1 |
On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote: |
2 |
> |
3 |
> Thank all of your for your continuous support. I will not be deploying |
4 |
> any scripts to improve integration in any way. |
5 |
|
6 |
Ok, this makes this the second item on the agenda where the proponents |
7 |
essentially have announced an intention to quit before the meeting |
8 |
because of voiced disagreement. As with the other, I suggest we move |
9 |
forward and discuss/decide so that at least the issue has some closure |
10 |
and either Michał or others have a sense of what does and doesn't have |
11 |
support. |
12 |
|
13 |
Gentoo is a relatively large project. If this were a group of 5 |
14 |
self-selected developers maybe we could all just do our own thing and |
15 |
rely on the fact that we knew we agreed on everything before we |
16 |
started. If we had a big complex release process we could perhaps |
17 |
rely on the fact that revert wars and such aren't really visible to |
18 |
our users. We have neither of those, so we need to have at least a |
19 |
semblance of governance before we go making changes. |
20 |
|
21 |
In both of the cases at hand (dynamic deps and github integration) the |
22 |
proponents have known for many months that the issues were |
23 |
controversial. When you propose any change you're going to have to |
24 |
expect opposition. When you propose a controversial change you're |
25 |
deluding yourself if you think you'll avoid it. |
26 |
|
27 |
People have a right to voice contrary opinions with reasoned |
28 |
arguments. The fact that not everybody agrees with those arguments |
29 |
does not diminish their value. |
30 |
|
31 |
You do have a right to expect timely resolution of the issues, but the |
32 |
council meeting schedule isn't a mystery. We meet once a month per |
33 |
the wiki page, and the meeting chairs are all pre-announced. Your |
34 |
issue will be discussed on the lists before we meet, as a courtesy to |
35 |
the entire community so that we can make informed and reasoned |
36 |
decisions, and there is no appearance of insiders/etc. We just have |
37 |
too many users to go shooting from the hip on things that are directly |
38 |
visible to them, even if this might have been more fashionable at a |
39 |
time in the past. |
40 |
|
41 |
I appreciate the efforts individuals and teams go through to come up |
42 |
with new features, and seeing them criticized, perhaps unfairly, is no |
43 |
doubt difficult. However, there are others in Gentoo who contribute |
44 |
and they need us to have some kind of semblance of policy to do so. |
45 |
That includes teams like QA, or Comrel, or Infra, who don't want to be |
46 |
the referees in revert wars and battles over bugzilla configuration |
47 |
and so on. They count on some kind of semblance of order to do their |
48 |
jobs. So does the entire developer community, because in the end |
49 |
we're all trusting each other to cooperate. |
50 |
|
51 |
The Council doesn't operate solely as a popularity contest. We don't |
52 |
print out and weigh the emails for and against to make every decision. |
53 |
Bring your arguments to the lists. You don't have to have the last |
54 |
reply to every email to win. Indeed, you don't /necessarily/ need to |
55 |
reply to any of them to win. So, take a break from the argument if it |
56 |
is making your blood boil. Half the time when people seem to want to |
57 |
give up on issues it is in cases where 6/7 council members seem |
58 |
inclined to support them. You'll never persuade everybody, nor do you |
59 |
have to. |
60 |
|
61 |
-- |
62 |
Rich |