Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:49:34 +0100
Steven J Long <slong@××××××××××××××××××.uk> wrote:
> I'll second that; it's impossible to discuss on bugzilla, as you just
> get trolled or spammed.

Funny. Other people manage just fine. Perhaps you should consider that
it's your behaviour that's the issue here. In the mean time, please
provide examples of PMS bugs where you feel you've been unable to
provide a useful contribution -- I had a look through bugs with your
comments in the PMS/EAPI component, and I found:

182028: You post a 'solution' that doesn't solve the requirements, and
then go off and start hurling abuse at David when he tells you that.

201499: You suggest a few things involving metadata.xml, and you are
told why that can't be done. The discussion continues productively.

230725: You helpfully implement a patch. The Council decides it doesn't
like the feature in question and rejects it.

250077: You jump in the middle of a discussion and start muddying the
waters with something we're not addressing.

> The process appears to be moving to "get discussion off ML and onto
> bugzilla where it can be killed" which appears to be a subversion of
> things, from where I'm sitting; I thought the idea was to have ML
> discussion _before_ stuff was proposed for a new EAPI?

That's up to the developers that file the bug. The PMS team has been
fairly flexible in how it handles input, although per Council request
we're going to try to do everything on bugzilla for EAPI 4.

> As it is, we're now getting long lists of stuff dumped on to the ML
> as "the new EAPI" with little review beyond a post-hoc justification
> that "a Gentoo dev filed a bug asking for it."

This is a no-win situation. When I do review features and suggest
modifications or not including them, I'm accused of meddling and only
allowing through things I like. When I don't, I'm accused of allowing
features through without review.

Also, did you miss the whole extensive review thing the Council and
any developer who feels like it does? I shall remind you that a good
number of features on the EAPI 3 proposal didn't make it.

> NB: I'm happy for there to be discussion via bugzilla, but not under
> ciaranm's supervision. After all, he's been proven to have issues
> when it comes to social interaction, which is pretty much essential
> to leading a project.

I'll agree I get confused easily when people start sockpuppeting or
posting pages of incoherent nonsense to unrelated bugs. If you can find
someone capable of dealing with the odd bad apple who does that then
I'd be happy for them to handle that part.

> And even then, I think ideas should be mooted to the list (via the
> RFC mechanism?) in line with the agreed process.

The agreed process is to go to bugzilla, not the list.

> The PMS list has the same problem: it's seen as ciaranm's domain, and
> we all know he doesn't set a collaborative tone, but rather one of
> conflict, which anyone on a clock can't be bothered with.

Please point to examples of conflict on the PMS mailing list. Also, I
shall remind you that the PMS list was a Council decision and that it
was primarily to replace the alias we were using for sending patches
for review -- that's still what it's being used for.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh