From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 11174 invoked by uid 1002); 27 Jun 2003 20:49:35 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gentoo-dev-help@gentoo.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Received: (qmail 18939 invoked from network); 27 Jun 2003 20:49:35 -0000 From: Alec Berryman To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org In-Reply-To: <20030627194703.GA404@cerberus.oppresses.us> References: <87r85fba2o.fsf@killr.ath.cx> <20030627194703.GA404@cerberus.oppresses.us> Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="=-dTDVZtcz2+1SMS/fjZ+/" Message-Id: <1056746975.1164.31.camel@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.0 Date: 27 Jun 2003 15:49:36 -0500 Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-core] proposal: make gentoo-core publicly read-only X-Archives-Salt: 97594688-cca2-4fb8-9f7f-4ab9afdaa2f9 X-Archives-Hash: 9ef27f0a44d238002446c09daa783c6d --=-dTDVZtcz2+1SMS/fjZ+/ Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, 2003-06-27 at 14:47, Jon Portnoy wrote: > On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 02:21:35PM -0500, Matthew Kennedy wrote: > > I personally feel that it may be a good time to reconsider making > > gentoo-core a publicly read-only list. Several users I know (some > > personally) are irate that we appear to be a "behind-closed-doors" > > project. Yes, this stems from the recent fork announcement. > >=20 > > gentoo-core is where we do our planning, discuss management structure, > > discuss technical questions (of which we already try to CC gentoo-dev > > out of courtesy) and architecture issues. > >=20 > > I hope that we can open -core as a publicly read-only list to involve > > our community more. We owe this much to our user-base in my opinion. > > For these reasons, I have CC'd this to -dev. > >=20 > > Matt > >=20 >=20 > We've already gone over the reasons -core should remain private=20 > (discussing security before it goes public and personal information). I=20 > think that a better approach would be to enforce a policy of all=20 > technical stuff and anything that isn't sensitive being discussed on=20 > -dev rather than -core. Moving all development talk to the, well, -dev list would be the best solution. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have heard four main reasons to keep -core private: 1) Gentoo should speak with a unified voice, and by keeping the community excluded from -core, announcements and policy changes can be discussed without a public display of fragmentation. 2) Devs make mistakes, and would rather "fall on their face" in private rather than in public. 3) -core would quickly become cluttered with mis-postings. 4) -core is boring anyway, why would you want to read it? While these four reasons, as well as the security issues mentioned above, look to be good ones on the surface, they become marginal when examined and all serve the purpose of setting the developers apart and away from their community. Security is not a valid excuse to keep things secret - Bugtraq and its kind already bring things out in the open quickly enough. That dead horse has been beaten enough. Gentoo can speak with a unified voice while still allowing discussion.=20 For example, it seems like once a month someone posts to -dev offering to re-implement portage or something like it in another language - Java, C, C++, Perl, whatever. The standard answer from a dev is invariably "We've discussed this on -core before and decided it wasn't a good idea." Now, the user who offered of himself to make what he saw as an improvement feels shut out and unwanted. Had there existed -core archive, the user could have read through the reasons and understood why - things are not always as obvious as they seem. Even better, the user might have looked through the archives and discovered the said discussions before posting, saving everyone a headache. Gentoo has stayed with python despite many offers - what harm does a valid, public evaluation do? Devs do make mistakes - Daniel Robbins recently slipped on some unmasking and there were a lot of questions in -user and on the boards.=20 Obviously, no one wants to make this kind of mistake, but the end result wasn't bad - it was corrected quickly, and no one thinks Daniel is incompetent. Everyone makes mistakes. If -core is read-only, there won't be mis-postings to it by unwary users. -core might be very boring, but even most Gentoo users' eyes would glaze over trying to parse the kernel code. Does that mean the kernel is distributed as a binary, because 'it would be boring' to try and improve the source code for those few that would want to? Perhaps the devs might have an idea that a non-"official"-dev can implement quickly; everyone benefits. Currently, -dev isn't a developer list; most of the e-mail is users' suggestions discussed by other users and the occasional dev, as well as the occasional mis-post targeted for -user. Perhaps in the future, if -core would be accessible to the community that drive it, -dev could be the buffer zone between the final work of the developers and the user community. Right now, there's a feeling that the developers are shutting themselves in an ivory tower. That's not good for community.=20 Gentoo's social contract has always said it will not "hide its problems", but has continued to keep its core development decisions closed. --=-dTDVZtcz2+1SMS/fjZ+/ Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQA+/K3fFzqxRt+zZvIRAkn6AJ91F4q3l/K0uyvXsCuZPXATdMOuCQCeOqkI LY1e/sr/upRtavz0oSstU+g= =gBUT -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-dTDVZtcz2+1SMS/fjZ+/--