Re: [gentoo-project] Call for Agenda Items -- Council Meeting 2015-10-11

[Anthony G. Basile]

On 10/9/15 6:31 AM, hasufell wrote:
> On 10/09/2015 03:21 AM, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
>> On Thu, 8 Oct 2015 14:24:30 -0400 Rich Freeman wrote:
>>> On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 11:01 AM, Anthony G. Basile <blueness@g.o> wrote:
>>>> So perhaps it was unwise for us to get into a situation where either 1) we
>>>> violate the Social Contract or 2) we have to surmount a technically
>>>> difficult situation.
>>>>
>>> I don't see how mirroring github on bugzilla violates our social
>>> contract, for several reasons:
>>>
>>> 1.  Developers aren't required to post patches to bugzilla before
>>> committing them to the tree, so nothing is lost by posting patches on
>>> github that might otherwise not be posted anywhere.
>>> 2.  Developers aren't required to open bugs on bugzilla before fixing
>>> bugs.  So, nothing is lost by opening pull requests on github that
>>> might otherwise not be opened anywhere.
>> The problem comes not from the fact that GitHub stuff is not
>> mirrored on bugzilla, but from the fact that with GitHub
>> integration Gentoo becomes dependent on a proprietary
>> metadata, which is outside of control of our community. Bugzilla
>> mirroring was discussed only as one of possible solutions.
>>
> No, gentoo does not become dependent on a proprietary metadata.
> The metadata is in the git repository. How someone communicates a change
> to other maintainers is up to him and that may as well happen via
> VoIP... you want people to record their talk and then upload it to
> bugzilla? No, I won't, because it was encrypted and private.
> The same applies for IRC, where you could argue we don't have full
> control over the infrastructure and as a result, no one is allowed to
> discuss stuff there, but only on bugzilla. This really makes no sense.
>
Some changes are trivial and can be communicated in any way.  Eg. you 
communicated to me recently via github that I needed and `|| die` in a 
ebuild.  But some changes are not trivial and have far reaching 
consequences.  I will ask for those to be discussed in a public forum 
where other devs can see it and its open to public scrutiny.  Eg. we had 
the discussion about libressl on this list. If an important discussion 
starts on github, what am I to say, or what will most devs say?  They 
will not say let's move it to bugzilla, they'll have the discussion 
there.  Once that happens, we have important history on infrastructure 
outside of our control. That where we cross the line with the social 
contract.

-- 
Anthony G. Basile, Ph.D.
Gentoo Linux Developer [Hardened]
E-Mail    : blueness@g.o
GnuPG FP  : 1FED FAD9 D82C 52A5 3BAB  DC79 9384 FA6E F52D 4BBA
GnuPG ID  : F52D4BBA