't a problem on other 
distros because they didn't have a special games group to deal with.

Even then, /nobody/ was willing to volunteer to lead the newly reforming 
games team, and few were willing to even be members.  By this time 
everything involved with it was simply too toxic, I guess.

So what council did first, was basically formerly declare than anyone 
that wanted could commit new (not yet in-tree) games on their own, 
without having to fear games team vetoing or reverting.  And the eclass 
was deprecated as effectively unmaintained, simply recognizing the fact.

And even /that/ was basically the minimum necessary to get some 
functionality back, hoping it might wake someone up on games team to at 
least have someone to work with and to try to compromise with.

But six months later, we still don't see a newly reactivated and gaining 
health games team trying to get back in the game, as it were.

And the /biggest/ problem, we /still/ don't have anyone of the former 
members (remember, no one further could join as it was too dysfunctional) 
volunteering to step up and actually head the thing, maintain or arrange 
for maintenance of the eclass, etc, despite the fact that some are still 
raising objections to moving ebuilds off the eclass, etc.

Bottom line, the former games team is /still/ dysfunctional and basically 
dead, and can't even pull itself together enough for there to be any 
other realistic alternative /but/ to have QA continue to work on moving 
existing ebuilds off of it, as proposed here.  This has gone on for 
/years/, and truth be, it's really a bit late now, even if games team 
/were/ to suddenly resurrect and try to reverse things now.

But that /still/ isn't happening.  There's others objecting, still saying 
it's not their use-case but it's a shame... and it is a shame... but at 
some point, that stinking rotting corpse just /must/ be buried or burned 
or otherwise disposed of.  Otherwise, it's just a worsening public health 
hazard, however much of a shame that death might be.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman