Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Concept of Projects - How to proceed?

[Rich Freeman]

On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 2:14 PM Jonas Stein <jstein@g.o> wrote:
>
> On 07/06/2020 03.43, Aaron Bauman wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 07, 2020 at 01:49:28AM +0200, Jonas Stein wrote:
>
> > I will happily revert my change on the graphics project Wiki [..]
>
> Glad to read your offer. Yes, please do so.
>
> I think it would hurt the Gentoo project if single developers delete
> projects
>
> - without without informing the project members
> - without prior discussion (on gentoo-dev for example),
> - without vote/consent
> - without an organized shutdown (reassign bugs, archive things...).
>
> However we should continue to find a general solution for the problems
> discussed in this thread and find a general consent.

While I get what you're saying, I think it would also be helpful if we
just let people who feel they are actually impacted by changes like
this speak up for themselves, instead of assuming that they must exist
and that it is our duty to speak up for them.

Are you, directly, impacted in any negative way by this change?  If so
it would probably be helpful if you just explained the issue.

This really seems like a fairly uneventful change.  I do think it is
better to pre-announce changes.  However, I suspect that most of the
fuss is because a lot of people assume that a change like this must
have some kind of big impact, and for whatever reason all the people
who are being harmed by it are just afraid to speak up so we must do
so on their behalf.

I say this as somebody who used to raise a lot more hypothetical
objections to changes in the past.  I've since learned that it is easy
to over-react, and that when others are actually impacted by a change
they will tend to speak up.

I'm pretty sure in this case there was an organized shutdown - I doubt
they just removed the project without reassigning packages or bugs.
They were effectively already assigned to nobody as it was, since the
project was inactive.

I guess my point is that while this probably could be done in a better
way, I think it is likely to end up happening either way, so all
undoing it is going to do is send a lot of people two more rounds of
bugspam at best.  Or, it will result in one more round of bugspam and
then these packages continue to be unmaintained because nobody is
going to bother doing all the steps you're suggesting to get rid of it
in the future.  Easier to just leave the dead project around and let
users wonder why nobody pays attention to the bugs they open.

-- 
Rich