Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo: State of the Union

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

Hola Ryan, 

On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 10:14 -0700, Ryan Phillips wrote:
> This is a follow up to Mark's (halcy0n's) thread regarding QA Policies and
> seemant's letter on herds, teams, and projects.
>
> I believe the way Gentoo is doing things is broken.  There I have said it.  The
> entire project has reached a level of being too political and trying to solve
> certain problems in the wrong way.

There certainly is scope for doing some things better, but this is of no
surprise to any of us. Gentoo has grown and matured quite a lot over the
past few years and what worked with 15 developers doesn't work all that
well with 300+, in the process of finding out what works best we have
(and will continue to) encounter difficulties and situations that
doesn't please everyone. However, I wouldn't say that it's all bad.

> Some of these problems are intermixed.  Please consider them starting points
> for discussion.
>
> __Problem: Developer Growth__
>
> I find that developer growth as being a problem.  Adding a developer to gentoo
> should be as easy as 1. has the user contributed numerous (~5+) patches that
> helps the project move forward.  If yes, then commit access should be given.
> Adding a developer is usually quite a chore.  There are numerous reasons why
> this is a problem: having a live tree, taking a test, and not defining within
> policy when a person could possibly get commit access.

Having just completed my ebuild and end quiz last week (having been a
'fake developer/staffer' for a little while longer) I must admit that I
didn't in any way find the quizzes to be at all difficult or hard, and
certainly not at all something that made it more difficult to become a
developer. If anything I found taking the quizzes to be educational,
now, I may be blessed by having Seemant as my mentor; he did ensure that
he took the time to review my quiz properly and that he also took the
time to expand on the questions already asked in the quiz (We played 20
questions and he made me answer a bunch of semi related stuff which in
turn helped me ellaborate on my answers as well as getting a better
understanding of the various bits mentioned in the quiz). And while I
have been around for a bit now, I certainly value the work my mentor did
in ensuring that I felt comfortable and confident before taking the
plunge and submitting.

As for the work involved from recruiters, they certainly didn't leave me
hanging around and when my quizzes were submitted it went pretty fast
ahead, they were marked, passed and my access was changed. 

I personally believe that the quizzes could be more difficult. And I
hope that the current revamp of the recruitment process will be one that
will benefit potential developers as well as current developers, Gentoo
as a whole and of course our user base.

> All these reasons leave the project stagnant and lacking developers.

On the contrary, now while I agree that some projects may be lacking in
man power I think overall there is more likely to be some deadweight. I
know Bryan (kloeri) has done quite a job out of clearing out and
retiring inactive devs, but I still believe that we may be overstaffed
in some areas. Maybe those areas that are lacking need to look at why
they are not attracting people? Or why people who showed interest didn't
stick around for the entire recruitment process? I believe that we need
to ensure that we have top notch, high quality devs rather than aiming
for quantity. 

And of course, we don't want a situation where it's too easy to become a
dev only to have people yo-yo in/out of the project as and when the
fancy takes them.

<snip>

> __Problem: QA Policies__
>
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/37544
>
> It seems that the QA Policies are a product of a Live Tree, and going partially
> non-live would solve the problems listed.
>
> Everyone here is on the same team.  There will be some breakages in the tree
> and those can be dealt with.  Like Seemant [1] said, herds are just groups of
> like *packages*.  The QA Policy is wrong when it says cross-team assistance; we
> are all on the *same* team.  The tree should naturally work.  If it doesn't
> then that is a bug for all of us.

Although we are all here to work on Gentoo and hopefully have a unision
goal, the motivation and the ideas for implementation and of course what
we find important differ. For the most part we are a group of pretty
decent people, but we don't always agree. Which is perfectly fine.

> Conflict resolution should not be a subproject.  It should *not* exist at all.
> Rules need to be in place to avoid conflict.  Having some sort of voting
> structure for all the developers (this doesn't mean requiring everyone to vote)
> and not just the council or devrel makes a lot of sense for most things.  If I
> don't like how someone is acting within the project there should be a vote and
> then see if that person is kicked out.  No trial, no anything besides a vote.
> And if I lose I have to deal with it.  Either stay with the project, or find
> something else.  This solution just works.

I am not entirely certain what your definition of conflict is, but in a
group as large as ours there will no doubt be a conflict of interests
and beliefs. People can't be expected to agree 100% all the time, and
lets be realistic, if we did we would be going absolutely nowhere and
this would be terribly boring. 

Now, I believe that having a votes only system in place could be quite
dangerous and could easily be abused. Say Developer X annoyed me, so I
decided to ensure that there was a vote, I could easily fabricate some
reason for why I thought he was bad for the project and I could
certainly win people over on my side to ensure that he was voted out. 

Now, admittedly the current policy for dealing with conflicts of the
sort of nature where action needs to be taken against a developer has
been proven to give more headache than what it's worth and therefor
Devrel are attempting to work on changing the way they deal with this.
Now, the discussion about this has been open on the gentoo-devrel@ ML
for a few days and it appears that no-one has any input on the proposed
new policy at all. 

Personally I would like to see a change, I would like us to be able to
avoid having to go through things such as a hearing process. I would
like for trolling/flaming and personal attacks to be discouraged and
stomped down on as and when they occur rather than when they have become
the sort of problem that affects the morale and motivation for all of
us. But that's a different discussion for a different time and a
different mailing list.


> Gentoo should be a fun environment.  The previous paragraph should be taken as
> a last resort.

Quite. "It's supposed to be fun, too." Now, personally I find Gentoo to
be primarily fun. I am involved with some incredibly awesome teams and I
deal with people who just plain kick arse. And I know that for many they
find the same within their projects/teams/whatevers... It's just a shame
we can't make it global yet ;)

Cheers,
Christel Dahlskjaer





-- 
gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list