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On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 17:17:17 -0700 Donnie Berkholz |
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<dberkholz@g.o> wrote: |
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| The vocal minority often gets its way, despite 99% of the other |
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| developers being happy with any given situation. |
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That's a somewhat dangerous claim to make, for several reasons. |
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Firstly, the vocal people are usually the ones who have a stake in an |
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issue. Most people don't care about an issue because they trust that |
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those who understand the issue and its implications will get it fixed. |
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Secondly, it's a good way of dismissing technical discussion. Coming up |
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with the right solution for a problem is often difficult, but doing so |
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can save huge amounts of effort later on. |
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Thirdly, it's a good way of dismissing anyone who happens to disagree |
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with you. |
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Fourthly, if the majority aren't vocal, how do you know what they want? |
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| The problem got so bad that our Developer Relations team wrote up an |
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| etiquette guide. |
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No no. That was a result of devrel being unable to address the real |
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issues that were affecting them (recruiting holdups, inconsistent and |
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far too low standards for people who did manage to get through the |
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system, complete neglect of the documentation they'd decided they'd |
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maintain), and needing to make it look like they were doing something. |
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It's often much easier to invent a problem where there is none |
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than it is to fix the real issues -- and doing so is a good way of |
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gaining popularity, at least for a while. |
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It's very easy to claim that "there are too many flamewars", even if |
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that isn't actually true. It's hard to claim "Portage needs replacing, |
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the tree has huge QA issues, several archs are horribly unmaintained and |
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too many developers don't have a clue what they're doing" because a) |
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they're difficult problems to address, b) if you do say them, Condorcet |
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ensures that you won't get elected and c) you might be expected to fix |
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them. |
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Most of these problems could be solved if we had a council that was far |
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less spineless, a council that's prepared to address the *real* issues |
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rather than doing nothing, a council that shows leadership and provides |
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direction where it's needed without screwing things up where it's not. |
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The problem with the old system was devrel's habit of holding secret |
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meetings, Daniel's habit of going off and deciding new directions |
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(catalyst, genkernel, ...) without consulting those who understood the |
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issues involved and so on. The problem with the new system is that it |
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encourages fence sitting and stagnation, and draws focus away from the |
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real issues and onto populist mud flinging. |
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-- |
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Ciaran McCreesh |
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Mail : ciaran dot mccreesh at blueyonder.co.uk |
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-- |
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