Re: [BuildBot] Notifications disabled for Debian-s390x-* and Fedora-ppc64*-* builders

[Joel Brobecker <brobecker at adacore dot com>]

> Anyway, I can't believe I'm having to explain these things again here.
> So this will be my last post on this subject.

It seems to me that the root of the discussion comes from conflicting
expectations as to who should be caring about what. In particular,
should the entire responsibility of caring for a given platform be
transfered over to "the community" as soon as a build bot is
contributed?

The GDB project being a volunteer-based community-driven project,
a port, and the associated resources, can only survive if there is
a group of people with time and motivation to match both the port
and the available resources. When resources are put in place for
those platforms, and those resources fail to be useful, the people
to turn to for answers are those who pushed for them to be put
in place. Asking the community in general to be responsible does
not seem like an attainable goal, nor is it attractive to me.

That is not to say that the community is entirely care free either.
I think we see nearly every day people cooperating on subjects
that do not directly matter to them, and as far as I am concerned
going well beyond the call of duty. But there has to be a reasonable
limit to what we ask of people to help for other platforms.
Contributing hardware is not a fire-and-forget thing. For the issues
with the buildbots, there has to be someone who has a stake in
those platforms, and willing to drive the effort in getting those
back in shape. These are the people we should turn to, not the
person who provides the service for those who want to. And if there
are none and the resource becomes a nuisance rather than a help,
then the logical answer is to remove it.

If anything, what this discussion leads me to, is that the lessons
learned here is that we should be clearer about an identified group
who would be responsible for what before a new buildbot is being put
in place, and also about what level of "service" can be expected
from the people maintaining the infrastructure, vs what concerns
the platforms the buildbots build and test.

Hopefully this will reconcile the idea of silencing a couple of
buildbots with the idea of calling for additional participation.
For me, there is no conflict in adding buildbots while silencing
others if there is a fully motivated group beind some, and not
enough behind others.

And finally, I felt the attacks on Sergio were really no way
to communicate with someone we're supposed to cooperate with.
I hope we all understand that, and we all know that there are
other ways to express contradicting opinions that are just
as effective and may even gain you a bit of extra goodwill.

-- 
Joel