Re: [gentoo-project] Discontinuing the support for GitHub pull requests

[Andreas K. Huettel]

Am Dienstag, 31. Oktober 2017, 14:50:42 CET schrieb Gregory Woodbury:
>
> I understand the concerns that Gentoo wants to guarantee that the project
> provides high-quality software. However, quite a number of people I know
> have taken a look at the requirements documents and decided that the hoops
> are too messy and unnecessary for them to show that they are competent.
> Many of them are already familiar with the methods and tools, and it is
> insulting that they would
> have to go through an "apprenticeship" before they are allowed to even
> submit patches.

A large part of that is perception. 
(*Also* because not everyone is as well-prepared and as knowledgeable as s/he 
thinks.)

Another part of it was in the past delays because of busy recruiters (sadly it 
did happen that people had everything ready and still had to wait many weeks). 
I'd assume this is not so bad anymore at the moment.

> These "attacks" (strong complaints and abusive language) do not improve
> the reputation of Gentoo out in the world. The other week I did a brief
> report on the Gentoo project and an update on the status of the
> repositories with regards to the latest software packages. The 'lightning
> talk' was appreciated but a few comments were made that several folks used
> and liked Gentoo, but were discouraged about the future of the project due
> to the politics.

About abusiveness, believe me it's a lot better now than it was maybe, say 10 
years ago. (Not that I was already around back then, my involvement goes only 
about 8 years back.)

The politics... well, there always are different opinions. Github is practical 
and useful, but from the side of free software philosophy (and yes I guess 
we're all free software supporters) not entirely uncontroversial. And in a 
large project we need to come up with compromises that make the maximum number 
of contributors happy.

> I have actually been programming since 1958, after learning FORTRAN
> by keypunching programs for my Father on weekends and evenings. In
> High School (circa 1970) i elected to go for a B.S. in Computer Science
> with a strong elective set in genetics. Working at Duke in 1978, I was
> somewhat involved in the development and administration of a system
> that was in the same room and the CS machine that was used to develop
> NetNews/USENET. A null modem and serial cables allowed for testing
> much of the development without needing to use slow modem connections.
> The systems were, of course, running UNIX. In 1980, I tried my hand
> at being a 'consultant' in the NYC Metro area, mostly at Bell Labs and
> NY Telephone. When I had to take a short gig on Wall Street, I couldn't
> deal any longer with the commercial scene, and went back to Duke, and
> spent another 25 years working as a system admin, programmer, and
> on-campus consultant, jumping on the Linux bandwagon very early.
> With such a background, I find the "required" hoops of the Gentoo
> developer admission process very insulting, especially in light of the
> politics I have observed; and I have no patience or inclination to deal
> with it just to become a member of the "inner circle" and get a chance
> to obtain commit access and to vote for the inbred council.
>
> After 59 years of programming, admining (excuse me - DevOps), testing,
> on a wide variety of platforms, I can be cranky and fussy. The thing is:
>        I do care about Gentoo.

Ha! With this background, as a member of the inbred council, I challenge you 
to produce a set of quiz answers that we can submit to the recruiters within 
at most 2 dedicated working days. :) One day for yourself, then review by me, 
then another day to fix it up. 

I suppose you could be developer with commit access within 2-3 weeks (and the 
main delay will be scheduling).

Yes we are happy for people to join up, and yes it takes some effort. But if 
you care about Gentoo, go the last step. Otherwise, at least in my case a 
certain tiredness sets in, about the freeloaders who submit one perfect pull 
request after the other but are too lazy to do the one little thing they don't 
like (signing up) so I don't have to pointlessly review their stuff anymore. 
(And yes, the developer with commit access who merges a pull request is in the 
end responsible for it.)

> Web tools
> to support this workflow should not be too hard to make. (I am actually
> surprised that there is not more automations to support development, but I
> suspect each developer would prefer to use the toolsets they are most
> comfortable with when working.)

Ah yes but for that we'd first have to agree on the color of it... (The web 
interface of course... :)

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@g.o
Gentoo Linux developer (council, perl, libreoffice)