Re: Maintainer policy for GDB

[Paul Gilliam <pgilliam at us dot ibm dot com>]

On Friday 18 November 2005 04:39, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:10:20 -0800
> > From: Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com>
> > 
> > About the voting system: I would also prefer to avoid this. The history
> > of the GDB maintenance community since I joined shows that we're able
> > to work together without unsolvable disagreements.
> 
> How far into the past does your history go?  I've seen unsolvable
> disagreements less than a year ago.

Do you have a URL into the mailing list archive?

> 
> > In case a disagreement happens and cannot be resolved, which should
> > be very seldom, the persons involved should present our arguments to
> > the SC, and the SC makes a decision.
> 
> I thought we wanted to minimize SC involvement.  If that's true, we
> should try to actively avoid situations where we need to go to the SC,
> not simply assume they will happen seldom enough to be insignificant.
> 
> One problem with going to the SC is that their procedures take a lot
> of time.  See how much time it took to resolve the last feud we had.

Do you have a URL into the mailing list archive? 

> I think we don't want the adverse effect the SC's slow judgement has
> on GDB development.
> 
> > I agree with Eli that an abusive developer/maintainer may happen again
> > in the future. But I disagree that we should enforce stricter rules to
> > prevent this from happening. This would be a waste of everybody's time
> > for a situation which can only potentially happen very seldomly.
> 
> What ``waste of time''?  It normally takes a few day--a week, say--to
> wait for objections, comments, etc.  We could limit that period to
> something reasonable, like 10 days.  We could do any number of other
> things to prevent the delay from getting unreasonably long.  What I
> cannot understand is why people are arguing for DOING NOTHING AT ALL.
> 
> > How many developers have been bulies in GDB in the past 5 years?
> 
> One thing I've learned about risk management is that you need to

This sounds like "the voice of authority".  Could you tell us your bona fides?

> consider the damage caused in case an event actually happens, not only
> the probability of the event.  Some events are so damaging that you
> might take extreme measures to make sure they never happen again.
> 
> > Let's not penalize the "nice guys", the majority of you, and deal with
> > the few "bad guys" when the situation demands it.
> 
> I hate to lecture, but let me remind you that laws were invented
> because leaving rules of conduct to the people, assuming they are
> reasonable and fair, was found to not work.
> 
> More to the point, if the ``penalty'' is reasonably tolerable, I don't
> understand why we cannot ``penalize'' ourselves a bit, if in return we
> regain trust and cooperation.
> 
> Let me say this in another way: This community, good-willing as
> it may be, failed a serious test of its ability to cooperate just a
> few months ago!  Isn't it reasonable to step back a bit and practice
> self-restraint for a while, until we have more than a few months of
> good cooperation behind us?
> 
> > So let's say we end up having somebody who is abusive and doesn't change
> > his behavior after discussing the problem. Then let's collect the evidences
> > of his behavior, and present them to the SC, who can then decide to revoke
> > or not the priviledges that he's abusing from.
> 
> That's not what happened last time.  Experience should teach us that

Do you have a URL into the mailing list archive? 

> such situations tend to create much uglier dynamics than the idyllic
> picture you envision.  Somehow, that experience taught us nothing, or
> so it seems.
> 
> Or maybe it's the old man in me talking, I don't know.
> 
> > > (Why CC everyone, if we all read the list?)
> > 
> > I like this practice, because emails with my name in the recipients
> > have a little flag, so I pay more attention to them (and look at them
> > first). This is an easy way to make sure that the message gets some
> > people's attention.
> 
> Since Daniel sets up his mailer to prevent replies getting to him by
> direct email, I find it ironic, to say the least, that he forces us to
> get the same message twice.
> 

Is there a technological solution to this problem?  Something that could
tell if a person were NOT subscribed to the list and send the mail directly?