Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Restricted version of gentoo-dev mailing list

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 7:33 AM, Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@×××××××.pt> wrote:
> On 2017-05-24, Michał Górny wrote:
>
>> On śro, 2017-05-24 at 03:48 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
>>> On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 08:41:25AM +0200, Micha?? Górny wrote
> [...]
>>>   Note where I said "...posted on Gentoo-User for comment...".  What I'm
>>> asking is for such proposed changes to be posted on Gentoo-User, and the
>>> discussion/feedback/flamefests/etc will be on Gentoo-User.  This type of
>>> surprise stuff seems to happen a lot in Open Source...
>>>
>>> * Gentoo /usr
>>> * Firefox Australis UI, and dropping ALSA and going PulseAudio-only
>>> * GNOME getting a hard-coded dependancy on systemd
>>> * etc, etc
>>
>> And what would be the use of those 'user comments'? Do you believe it
>> would change anything? So what is the purpose of asking more users from
>> feedback *we do not want*?
>
> Is this the official policy of the Gentoo project?
>

Unless you're reading it in an approved GLEP or some other official
summary from the Council or some other project team nothing anybody
says on this list really constitutes "official policy."

Michał put it bluntly, but basically made the same points I did in
fewer words.  The issue isn't WHO we get feedback from, but rather
what KIND of feedback we're getting.

Expressing preferences is sometimes but not often useful around here.
We've actually done forum polls and such when such preferences are
sought, but it doesn't happen often.  This isn't because we don't care
about user preference.  Rather, it is because the whole point of
Gentoo is that we don't make you express your preferences in some poll
and then you're stuck with whatever the majority votes for.  If you
have a preference you can stick it in your USE flags and you don't
have to justify it to anybody.  The whole point of Gentoo is to give
users choices.

When times come where it seems like a choice is being taken away (such
as the examples above), there is usually a driver behind it which we
find difficult to avoid.  If we don't support GNOME without systemd it
probably isn't because we're all systemd fanboys (that should be
pretty obvious).  Instead it is because the gnome team finds that with
their manpower they can't deliver the level of support to the project
while spending time working around the systemd issues.

Ultimately all this stuff is FOSS, so there is almost never a
technical issue that couldn't be worked around in theory.  The problem
is that manpower is limited and if all the people working on a project
would rather spend it on something other than fighting upstream then
that is often what ends up happening.

So, when these kinds of discussions happen it tends to be more about
searching for alternatives that maybe the team hasn't considered, or
trying to assess the impact of a change and how to make it in a way
that isn't too disruptive.  We circulate news items so that we can get
feedback so that when the change is communicated to users they have
clear instructions on how to cope.

So, if an outsider wants to point out that there is some way to
mitigate the impact of a change, or that there might be a way to avoid
the change that doesn't just involve endless patching/etc, then that
is helpful feedback to have.

On the other hand, when these kinds of changes come along there are
some who will just point out how bad the change is for them
personally, and how much work we're causing them.  While we're
sympathetic, in the end we're not employees.  If a volunteer not
spending six hours per month on patches causes your business to lose
500 hours of work, you can't really compare the two.  If there is some
way of making everybody happy I think most around here would be happy
to hear it.  However, just complaining about the impact of a proposed
change when it is clear that those proposing the change and making the
decisions already know that it will be impactful isn't helpful.

Gentoo is hardly the only community where this sort of situation
exists.  I think any non-commercial distro is going to face these
kinds of situations.  Those contributing are going to weigh the impact
of the change in terms of how much work it costs them and how much it
furthers their goals, and a lot of +1's from users aren't going to
have much impact except to the degree that they align with those
pre-existing factors.

Now, for a commercial distro (including semi-commercial ones like
Ubuntu) the situation is going to be different.  RedHat can afford to
pay developers to fork upstream projects if it comes down to it if it
makes their paying customers happy, because they actually have paying
customers.  The customers get to vote with their dollars, and those
dollars give RedHat leadership the power they need to incentivize
developers to build what will bring in those dollars.  There is no
reason this can't work on a smaller scale with Gentoo - I doubt there
is a bug or pull request sitting in limbo that would remain that way
if somebody offered a significant bounty for its resolution.  However,
absent that contributors are going to scratch their own itches whether
that is personal benefit or some kind of community-oriented goal.

-- 
Rich