Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2014-02-25

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

Tom Wijsman schrieb:
>> Thanks, I would like to phrase the question a little more precisely:
>>
>> I would like to ask council to state whether the QA team has the
>> authority to mandate a policy when there is neither general agreement
>> that this policy is a good thing, nor the policy would avert any kind
>> of immediate serious problem for users.
> That can be reduced to the question whether QA is considered serious.

I don't think so. If the council answers this question in the negative,
QA still has its emergency powers and can enforce the policy set by the
council.
QA can also propose any new policy they consider useful to the council,
which can then hear the opposing sides and make a decision based on that.

> (There is a majority that agrees as well as a serious problem to users
> in the GTK+ USE flag situation; the former can be deduced from the
> mailing list, the latter can be realized when controlling the USE flag
> among a lot of GTK+ packages. It is something that can be done later; on
> the other hand, if we categorize everything that way it halts progress)

The gtk flag naming problem is not serious in the sense that it will
break user systems. Additionally, it has been known and discussed for a
long time. Establishing a gtk USE flag policy did not become suddenly so
urgent that next council meeting was too far in the future.

> The GLEP states that we can
>
>  1) maintain a list of current "QA Standards";
>
>  2) ensure all developer tools are in line with the current QA
>  standards;
>
>  3) and apply it as per "In the event that a developer still insists
>  that a package does not break QA standards, an appeal can be made at
>  the next council meeting. The package should be dealt with per QA's
>  request until such a time that a decision is made by the council."
>
> which effectively makes the "QA Standards" act as policy.

I don't think that it is necessarily the case. "QA standard" could also
mean telling developers to either use gtk USE flags in the QA team
recommended way, or ensuring through other means that users to not
encounter unexpected breakage. Another possible interpretation is that
QA standards codify established good practices which are largely
non-controversial (it was attempted with saying that live ebuilds should
be unkeyworded or p.mask'ed IIRC)..

> As "QA Standards" under this interpretation are needed to raise
> quality; the council should clarify whether we are able to raise the
> quality level, or rather are restricted to what exists and expect the
> council to raise the quality instead (by having the council do that).

"raise the quality" is very subjective. This would not restrict QA
powers at all, because almost any policy can claim that as its aim.


Best regards,
Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn