Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: formally allow qa to suspend commit rights

[Alec Warner]

On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 4:46 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 7:22 PM, Patrick Lauer <patrick@g.o> wrote:
> >
> > Yey, we're allowed to sometimes do revert games, if we're asking nicely
> > ... and the only way to stop the revert game is for QA to stand down.
> > We're allowed to send strongly-worded emails, but getting things baked
> > into policy is too radical.
>
> So, here is how I reconcile this.  There are basically two kinds of
> problems - technical problems, and people problems.  We need to deal
> with both.  I see QA as being primarily responsible for technical
> problems, and it should be staffed to deal with them.  I'm fully
> supportive of it being a policy-creating body, with the Council being
> the place to vet any policies that seem controversial.
>
> If an ebuild has a deficiency, that's a technical problem - QA should
> step in.  QA should also educate the maintainer so that they
> understand how to avoid the problem in the future.
>
> Suppose the maintainer refuses to take the problem seriously (whether
> they're just lazy, incompetent, or malicious).  Now, that is a people
> problem, and really shouldn't be QA's responsibility to deal with
> beyond pointing it out to Comrel.
>
> Comrel should deal with people problems, and they should be staffed
> accordingly.  They need the manpower so that they can deal with them
> efficiently.  When QA says that a developer is not following a
> technical policy, Comrel should defer to them as this is their area of
> expertise.  If either QA or Comrel gets out of hand there is always
> the appeal to Council, so neither body needs to be walking on
> eggshells or taking 18 months to decide to do something about a
> problem.  If QA feels like Comrel isn't taking their complaints
> seriously, there is the Council - Comrel should be taking their
> concerns seriously.  However, QA needs to recognize that people
> problems aren't always best solved with the use of command-line
> utilities.
>
> In then end we'll only get where we need to be if we work together,
> and avoid the passive-aggressive nonsense.  If somebody feels that QA
> is out of line by all means put it on the Council agenda.  Otherwise,
> devs need to do what they can to make the job of QA easier, and not
> harder.
>
> About the only time I really see need for "emergency suspension
> powers" is in the situation of some kind of hacking attempt.  I'm not
> aware of any attack like this ever being mounted, but if it were the
> necessary action would involve a lot more than just suspending
> somebody's commit rights.  Probably the best first action would be to
> disable all rsync/etc distribution, lock down cvs entirely, and then
> begin cleanup.
>
>
I can only think of one incident, and once we learned of the incident that
developer was let go.



> If there is some kind of general standing problem of Comrel ignoring
> QA by all means let the Council know (assuming you can't just work it
> out with them).  However, Comrel announced not all that long ago a
> general desire to enforce CoC with short bans/etc, and that they were
> interested in having a vital QA organization so that they have some
> kind of authority to rely on for technical questions.  That certainly
> sounds like a good direction to me, so I don't want to dwell too much
> on the past.
>
> Bottom line - don't be afraid to do your job, and when something gets
> in the way speak up about it!
>
> Rich
>
>