Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Brian Dolbec]

On Fri, 2012-12-21 at 10:46 +0000, Markos Chandras wrote:
> On 21 December 2012 08:49, Brian Dolbec <dolsen@g.o> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2012-12-20 at 21:30 -0800, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr." wrote:
> >> I have several suggestions how we can improve things:
> >>
> >> 1. 3 months is too short period anyway.
> >>
> >> 2. Think through what the goals are. We do not want to retire as many
> >> people as possible. We do not want to frustrate people who do contribute
> >> to Gentoo. We do not want to discourage people who consider becoming new
> >> developers. At least I don't.
> >>
> >> 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider
> >> maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in
> >> metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a
> >> formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other
> >> people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package.
> >>
> >> 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained.
> >> Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good.
> >> They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs
> >> access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with
> >> that as long as things are maintained properly.
> >>
> >> 5. Remember that cvs/bugzilla activity is not the only way of
> >> contributing. It's probably most tanglible and very needed, but let's
> >> not reduce real people and their real world situations, and their effort
> >> to contribute to just dates and numbers.
> >>
> >> Paweł
> >>
> >>
> >
> > +1
> >
> >   Even though I am a relatively new developer, I too got an email
> > stating my inactivity (not from undertakers@).  My main purpose for
> > becoming a dev was not for ebuild work, but more for coding.  Three
> > months is way too short to be making that type of list.
> >
> > For all those young devs out there still in college/university.  You
> > will find that time accelerates as you age.  3 months may seem a long
> > time for you now, but give it another 5-10 years and you'll discover
> > that 3 months can go by quite quickly.  Especially with a family (wife,
> > kids, pets) and a full time job.
> >
> > --
> > Brian Dolbec <dolsen@g.o>
>
> Nobody said the policy is correct. I face the same problems so the
> policy might not be appropriate anymore. However, I totally disagree
> with
> the way Doug started this thread. Calling us "brain dead" ? No sorry,
> I am not willing to discuss anything about this policy nor willing to
> change it if someone can't behave properly and ask us nicely to
> discuss the problem. We never *insulted* or *threated*  anyone with
> retirement, we are extremely polite and we just ask for status updates
> in order to clean up metadata, reassign bugs and look for new
> maintainers of unattended packages. Nobody ever complained in the
> past, and all of them were willing to drop themselves from metadata
> without problems. But I never expected this attitude just for asking
> "hey are you there? do you still want to maintain all these packages?
> any ETA on coming back". Seriously...
>

Ah, yes.  Sorry, I was replying to Pawel's suggestions.  I should have
deleted Doug's text from the above as I've done now.  I in no way meant
it as I was insulted/threatened by the email I got.  And Doug's original
comments were harsh.
-- 
Brian Dolbec <dolsen@g.o>