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

[Tom Wijsman]

On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 09:38:41 +0100
Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:

> Dnia 2014-02-20, o godz. 21:47:46
> Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@g.o> napisał(a):
>
> > On 01:14 Fri 21 Feb     , Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn wrote:
> > > Andreas K. Huettel schrieb:
> > >
> > > > Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not
> > > > hesitate to repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you
> > > > previously suggested one (since the last meeting).
> > > >
> > > > We will send out the agenda one week before the meeting date,
> > > > i.e. 2014-02-18.
> > >
> > > If that is still possible, I would like to add one more item
> > > related to the gtk/gtk2/gtk3 USE flags to the agenda. Namely,
> > > whether Council gives QA the powers to enact such a rule.
> > >
> > > In my opinion, it is not necessary for QA to have such powers (and
> > > therefore better if they don't have it). QA can already act per
> > > GLEP 48 if there is an immediate serious problem for users. And
> > > when there is not an immediate serious problem, any such rule can
> > > be proposed by QA to council for decision, especially if the
> > > topic is as controversial as the gtk USE flag issue.
> >
> > Funny how every time a controversial decision gets made, somebody
> > inevitably tries to undermine the authority of the group making the
> > decision.
>
> Well, I think one issue here is that QA undermined the authority of
> GTK+ maintainer here,

The USE flag is meant for tree wide usage, it is thus more of a question
of responsibility. If other maintainers as well as users have an
inconsistent and therefore confusing usage of the USE flag, then the
GTK+ maintainer can under that authority be expected to address that; as
to stop several reincarnations, a tracking bug they're not CC-ed on,
the QA team as well as Council getting pinged about this, ...

Note that I do not mean to blame them in specific, as there appears no
document stating who owns USE flags, and that owner can very well be
Gentoo itself; the above paragraph just assumes the authority over the
USE flag as you have put it forward, but it could just as well be seen
as that such authority by the GTK+ maintainers is non-existing.

If the meaning of the USE flags affects other maintainers more, as well
as our users; I'd think the authority should be with Gentoo as a whole.

Otherwise it is questionable as to why the community is discussing these
GTK+ USE flags in the first place. Does the community have an influence?

> and applied another policy behind their backs.

QA meetings are public and can be attended by those interested;
the policy idea was brought to this gentoo-dev ML by wired, thus
everyone has the opportunity to give feedback on the policy forming.

> So we have two conflicting policies now, one from people who maintain
> GTK+ and a lot of packages using it, and the other from a team of
> people who just had a meeting and decided otherwise.

GLEP 48 resolves this conflict.

> > In my understanding, the issue you want to address is whether the
> > QA team has authority over tree policy.
>
> Even more general, whether QA is supposed to ignore people

We've read a lot about it.

> and just tell them what to do instead of trying to reach an agreement
> over having a single policy.

After several years, an agreement with all parties involved has shown
to be unreachable. The time has come to decide as a distribution in
the upcoming council meeting; with the users, consistent usage,
acceptable maintenance, migration history and future goals in mind.

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@g.o
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D