[gentoo-dev] ML changes

[gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Mike Doty]

All-

We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
 bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
 there is no requirement to be on this new list.

This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out anyway)
but that's a path to cross later.

We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
the time.

--taco
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Olivier Crête]

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On Thu, 2007-12-07 at 13:24 -0700, Mike Doty wrote:
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.

What are the proposed guidelines for the different between -project and
-dev? What goes where?

-- 
Olivier Crête
tester@gentoo.org
Gentoo Developer

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Bryan Østergaard]

On 7/12/07, Mike Doty <kingtaco@gentoo.org> wrote:
> All-
>
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.
>
> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out anyway)
> but that's a path to cross later.
>
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> the time.
>
Consider this my last post ever to gentoo-dev ML if this really goes
through. Degrading non-dev contributers like myself to second-class
citizens is definitely not going to make me want to contribute
anything more.

Regards,
Bryan Østergaard
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Jim Ramsay]

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Mike Doty wrote:
> devs who moderate in bad posts will be subject to moderation
> themselves.

Will this be monitored/enforced by the proctors?

-- 
Jim Ramsay
Gentoo/Linux Developer (rox,gkrellm)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Mike Doty]

Jim Ramsay wrote:
> Mike Doty wrote:
>> devs who moderate in bad posts will be subject to moderation
>> themselves.
> 
> Will this be monitored/enforced by the proctors?
> 
no.  it will probably be devrel who decides if someone was moderating
inappropriately.

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:24:32 -0700
Mike Doty <kingtaco@gentoo.org> wrote:
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now
> would be the time.

Seems to me that this proposal doesn't solve any problem or address any
issue, and is merely a knee-jerk "well we have to do something" that's
being implemented merely because some people would like to be seen as
doing something...

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Josh Sled]

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Mike Doty <kingtaco@gentoo.org> writes:
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the

What's the definition of "bad"?

-- 
...jsled
http://asynchronous.org/ - a=jsled; b=asynchronous.org; echo ${a}@${b}

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[expose]

> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out
> anyway) but that's a path to cross later.
If it will remove the need for -core, why not move some future -dev content 
to -core, and make -dev the new list you called -project?

So, if you move discussions where non-devs arent supposed to speak 
unmoderatedly to -core, this should be an equally well solution, but it 
should create less noise (ie., people will less likely feel "degraded" etc).

Though I'm not an insider when it comes to -core, I'd guess there is few need 
for non-public discussions, except for security reasons or similar.

Anyway, I wouldnt name it -project but rather -public or -dev-open maybe.
I find -project confusing.

Besides all this:
How will moderation actually work? Whom to ask to moderate a mail?
Just mail a random dev, at best one having to do with the issue or the 
discussion, to his dev@gentoo.org address and ask to forward the post or how?
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Dale]

Bryan Østergaard wrote:
> On 7/12/07, Mike Doty <kingtaco@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> All-
>>
>> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to
>> where only
>> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who
>> moderate in
>>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
>> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently
>> becomes.
>>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.
>>
>> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked
>> out anyway)
>> but that's a path to cross later.
>>
>> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now
>> would be
>> the time.
>>
> Consider this my last post ever to gentoo-dev ML if this really goes
> through. Degrading non-dev contributers like myself to second-class
> citizens is definitely not going to make me want to contribute
> anything more.
>
> Regards,
> Bryan Østergaard

And this lowly user will unsubscribe as well.  What's the point in
getting the emails if you are censored?  I thought the "proctors" were
supposed to keep this list on topic?

Dale

:-)  :-)  :-)
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Josh Saddler]

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Jim Ramsay wrote:
> Mike Doty wrote:
>> devs who moderate in bad posts will be subject to moderation
>> themselves.
> 
> Will this be monitored/enforced by the proctors?
> 
See the council meeting logs when they're posted. Having just watched
the meeting "live," I saw that the proctors project was just ended.


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Thomas Tuttle]

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:31:31 +0200, "Bryan Østergaard"
<bryan.ostergaard@gmail.com> said:
> On 7/12/07, Mike Doty <kingtaco@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> > devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
> >  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the

Why?  Is it getting too much junk traffic?

> > gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
> >  there is no requirement to be on this new list.

Fine, but I don't understand why -dev would then have to be moderated. 
If -dev is for core Gentoo stuff, and -project is for more specific
stuff or offshoots, why should one be moderated and the other not?

> > This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out anyway)
> > but that's a path to cross later.

How do you figure?  If -dev takes on everything from -core, then the
only purpose I can see for moderation is to squelch the opinions of
non-devs when controversial issues are discussed.  I can understand
moderation if non-devs are getting in the way (although I don't see any
evidence of that), but that would have nothing to do with -core.

> > We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> > the time.

I don't officially have input, but I think this is a bad idea, or should
at least be presented along with some reasoning.  -dev is the way a lot
of people learn about Gentoo development, and it would be unfair to
force people including "devs-to-be" to wait for someone to approve their
posts.

> Consider this my last post ever to gentoo-dev ML if this really goes
> through. Degrading non-dev contributers like myself to second-class
> citizens is definitely not going to make me want to contribute
> anything more.

He's got a point.  And, as an arch tester, I'm going to be annoyed if
one day I need to ask something here and my post is delayed or lost
because I'm not a dev.
-- 
Thomas Tuttle - ttuttle@ttuttle.net - http://www.ttuttle.net/

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Thomas Tuttle]

Oh, a couple more questions.

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:24:32 -0700, "Mike Doty" <kingtaco@gentoo.org>
said:
> All-
> 
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where
> only
> devs can post

What about arch testers?

> but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.

This is bad, for two reasons.

1. It doesn't put responsibility for moderating messages in a timely
fashion on anyone.  Devs will want to hack, not moderate, and I worry
that messages would get ignored.
2. It doesn't set a clear standard for what is acceptable or not.  Some
devs might moderate in questions/suggestions from non-devs willingly,
while others might decide that they're getting in the way and moderate
them out.

> devs who moderate in bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.

What about devs who moderate *out good* posts?  Do you have a way to
make sure devs aren't trashing messages that others might find useful? 
I could see situations where a user or dev-to-be makes a suggestion or
comment that is badly written, or not feasible in the dev's mind, or
"wrong" to them in some other way, and the dev trashes it, figuring it's
irrelevant to everyone.

> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently
> becomes.

Is there an official definition of the split between the two?  Is -dev
basically going to be core Gentoo devs collaborating on internal things
that require coordination, and -project going to be where various
projects get implemented?

> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out
> anyway) but that's a path to cross later.

I'd cross it sooner, rather than later, because without moving -core's
traffic to -dev, it will look like you're just excluding non-devs for no
reason.  If -dev becomes a place where devs truly need an uninterrupted
place to discuss things, then you could fairly say that the devs need
the moderation to work efficiently.

Thanks again,

Thomas Tuttle
-- 
Thomas Tuttle - ttuttle@ttuttle.net - http://www.ttuttle.net/

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Ned Ludd]

On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 13:24 -0700, Mike Doty wrote:
> All-
> 
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.

> 
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> the time.

This is an absolutely wonderful idea and I can't wait till we implement
it.

-- 
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Linux

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Thomas Tuttle]

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:55:15 +0200, expose@luftgetrock.net said:
> How will moderation actually work? Whom to ask to moderate a mail?
> Just mail a random dev, at best one having to do with the issue or the 
> discussion, to his dev@gentoo.org address and ask to forward the post or
> how?

Most mailing list systems have a built-in provision for moderation.  The
devs who haven't been meta-moderated out (to use the Slashdot term)
would have access to it, and could approve or reject messages from
non-devs.  I guess.
-- 
Thomas Tuttle - ttuttle@ttuttle.net - http://www.ttuttle.net/

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Seemant Kulleen]

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On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 13:24 -0700, Mike Doty wrote:
> All-
> 
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.
> 
> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out anyway)
> but that's a path to cross later.
> 
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> the time.
> 
> --taco

My only comment for now is: why not just make -core read only, but
public, and leave -dev as it is?  That way we don't have to muck around
with deprecating lists and introducing new ones.

Thanks,

Seemant


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[expose]

> Most mailing list systems have a built-in provision for moderation.  The
> devs who haven't been meta-moderated out (to use the Slashdot term)
> would have access to it, and could approve or reject messages from
> non-devs.  I guess.

Wouldnt this allow for the following:

Devs A, B, C are argueing against X, Y, Z who are of a different opinion.
I submit a mail supporting XYZ, as soon as (s)he can A picks it up, sorts it 
out/deletes it/rates it irrelevant/whatever, and noone every notices?
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Jeffrey Gardner]

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Seemant Kulleen wrote:
> My only comment for now is: why not just make -core read only, but
> public, and leave -dev as it is?  That way we don't have to muck around
> with deprecating lists and introducing new ones.

^ ^ I agree with that idea ^ ^


- --
Jeffrey Gardner
Gentoo Developer
Public PGP Key ID: 4A5D8F23
hkp://pgpkeys.mit.edu
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-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Denis Dupeyron]

On 7/12/07, Seemant Kulleen <seemant@gentoo.org> wrote:
> My only comment for now is: why not just make -core read only, but
> public, and leave -dev as it is?  That way we don't have to muck around
> with deprecating lists and introducing new ones.

That looks like a good idea to me if the mandatory communication
(package retirement announcements, USE flag discussions, etc...) is
moved to -core. If not, I don't see the point.

Also I still think we need a private mailing list. Whether it's used
often or not shouldn't be a metric for the decision. And if things get
leaked out as Mike says, then it's an entirely different issue that
deserves an entirely different type of resolution on a case by case
basis involving the source of the leak, not the list.

Denis.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Tom Wesley]

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On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 10:31:31PM +0200, Bryan Østergaard <bryan.ostergaard@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>  Degrading non-dev contributers like myself to second-class
>  citizens is definitely not going to make me want to contribute
>  anything more.

+1

This move would be shooting Gentoo in the foot, in my opinion.

 -- tomaw


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Michael Krelin]

Is this course of tightening all possible restrictions permanent now?

Love,
H

Mike Doty wrote:
> All-
> 
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.
> 
> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out anyway)
> but that's a path to cross later.
> 
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> the time.
> 
> --taco
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Krzysiek Pawlik]

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Seemant Kulleen wrote:
> My only comment for now is: why not just make -core read only, but
> public, and leave -dev as it is?  That way we don't have to muck around
> with deprecating lists and introducing new ones.

I'm for that idea - less problems for infra, no big changes. Would the archives
of -core be opened too?

-- 
Krzysiek Pawlik   <nelchael at gentoo.org>   key id: 0xBC555551
desktop-misc, desktop-dock, x86, java, apache, ppc...


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:21:40 +0200
Krzysiek Pawlik <nelchael@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I'm for that idea - less problems for infra, no big changes. Would
> the archives of -core be opened too?

That's been discussed several times in the past. Agreement has always
been that any change to the public status of -core couldn't be applied
retroactively.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Marius Mauch]

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:43:57 -0400
Seemant Kulleen <seemant@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 13:24 -0700, Mike Doty wrote:
> > All-
> > 
> > We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to
> > where only devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev
> > post.  devs who moderate in bad posts will be subject to moderation
> > themselves.  in addition the gentoo-project list will be created to
> > take over what -dev frequently becomes. there is no requirement to
> > be on this new list.
> > 
> > This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked
> > out anyway) but that's a path to cross later.
> > 
> > We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now
> > would be the time.
> > 
> > --taco
> 
> My only comment for now is: why not just make -core read only, but
> public, and leave -dev as it is?  That way we don't have to muck
> around with deprecating lists and introducing new ones.

I have to agree, the idea sounds simply like you want to rename -core
to -dev and -dev to -project, with the moderation added to make it
appear somewhat open.

Marius

-- 
Marius Mauch <genone@gentoo.org>
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

RE: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chrissy Fullam]

On 7/12/07, Mike Doty <kingtaco@gentoo.org> wrote:
> All-
>
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to 
> where only devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  
> devs who moderate in  bad posts will be subject to moderation 
> themselves.  in addition the gentoo-project list will be created to take
over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.

This was discussed in June's council meeting, then brought back up at
today's council meeting, and slotted for voting in next months meeting. I do
not think one could consider it a knee jerk reaction when there is so much
time between conception, discussion, and voting.

Having been active in those meetings maybe this will clarify it some for
others... this is what I derived of it:
The -core mailing list is for information too sensitive to be sent to the
public. Does this information stay confidential until it's appropriate
release time, no not always, but it is based on a sound principle so the
list stays.

The -dev mailing list would be the list for development discussion. The
reason it does not replace -core is because it would still be open to be
viewed by the public. 
Many devs have stated that they do not wish to read -dev presently due to
the quantity of off topic emails, or at least those that are not productive.
These devs would be able to continue to read -dev and reduce the volume of
email to wade through to only those pertinent to the topic at hand.
Non-devs would still subscribe and post, but those posts must first be
approved by ANY developer. The method of contact has not been
documented/discussed, one could presume IRC or email or even that one of the
hundreds of developers might be active at that moment and decide to release
that post. An additional method discussed was to have all non-dev emails on
a timeout, pick a number of hours, and then the email if not moderated would
be released. (non-dev sends his email, time period expires and no one booted
it, so the email rolls through)

The -project mailing list would be the place for the unmoderated and
potentially off topic correspondence. I don't think anyone is married to the
name. It also is a required list for a dev to join.

The moderation of -dev would be done by any developer who saw fit to release
the email sent from a non-dev.
The release of "bad emails" would be addressed by devrel. What makes an
email "bad" would be decided based on the principles of the Code of Conduct.
See http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/coc.xml

Hope this helps.

Kind regards,
Christina Fullam
Gentoo Developer Relations Lead | GWN Author

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Ned Ludd]

On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 13:24 -0700, Mike Doty wrote:
> All-
> 
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.
> 
> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out anyway)
> but that's a path to cross later.
> 
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> the time.
> 
> --taco

A lot of people seem to be confused about this mail of yours. Namely
mainly how it does or does not relate to the core mailing list. Perhaps
you could clarify the idea a little bit for those who seem confused. 

Thanks in advance.

-- 
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Linux

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

RE: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chrissy Fullam]

>The -project mailing list ... is a required list for a dev to join.

Sorry, NOT a required list for devs to join.

Kind regards,
Christina Fullam
Gentoo Developer Relations Lead | GWN Author



-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Mike Kelly]

Mike Doty wrote:
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.
> 
> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out anyway)
> but that's a path to cross later.
> 
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> the time.

Here's my input: Hell no.

I might post something more detailed later, but that's the gist of it.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

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On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 22:31 +0200, Bryan Østergaard wrote:
>
> Consider this my last post ever to gentoo-dev ML if this really goes
> through. Degrading non-dev contributers like myself to second-class
> citizens is definitely not going to make me want to contribute
> anything more.

I think the idea is being taken the wrong way. Why would you think you
were second class?

I take it as internal stuff on -core. Gentoo developers working with
each other on -dev. Everyone who wants to work on the Gentoo Project,
devs and all can do it in -project. I don't see anything wrong with
levels of separation like that. Other than it being different.

It's not like all development takes place on the -dev ml. Nor will -dev
be private, so the public can still follow. If they need to interact.
There is still IRC, Bugzilla, -project, etc.

We don't let just anyone have a voice on #gentoo-dev or etc. What would
make the -dev ml any different? Which just like on IRC, voices could
still be granted to some past devs. If that goes against policy, then
that's just a downfall of no longer being a dev. But it might still be
possible to have former devs subscribed and able to post to -dev.

Either way very few in any position are allowed to retain all power,
privileges and etc after leaving the position. What ever it is. That's
not a elitist thing. That's just how things are. Doesn't make one better
than another, one first class or another second class.

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
Gentoo/Java

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Marius Mauch]

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:43:59 -0700
"Chrissy Fullam" <musikc@gentoo.org> wrote:

> An additional method discussed was to have all non-dev emails on
> a timeout, pick a number of hours, and then the email if not
> moderated would be released. (non-dev sends his email, time period
> expires and no one booted it, so the email rolls through)

For what it's worth, _IF_ this proposal goes through I'd strongly prefer
that mode of operation, so that moderation can't become a limiting
factor.

Marius

PS: Am I the only one who missed both reminders for the meeting?

-- 
Marius Mauch <genone@gentoo.org>
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Olivier Galibert]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 01:24:32PM -0700, Mike Doty wrote:
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> the time.

"Any dev can moderate" is an illusion.  Most non-dev messages are
perfectly reasonable ones and I'm pretty sure the smart devs know how
to handle filters when they get bored with the flamefests.  So either
the devs get a message when there is something to be moderated, and
it's going to annoy them to see all these messages twice, or they
don't, and I don't see anybody checking a web site or something on a
regular basis to see if there are messages to let go through.  At
least not long term.

  OG.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Jeffrey Gardner]

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William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 00:10 +0200, Denis Dupeyron wrote:
>> On 7/12/07, Seemant Kulleen <seemant@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> My only comment for now is: why not just make -core read only, but
>>> public, and leave -dev as it is?  ...
> 
> Understanding the simplification with the above approach.
> 
>> Also I still think we need a private mailing list.
> 
> +1
> 
> I personally agree there needs to be at least one private, non-public
> ml. So with that, I would not be for opening up -core.

Why not make -core o+r from this day forward and create gentoo-private
for the secret stuff?
This way we only need to be subscribed to two mailing lists: -core and
- -private

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-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Robert Buchholz]

Am 13.07.2007 um 00:43 schrieb Chrissy Fullam:
> The -dev mailing list would be the list for development discussion.  
> The
> reason it does not replace -core is because it would still be open  
> to be
> viewed by the public.
> Many devs have stated that they do not wish to read -dev presently  
> due to
> the quantity of off topic emails, or at least those that are not  
> productive.
> These devs would be able to continue to read -dev and reduce the  
> volume of
> email to wade through to only those pertinent to the topic at hand.
> Non-devs would still subscribe and post, but those posts must first be
> approved by ANY developer.
...
> The -project mailing list would be the place for the unmoderated and
> potentially off topic correspondence. I don't think anyone is  
> married to the
> name. It also is a required list for a dev to join.

Isn't that two solutions for one problem?

Creating the -project list is a way to discuss off-topic non-technical
stuff on a place other than -dev. Why would we need to enforce  
moderation
on the -dev list along with that?

I have to second the voices that a lot of user mails are productive.  
I did
not do any stats, but I feel that most mails to -dev are currently by  
Gentoo
devs anyway, so it will not seriously reduce the amount of mail in  
total.

As far as the usually fast technical discussions are concerned, my  
problem
here is that users are in practical kept out of the discussion by the  
mere
delay of their mails. We might experience double replies, users writing
replies which get dumped -- because someone else already wrote the
same mail 30 minutes ago and it did not get approved until he wrote  
his mail.
If you ever spent 30 minutes figuring out a problem in Mac OS X and  
filing
a decent bug report on their bug tracker just to find out it gets DUPed,
but you could not know before because the search is not public, you know
what I am talking about.

My imagination of this would be:
Create the project list for open discussion and restrict the
*topic* range, not the *participant* range  of this list.
We can evaluate whether the SNR did improve enough after some time.

Regards,

Robert

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Will Briggs]

Mike Doty wrote:
> All-
> 
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.
> 
> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out anyway)
> but that's a path to cross later.
> 
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> the time.
> 
> --taco

A few points

1) As a point of fact, here am I, a non-dev user, responding to an email
on the dev list.  Why?  Because it's an issue that affects me as a user.
   Users are part of the gentoo community (*cough* are the whole point
of the gentoo community *cough*) and at some point user-developer
interaction needs to have a "level playing field" forum.  gentoo-dev, in
practice, has provided this.

_However it is spun, any moderating of non-devs is a disenfranchisement_


2) "what -dev frequently becomes" - does this solve the problem?  Let me
suggest that flamewars and other negative things can and will appear
amongst the copious amount of dry tinder that exists within the ranks of
those who have an @g.o email address.

_These proposed changes won't solve the "problem"_


3) I read this list to keep my finger on the pulse of what's happening
in gentoo's heart.  Crucial to this is the significant contribution of
some non-dev's.  Included among these are former-developers, who while
they can't contribute in code or bug fixes etc, can in thought and
debate.  I'll also name up Duncan who here and on -amd64 often provides
thought-provoking (although *cough* lengthy) posts, and even Mr.
McCreesh who provides posts that while sometimes caustic/flammable, are
also often precise and, in the most positive sense of the word,
idealistic.  I wouldn't want these contributions to be delayed or
(perish the thought) vexatiously moderated.

_Contributions from non-devs are valuable_



4) gentoo-dev is what it is.  If you want a moderated list, create a
new, moderated list, where everyone member is subject to it and there
are clear understandings, from the get-go of who, by whom, and what will
be moderated.

_If you want to do this, do it properly_


W.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Ned Ludd]

On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 02:17 +0200, Robert Buchholz wrote:

> I have to second the voices that a lot of user mails are productive.  
> I did
> not do any stats, but I feel that most mails to -dev are currently by  
> Gentoo
> devs anyway, so it will not seriously reduce the amount of mail in  
> total.

FYI we do have stats..

http://archives.gentoo.org/stats/gentoo-dev-per-month.xml
http://archives.gentoo.org/stats/gentoo-dev-per-year.xml
http://archives.gentoo.org/stats/

-- 
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org>

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Daniel Ostrow]

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On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 13:24 -0700, Mike Doty wrote:
> All-
> 
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.
> 
> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out anyway)
> but that's a path to cross later.
> 
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> the time.

It is rare enough that I actually respond to something on -dev (or any
ml for that matter) so you know I have to care...

Personally, I rather dislike this proposal, mostly because I see it as a
bunch of unnecessary work...

I as a developer find it very difficult to cut though what I consider
noise to find the bits that I consider important to being able to
continue being an effective developer on a list that I am *required* to
be subscribed to. We have considered the likes of a moderated list, an
announce only list and now this sillyness to help in cutting down on
what a lot of us see as noise. How about we try something else....a self
moderated quasi-announce list...

1). Create 1 (ONE) new list, which, for the purposes of this discussion
I will call it gentoo-dev-info (the name matters not). The requirement
for subscription for all devs would shift from gentoo-dev to
gentoo-dev-info.

2). All *new* threads should cross post (regardless of whether it is
from a dev or a user) to both gentoo-dev and gentoo-dev-info. Those that
don't cross post (either by ignorance or accident) can be forwarded by
someone to the missing list.

3). The reply-to header for gentoo-dev-info should be set to gentoo-dev.

4). No further e-mail will be sent to gentoo-dev-info on this new thread
until a resolution on what actions if any need to be undertaken.

5). If a thread topic is posted that interests you as a developer (or a
user for that matter), you can either a). sub to gentoo-dev to continue
discussion there, b). utilize any of the archives to follow the topic
and contribute without being subscribed or c) have already been
subscribed and only pay attention to this one thread sending the rest
to /dev/null (yay! procmail).

6) After the thread has petered out, if, and only if, any action is
being taken, be that a change in policy, a clarification of policy or an
actual change in behavior of some component, the dev or devs who are
going to take said action send a notice describing it as a follow up
notice to both gentoo-dev and gentoo-dev-info.

Using that model devs and any users that want to subscribe as well can
be aware of every new thread that gets started and choose to participate
or not. This also gives them a new list that should have almost no
noise, every thread will be at most two e-mails long, the initial e-mail
and the resolution (if any). If you don't care about a topic all you see
is that it was discussed and what the outcome of said discussion was, if
you do care, you involve yourself in the discussion at your pleasure.

We can trust people on their honor not to post to gentoo-dev-info in any
manner other then that described above. This way we avoid the whole
overhead of having to moderate the list, if people misbehave and post
additional crap to the list consider moderating that one user...but
honestly since there is a list *with the same thread* meant for
discussion already this should only happen out of ignorance of policy or
malicious action...the latter should be clearly identifiable and dealing
with it should be easy.

No need to change the status quo for dev, no need to privatize core,
just create one list, post the rules and off you go...

--Dan

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Daniel Ostrow]

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<total-snip>

One additional note, my proposal doesn't account for controlling
flaming, disrespect or general asshatery (discounting outright
ridiculous things like blatantly insulting people, that's a no-no). That
I am afraid is just one of the natures of communities our size. There is
no way we can curtail people from speaking their minds publicly, if you
ban someone from a list they will find somewhere else, equally as
public, to be an asshat...and now they have valid ammunition...granted
this "somewhere else" won't necessarily be visible to you (for any value
of you) so your panties might get less bunchy...but frankly any damage
will still be done...

The point is so that you can *ignore* it when it happens...trying to
stop it is an exercise in futility and will only make your hair gray and
your stress level increase...people will be assholes...that's just
people I'm afraid...

</total-snip>

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Kumba]

Olivier Crête wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-12-07 at 13:24 -0700, Mike Doty wrote:
>> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
>> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
>> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.
> 
> What are the proposed guidelines for the different between -project and
> -dev? What goes where?

See Bug # 181368, where I initially proposed gentoo-project.


--Kumba

-- 
Gentoo/MIPS Team Lead

"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands 
do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."  --Elrond
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Kumba]

Mike Doty wrote:
> All-
> 
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where
> only devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who
> moderate in bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition
> the gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently
> becomes. there is no requirement to be on this new list.
> 
> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out
> anyway) but that's a path to cross later.
> 
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be 
> the time.


Hmm, given that I'm the one who planted the seed for -project, I have to wonder
if the seed has grown in a way that might be useful.  Or if it has merely become
a weed now, and should be pulled from the garden.

Here's what my thinking was when I put out the initial e-mail calling for 
-project, including thoughts now on how they should be laid out now:

	- I envisioned three mailing lists, essentially:
		* core
		* dev
		* project

	- core:	private, dev-only mailing list for internal discussion

			* Possibility: becomes read-only to the public after
			  a set time limit, possibly 1, 2, 4, or 6 months.
			  Certain messages and threads could be marked (via
			  some feature, for example) to remain permanently
			  private, and thus would never be readable by the
			  public.  This policy would NOT apply retroactively.


	- dev:	open, dev and user mailing list for technical discussions about
		the gentoo project.  Topics would include package
		addition/removal/masking announcements, EAPI discussions,
		package development questions/inquires (i.e., from users,
		but NOT help -- gentoo-user exists for that).

			* Possibility: Package changes, such as moves,
			  deletions, additions, and so forth could also be
			  routed automatically to a -dev-announce ML, possibly
			  by prefixing the subject field with "[ANNOUNCEMENT]:"
			  (This prefix, would of course, be stripped by the
			  automatic mailer before posting to -dev-announce).

			* Possibility: topics could also include developer
			  recruitment and developer departure emails.  However,
			  these may need to be sparse and impersonal (almost
			  machine-like) where-in it may be announced who joined
			  (First/Last name, developer name, IRC handle, etc..),
			  herd they'll be joining, and duties they'll perform,
			  including packages they may be maintaining.  These can
			  also be routed to a -dev-announce ML.


	- project: open, dev and user mailing list for non-technical discussions
		   of the gentoo project.  Topics can include pretty much
		   anything non-technical, including topics with high
		   flammability content, but it would be advised that people
		   maintain their composure and at least try to be respectful of
		   other developer and user viewpoints.  One may not have to
		   agree, but one should at least give respect.

			* Possibility: Automated greeting e-mail sent to people
			  who sign up to the list reminding them to conduct
			  themselves accordingly.  Overall, the list should
			  moderate itself, because most of us are adults after
			  all.  Those who maintain a track record of NOT
			  moderating themselves, could be forced off the list
			  (after discussion/inquiry/vote) by some responsible
			  party (which I won't attempt to detail any further as
			  to whom this party should/should not be).



Moderation just doesn't sit very well with me.  One, it's got an overhead 
burden, and likely, most devs will ignore the queued messages.  Those with 
enough idle curiosity might take a peek at them, but by and large, I think this 
puts up barriers for some potential future great idea to come along and get 
quietly shuffled away into /dev/null.

Two, wayward devs and users who post the wrong message to the wrong list can be 
pointed in the right direction with a simple reminder that takes all of 2mins to 
compose.  I see it done all the time for the types that try emailing 
"unsubscribe" to an ML.  In the event they continue, then they can be blocked 
for a time.

Basically, moderation is a tool to me, a tool that should be used sparingly. 
Not used as a blanket cover, with the occasional someone lifting up that blanket 
to peek outside (save that for the monster under the bed).  That said, however, 
I don't think we should totally dismiss the idea of blanket moderation.

Rather, I think we should first implement -project, put out enough information 
to get people to use it, and watch it for a few months.  By and large, we may 
discover that simply giving another list for the non-technical discussions may 
fix the problems on -dev, and moderation won't be needed on either list.  If, on 
the other hand, problems still arise on -dev that -project did not address (or 
may've been potentially created by -project's creation), then we can revisit the 
option of blanket moderation then.

Simply put: One Step At A Time.



Cheers,

--Kumba

-- 
Gentoo/MIPS Team Lead

"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands
do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."  --Elrond
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Kevin Lacquement]

Kumba wrote:

>     - I envisioned three mailing lists, essentially:
>         * core
>         * dev
>         * project
> 
>     - core:    private, dev-only mailing list for internal discussion
> 
>             * Possibility: becomes read-only to the public after
>               a set time limit, possibly 1, 2, 4, or 6 months.
>               Certain messages and threads could be marked (via
>               some feature, for example) to remain permanently
>               private, and thus would never be readable by the
>               public.  This policy would NOT apply retroactively.

I'm not sure about stuff in -core becoming publicly accessible.  After 
all, isn't it in the private list for a reason?  Perhaps summaries of 
-core discussions being forwarded to -dev would be a better option. 
However, I'm new to -dev, so if this is what already happens I don't know.

> 
> 
>     - dev:    open, dev and user mailing list for technical discussions 
> about
>         the gentoo project.  Topics would include package
>         addition/removal/masking announcements, EAPI discussions,
>         package development questions/inquires (i.e., from users,
>         but NOT help -- gentoo-user exists for that).

Here's where we want the non-devs to get access.  After all, not all 
development and debugging is done by devs.  All the current devs were, 
at one point, users.  Where did they get their start?  My bet is they 
entered via the -dev mailing list, learned the ropes here, and 
eventually earned their dev status.  If the -dev list is closed, where 
do the new dev-wannabes learn the ropes and get their voices heard?

> 
>             * Possibility: Package changes, such as moves,
>               deletions, additions, and so forth could also be
>               routed automatically to a -dev-announce ML, possibly
>               by prefixing the subject field with "[ANNOUNCEMENT]:"
>               (This prefix, would of course, be stripped by the
>               automatic mailer before posting to -dev-announce).

Would it perhaps be better to send announcements to -dev-announce, and 
have that list forward to -dev?  That way we avoid issues if a subject 
starts with [ANNONUCEMENT], for example

> 
>             * Possibility: topics could also include developer
>               recruitment and developer departure emails.  However,
>               these may need to be sparse and impersonal (almost
>               machine-like) where-in it may be announced who joined
>               (First/Last name, developer name, IRC handle, etc..),
>               herd they'll be joining, and duties they'll perform,
>               including packages they may be maintaining.  These can
>               also be routed to a -dev-announce ML.

If these messages will be machine-like, why not have them 
machine-generated?  When you become a dev, someone (you?  the person 
that -dev-ifie's you?) fills out a form, and the information from the 
form is forwarded to the list.

[snip -project]

> 
> Basically, moderation is a tool to me, a tool that should be used 
> sparingly. Not used as a blanket cover, with the occasional someone 
> lifting up that blanket to peek outside (save that for the monster under 
> the bed).  That said, however, I don't think we should totally dismiss 
> the idea of blanket moderation.
> 
> Rather, I think we should first implement -project, put out enough 
> information to get people to use it, and watch it for a few months.  By 
> and large, we may discover that simply giving another list for the 
> non-technical discussions may fix the problems on -dev, and moderation 
> won't be needed on either list.  If, on the other hand, problems still 
> arise on -dev that -project did not address (or may've been potentially 
> created by -project's creation), then we can revisit the option of 
> blanket moderation then.

I agree with this.  Also, it gives a transition time for people to get 
used to the new idea.  Don't create -project, then 3 months later say 
"that didn't work, we need to moderate -dev".  Give it a little more 
time than that.  Ensure that people are reminded, especially at the 
beginning, that there may be a more appropriate forum.

> 
> Simply put: One Step At A Time.
> 
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> --Kumba
> 

My 2 non-dev cents,

Kevin
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Kumba]

Kevin Lacquement wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure about stuff in -core becoming publicly accessible.  After 
> all, isn't it in the private list for a reason?  Perhaps summaries of 
> -core discussions being forwarded to -dev would be a better option. 
> However, I'm new to -dev, so if this is what already happens I don't know.


It's been a topic debated off and on on whether or not to keep -core locked away 
forever, but face it, even the CIA declassifies its dirty laundry every so 
often.  Now I'm not saying we should hold onto -core material for 30+ years, but 
I see no point in forever locking up the information on -core.  At minimum, it 
provides a historical look into how developers used to think.  Equally, this is 
why we need a sufficient time gap to let a majority of topics die off on -core 
before they become fodder for public consumption.  And why a marker being 
available to permanently lock certain threads/messages as needed.




> Here's where we want the non-devs to get access.  After all, not all 
> development and debugging is done by devs.  All the current devs were, 
> at one point, users.  Where did they get their start?  My bet is they 
> entered via the -dev mailing list, learned the ropes here, and 
> eventually earned their dev status.  If the -dev list is closed, where 
> do the new dev-wannabes learn the ropes and get their voices heard?

You missed the small mention of "open" in my first sentence.  I probably should 
have clarified what my definition of what "open" is, but it pretty much means no 
moderation on the -dev list so that users and developers could post.




> Would it perhaps be better to send announcements to -dev-announce, and 
> have that list forward to -dev?  That way we avoid issues if a subject 
> starts with [ANNONUCEMENT], for example


-dev-announce is a list proposed by another developer, and it's got its own bug 
number someplace (don't have it on hand ATM, however).  And technically, you 
wouldn't be forwarding the -dev-announce messages to -dev, because -dev-announce 
is essentially acting as a filter to -dev.  -dev would, in theory, contain ALL 
technical discussion related to the project.  -dev-announce would contain all 
announcements of certain, specific, technical things occurring within the 
project (and already talked about on -dev).  As a result, someone posting to 
-dev and wishing that post to also be forwarded to -dev-announce would attach 
[ANNOUNCEMENT]: to their subject line.  Not all devs are gonna wanna get into 
discussions, even technical ones.  Thus they can still monitor -dev-announce to 
keep abreast of things.

This method is no different really from the art of prefixing [PATCH]: to the 
subject line of an email on a kernel development list (or development list for 
any other software project) to indicate that the contents of the email includes 
a patch.  Even for LKML and linux-mips, there are tools in git that can target 
emails marked at patches, and automatically perform various feats of magic on 
them (such as stuffing the patches into a git queue of sorts).

This is why I don't think we could expect many problems from an announcement 
message.  Presumably, an announcement message would not be put out unless it'd 
already been discussed.  History, however, shows us that this is not always the 
case.  Thus, if some kind of a discussion were to arise from some kind of 
announcement, it likely wouldn't get forwarded to -dev-announce anyways (since 
replying to a mail would read as "Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT]", and it wouldn't get 
picked up by the automated mailer).  Furthermore, the -dev-announce list can 
probbaly be locked to only accept inbound mail from a specific host or address, 
itself tied to a script or bot of some kind.  If someone accidentally sent a 
message to -dev-announce, they would get a bounce back of some kind.




> If these messages will be machine-like, why not have them 
> machine-generated?  When you become a dev, someone (you?  the person 
> that -dev-ifie's you?) fills out a form, and the information from the 
> form is forwarded to the list.

We could automate it possibly, pulling data from the LDAP system used to auth 
devs to a number of gentoo systems.  Or someone in devrel could just take a few 
seconds to fill out a few fields in an email template and hit send.  I said 
impersonal because my mind is thinking technical == dry, white-paper-like 
material.  Either method works. but it's just a suggestion.  The more personal, 
emotion-filled (and I don't mean negative emotion-filled either) ones could go 
elsewhere, like to -project or such.


Cheers,


--Kumba

-- 
Gentoo/MIPS Team Lead

"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands 
do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."  --Elrond
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Kevin Lacquement]

Kumba wrote:
> 
> 
>> Here's where we want the non-devs to get access.  After all, not all 
>> development and debugging is done by devs.  All the current devs were, 
>> at one point, users.  Where did they get their start?  My bet is they 
>> entered via the -dev mailing list, learned the ropes here, and 
>> eventually earned their dev status.  If the -dev list is closed, where 
>> do the new dev-wannabes learn the ropes and get their voices heard?
> 
> You missed the small mention of "open" in my first sentence.  I probably 
> should have clarified what my definition of what "open" is, but it 
> pretty much means no moderation on the -dev list so that users and 
> developers could post.
> 

Sorry, I should have made it clear - I was agreeing with you there.  I'm 
not a -dev yet, but if I continue to have the time to work towards it, I 
don't want to be blocked because someone decided that users couldn't 
give insights to the developers list.

Kevin
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Kumba]

Kevin Lacquement wrote:
> 
> Sorry, I should have made it clear - I was agreeing with you there.  I'm 
> not a -dev yet, but if I continue to have the time to work towards it, I 
> don't want to be blocked because someone decided that users couldn't 
> give insights to the developers list.

Ah ha, then yeah, some of our devs come from the list, and if it becomes more 
technical by shuffling non-technical discussions elsewhere (mostly), it might 
help to filter out good candidates for new devs.

Course, the mailing lists alone aren't the only source; I've picked up devs 
straight off IRC, and I know of others who came on board solely through bugzilla 
contributions.  So there are many alternatives.


Cheers,


--Kumba

-- 
Gentoo/MIPS Team Lead

"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands 
do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."  --Elrond
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Andrew Cowie]

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On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 19:05 -0400, William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> I think the idea is being taken the wrong way. Why would you think you
> were second class?

Because this is where the development of the Gentoo Linux distribution
is discussed.

I'm not a Gentoo dev either, but I manage to make my own little
contributions here and there. I guess that's why I'm speaking at the
Gentoo UK conference tomorrow.

There is no point in being subscribed to a community list if you can't
participate in the discussions.

I'm with Brian. If this goes through, I shall be moving on.

On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 17:43 -0400, Seemant Kulleen wrote:
> My only comment for now is: why not just make -core read only, but
> public, and leave -dev as it is? That way we don't have to muck around
> with deprecating lists and introducing new ones.

Hear, hear.

On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 15:43 -0700, Chrissy Fullam wrote:
> The moderation of -dev would be done by any developer who saw fit to release
> the email sent from a non-dev.

The world over, compulsory moderation of otherwise public lists stifles
conversation. Typically it is weeks, not hours, before someone gets
around to glancing at the awaiting-approval queue, with the result that
even if a message is approved it appears in the thread long after the
issue was raised and far to late to be a useful contribution to the
discussion.

Open Source is about lowering barriers to entry and encouraging broader
participation. You don't want to go this way.

AfC
London

-- 
Andrew Frederick Cowie
Managing Director
Operational Dynamics Consulting, Pty Ltd

Sydney    +61 2 9977 6866
New York  +1 646 472 5054
Toronto   +1 647 477 5603
London    +44 207 1019201

We are an operations engineering consultancy focusing on strategy,
organizational architecture, systems review, and change management
procedures: enabling successful use of open source in mission
     A. critical enterprises, worldwide.

http://www.operationaldynamics.com/

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Peter Gordon]

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On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 13:24 -0700, Mike Doty wrote:
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.

> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> the time.

[ Long rant ahead, perhaps some of which may or may not quite as
accurate as intended since I've not been following Gentoo's development
as closely as I should have over the past few months. ]

Quite frankly, this (if passed) will be Gentoo's deathbed moment, and
this mail will be one of my last from an official Gentoo account.

For far too long the mailing lists, IRC channels, and other media of
developer communication have been ridden with belligerent,
inconsiderate, and often-accusatory postings. However, instead of
removing the few who cause most (if not all) of this damage to Gentoo,
we are further restricting its development.

I fail to see how such restriction will aide us in any way. We already
have the gentoo-core mailing list, and anything needing to be kept
internal to developer-only discussion should be sent there. Yes, stuff
is leaked from time to time, but Gentoo's developer handbook [1]
explicitly states that "gentoo-core is to be used for internal
discussions." Thus, those who leak information that is not to be made
public should be disciplined accordingly.

Instead, we (the entire developer community) simply continue to let
things of this nature occur, and persist in adding layers of bureaucracy
in order to pretend to ourselves that this is much less harmful to us
than it verily is.

Yes, that's what this amounts to: bureaucracy. We are simply adding more
process and protocol to the posting by non-developers. How can we say
that devs won't discard what may have otherwise been great discussions
of introspection or other aspects of our development? How can we ensure
that developers with personal vendettas [2] won't use this moderation
power as a form of attack against the developer in question or the
community as a whole? Wait, what's this: Oh I see. We discipline them.

What does this accomplish? It adds another point of reason for possible
disciplinary action at the expense of furthering development and
hindering discussion. 

As a moderator of Gentoo's forums for nearly two years (and a moderator
on a few other forums since about three years prior to this), I know
from experience that such moderation should be in terms of a blacklist -
whereby all posts and content are accepted and those which violate the
rules disciplined. Having a whitelist - where only permitted content is
accepted and others moderated in - is far too troublesome for this.
Aside from the issues I noted above, who's to say which posts are "good"
or "bad" in the first place? Who will ensure that posts are moderated in
a timely and reasonable manner? 

Gentoo's goal of being community-driven was in our reach once.. Nay, we
_were_ a community when I first started with Gentoo several years ago
now: users, developers, infrastructure hackers, designers - nearly
*everyone* was contributing back to the community in a way: mailing list
or forums support, bug reporting/triaging, ebuild submission, et al.

Now, where do we stand? That community has fallen so much that we need
another group (User Reps.) to act as an intermediary between them. More
and more people are interested in development of Gentoo. They _want_ to
help develop Gentoo or contribute to it in a significant way; yet all of
this is just one more item to preclude such people from their
contributions. Let me repeat that just to make it perfectly clear: WE
ARE PUSHING AWAY POTENTIAL STAFF. But I digress..

In effect, you (the devs) are now telling others (potential
contributors) what we can and cannot say on the list. While I understand
that nothing about Gentoo grants me a protected right to freedom of
speech or expression in any way, this reeks of heavy censorship to me.

I, for one, will personally stand against any such action on this list.
If it comes down to it, I will personally approve _any_ non-spam posting
to this list by _anyone_ for the sake of civil disobedience. I encourage
others to take similar action. This type of administration cannot be
allowed to establish itself as proper or "just" in any way.

[1] http://gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1&chap=3
[2] Don't disagree with this outright: I know many, including myself,
have a strong mutual dislike with one or more developers from this and
other distributions though we may refrain from admittance thereto. It's
part of our human psyche and is a normal aspect of anyone's emotions
with regards to social interactions.
-- 
Peter Gordon (codergeek42)
Gentoo Forums Global Moderator
GnuPG Public Key ID: 0xFFC19479 / Fingerprint:
  DD68 A414 56BD 6368 D957 9666 4268 CB7A FFC1 9479
My Blog: http://thecodergeek.com/blog/


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Peter Gordon]

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On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 23:41 -0700, Peter Gordon wrote:
> For far too long the mailing lists, IRC channels, and other media of
> developer communication have been ridden with belligerent,
> inconsiderate, and often-accusatory postings. However, instead of
> removing the few who cause most (if not all) of this damage to Gentoo,
> we are further restricting its development.

I retract this comment in its entirety. Soon after I sent this email, I
spoke with some other devs who have confirmed that the lists and whatnot
have been polite for the most part as of recently.

The rest of my mail still holds...
-- 
Peter Gordon (codergeek42)
Gentoo Forums Global Moderator
GnuPG Public Key ID: 0xFFC19479 / Fingerprint:
  DD68 A414 56BD 6368 D957 9666 4268 CB7A FFC1 9479
My Blog: http://thecodergeek.com/blog/


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Seemant Kulleen]

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Thanks for expressing your point of view that clearly.  I stand with
you.  Gentoo, for a while, has been taking itself *way* too seriously.
Perhaps that mentality is part of the inevitability of a project's
evolution through its own stages of life.  Or perhaps, it's just human
nature to shriek in a frenzy about things we don't like, and demand that
"something must be done" and "won't someone please think of the
children????"  which brings this sort of action about.

I've said for a while now (on this list, on my blogs) -- bad behaviour
happens on this list because we (as a community) allow it to happen.  If
it's not encouraged and trolls are not fed, they die out.  Part of the
thrill of someone raising a pointless argument and picking on
ridiculously petty details is the satisfaction gained from others taking
that stupidity seriously and wasting their (and everyone else's) time
with it.

So I say to you (the developer community): stop the insanity.  This
whole business of whitelisting is rather a ridiculous notion, that is
not scalable and serves only to create distance between those with
@gentoo.org addresses and those without.  As a result, the @gentoo.org
island isolates itself even further than it is already.  That in turn,
only worsens whatever problems we perceive.

What I find absolutely astounding is how much power Ciaran (we all know
the elephant in the room that motivates this newest council
announcement) wields over Gentoo.  You know what?  The fact that Gentoo
as an entity still reacts to one person this way means, in all but name,
that Ciaran actually is the de-facto lead developer of Gentoo.

This leaves two courses of action.

1. Officially install him as such; or
2. Stop letting him wield his power over you.  (yes, you, not us --
concentrate on how much you let him affect you).



Thanks,

Seemant


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RE: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Togge]

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007, Chrissy Fullam wrote:

> that post. An additional method discussed was to have all non-dev emails on
> a timeout, pick a number of hours, and then the email if not moderated would
> be released. (non-dev sends his email, time period expires and no one booted
> it, so the email rolls through)

++1, from a lurking AT

-- 
Togge (amd64 arch tester)
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Piotr Jaroszyński]

> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would
> be the time.

It's like proctors, but worse. The only achievement will be another few devs 
retiring.

Btw. I haven't seen any flamewars recently, have you? (probably except what 
this thread will become)

-- 
Best Regards,
Piotr Jaroszyński
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Grant Goodyear]

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Mike Doty wrote: [Thu Jul 12 2007, 03:24:32PM CDT]
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to
> where only devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.
> devs who moderate in bad posts will be subject to moderation
> themselves.  in addition the gentoo-project list will be created to
> take over what -dev frequently becomes.  there is no requirement to be
> on this new list.

Personally, I dislike this idea (I tend to agree w/ Seemant's
sentiments, if not quite his extrapolations).  That said, I'll just
subscribe to -project instead of -dev, so I don't see that it's going
to affect me very much.

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear	
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@gentoo.org
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

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On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 03:11 -0400, Seemant Kulleen wrote:
> Thanks for expressing your point of view that clearly.  I stand with
> you.  Gentoo, for a while, has been taking itself *way* too seriously.
> Perhaps that mentality is part of the inevitability of a project's
> evolution through its own stages of life. 

I consider it growing up. Do we want businesses to run and base their
service/product offerings on Gentoo? If so we must take it seriously.
Otherwise we are just a hobby distro for the uber geeks.

What makes a developer only -dev list any different than developers only
having a voice on #gentoo-dev?

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
Gentoo/Java

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:14:00 -0400
"William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I consider it growing up. Do we want businesses to run and base their
> service/product offerings on Gentoo? If so we must take it seriously.
> Otherwise we are just a hobby distro for the uber geeks.

If you want businesses to use Gentoo, you need to start offering things
that make Gentoo a better solution than other distributions. That,
first and foremost, means technical improvements, an area upon which
Gentoo is most definitely not focused right now.

> What makes a developer only -dev list any different than developers
> only having a voice on #gentoo-dev?

The former is where development discussion is supposed to take place.
The latter is a social convenience.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Roy Marples]

On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 15:26 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> If you want businesses to use Gentoo, you need to start offering things
> that make Gentoo a better solution than other distributions. That,
> first and foremost, means technical improvements, an area upon which
> Gentoo is most definitely not focused right now.

Maybe it's because everyone is feeding the trolls instead of developing.

In my eyes, Gentoo already offers a better solution than other distros
and thus my business uses it and has done for a good few years now.
We're very happy with Gentoo right now.

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

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On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 15:26 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:14:00 -0400
> "William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >
> > What makes a developer only -dev list any different than developers
> > only having a voice on #gentoo-dev?
> 
> The former is where development discussion is supposed to take place.
> The latter is a social convenience.

For some. Most all of my development communication is primarily done via
IRC. Email is rarely used, and from what I have seen else where. This
seems to be the main trend IMHO. Granted for big issues discussed over
time, the ML is a better resource than IRC.

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
Gentoo/Java

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Vieri Di Paola]

Hi,

As a non-dev who recently joined this list, I think it
would be too bad for me if you made those policy
changes.

Basically, I neither have the skills nor the time
(yet) to even try to become a dev but I truly enjoy
"contributing" once in a while especially for packages
I use at work.

Since I'm not yet in a position of wanting to become a
dev, I don't use IRC. Also, I find e-mails a lot more
convenient when time is a limiting factor.

The fact is that I joined this list with the intention
of asking whether someone can help me out with a
couple of reports I posted in bugs.gentoo.org such as
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=182544
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=174588

I already contacted jokey (Markus) several months ago
via e-mail and we agreed that he would have setup
"proxy maintenance" for the shorewall ebuilds so that
I could contribute patches and learn from his
suggestions. We never got to do anything because we
simply stopped e-mailing.

So basically, I'd like to take advantage of this list
before I get excluded and ask anyone if it's possible
for a plain user like me to make occasional
package-specific contributions in the form of "proxy
maintenance" or the likes.

I also feel that an open dev mailing list can be
useful for contributing users to learn from
experienced devs a few things that aren't always
obvious (eg. a recent post titled "cyclic
dependencies"). If you think I should direct my
queries to another list then please let me know.

Markus, if you have a chance to read this then I'd be
glad to resume our e-mail interchange, if you're still
willing to. If you're overloaded with work then maybe
someone else could help out?

Thank you all for making Gentoo what it is.
And sorry for the long post.



       
____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. 
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545433
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Thomas Tuttle]

On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:08:38 -0400, "William L. Thomson Jr."
<wltjr@gentoo.org> said:
> On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 15:26 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> > On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:14:00 -0400
> > "William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > What makes a developer only -dev list any different than developers
> > > only having a voice on #gentoo-dev?
> > 
> > The former is where development discussion is supposed to take place.
> > The latter is a social convenience.
> 
> For some. Most all of my development communication is primarily done via
> IRC. Email is rarely used, and from what I have seen else where. This
> seems to be the main trend IMHO. Granted for big issues discussed over
> time, the ML is a better resource than IRC.

Personally, I prefer quicker mechanisms to slower ones, but some people
dislike real-time communications because they can interrupt their work
constantly.  I think what's important is not the signal-to-noise ratio,
per se, but the relevant-to-irrelevant ratio.  To me, it makes no
difference whether the traffic that I don't care about is spam/trolls or
just discussion of another project.  So I'd support -dev being for
coordination of core development and -project being for other things, so
that people can read all of -dev easily and simply pay attention to only
what they want to see on -project.  But I see no reason to moderate
either -- #-dev is moderated because IRC is an easy medium to disrupt. 
It's a lot harder to wander on to a mailing list and start trolling, and
it's easier to block.

Just my $0.02,

Thomas Tuttle
-- 
Thomas Tuttle - ttuttle@ttuttle.net - http://www.ttuttle.net/

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Donnie Berkholz]

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On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 03:11:55 -0400
Seemant Kulleen <seemant@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I've said for a while now (on this list, on my blogs) -- bad behaviour
> happens on this list because we (as a community) allow it to happen.
> If it's not encouraged and trolls are not fed, they die out.  Part of
> the thrill of someone raising a pointless argument and picking on
> ridiculously petty details is the satisfaction gained from others
> taking that stupidity seriously and wasting their (and everyone
> else's) time with it.

I just read an article about this [1]. To summarize, in a volunteer
community, there needs to be more people enforcing the rules than
people breaking them. A small group of proctors doesn't work -- we need
everyone to join in to enforce our standards when someone violates them.

Thanks,
Donnie

1.
http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=788CF452-E7F2-99DF-3EBC599C3A9F1C6F&chanID=sa003

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Donnie Berkholz]

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On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:41:33 -0700
Daniel Ostrow <dostrow@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 1). Create 1 (ONE) new list, which, for the purposes of this
> discussion I will call it gentoo-dev-info (the name matters not). The
> requirement for subscription for all devs would shift from gentoo-dev
> to gentoo-dev-info.

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=183875

Thanks,
Donnie

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Jim Ramsay]

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Seemant Kulleen wrote:
> Thanks for expressing your point of view that clearly.  I stand with
> you.

<snip: More clear arguments>

I'm just adding one more comment that I don't think I've seen yet in
this thread.  (Although it's been a long thread, and I don't remember
all the points from all the other mails this late in the game...)

To my recollection, the recent flame wars have for the most part been
between devs and non-devs.

Now, this proposed moderation only addresses one half (the non-dev
side) of that "problem", by moderating it away.  I personally think
that a better solution would be to address the @gentoo.org side of the
problem, since that is, in theory, something that we already have
control over via devrel.

If we have our own house in order and provide leadership and direction
on the list by not replying to personal attacks (or perceived personal
attacks) with more personal attacks (or perceived personal attacks),
and always keeping "our side" of the technical discussions purely
technical and non-sarcastic, I really believe that flame wars will just
flicker and die.

Maybe this just means that we need more people to report "developers
acting badly" to devrel.

In closing, I also disagree with the Moderation Proposal.  I think
that it may stop the flame wars at the cost of stopping valuable
discussions.

-- 
Jim Ramsay
Gentoo/Linux Developer (rox,gkrellm)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Joe Peterson]

Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:41:33 -0700
> Daniel Ostrow <dostrow@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> 1). Create 1 (ONE) new list, which, for the purposes of this
>> discussion I will call it gentoo-dev-info (the name matters not). The
>> requirement for subscription for all devs would shift from gentoo-dev
>> to gentoo-dev-info.
> 
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=183875

My vote:

1) Keep gentoo-core as-is
2) Do not block or moderate gentoo-dev and do not create more lists
3) Allow policy for devs to use procmail to filter on subject line

I just think that many of the proposals to "solve" this are making
things more complicated, messy, inelegant, or are just fostering
alienation/censorship.

If the problem is sifting through too much noise, just make policy
allowing #3 above.  For example, devs could filter subjects starting
with "Re:" if desired.  Or we could choose keywords like "Off-topic:" or
"Rant:" that would could be filtered.  If a dev using a filter wants to
see replies or other filtered mail, he/she can go read the mail list
archive.

						-Joe
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 23:41 -0700, Peter Gordon wrote:
> Quite frankly, this (if passed) will be Gentoo's deathbed moment, and
> this mail will be one of my last from an official Gentoo account.

Sure.  Just like CoC.  Or PMS.  Or whatever the popular "Gentoo is
dying" topic was prior to that.

If you really feel that strongly about it, feel free to leave.  Better
yet, how about you move to France with the rest of the pussies..
(obligatory South Park quote)

Seriously, how about instead of these childish "if this happens, I'm
taking my toys and going home" attitudes, you instead try to determine
what you can do to improve a situation you see as bad for Gentoo with
one you see as positive.  I've grown sick of all this talk and would
really like to see some action from the peanut gallery.  I know this
might be too much to ask from the armchair Council, but one can dream,
can't they?

> For far too long the mailing lists, IRC channels, and other media of
> developer communication have been ridden with belligerent,
> inconsiderate, and often-accusatory postings. However, instead of
> removing the few who cause most (if not all) of this damage to Gentoo,
> we are further restricting its development.

Actually, I tend to agree with you.  The problem is that we really don't
have a way to say that "Gentoo, as a project, has decided that we don't
want these people" and get rid of them.  Rather, we have these policies
that tend to protect the guilty and harm the innocent.  We've become
much too bureaucratic.

How about as an outgoing final act for the current Council, we just ban
all the asshats from the list (via our own discretion) and we just see
how much nicer things are in the month before the next Council has their
meeting.  I'm willing to bet the new Council wouldn't reverse any of our
bans/whatever and we wouldn't need to enact this sort of crap.  It would
be much easier if we could just be like "hey buddy, you're a dick... we
don't want you here" and we got rid of those people.

Sure, they'll turn up somewhere else, but do I really give a crap if
some guy decides to start flaming on some barely-used list or even
outside Gentoo's infrastructure about how much we suck or how unfairly
we treated them?  We get enough of that crap as it is now, and I don't
see it impacting us much, if at all.  What *does* impact us severely is
the perception that we're not doing anything about our problems.  I
would much rather do something and be wrong than do nothing.  Doing
nothing is *guaranteed* to not solve anything.

<snip a bunch of crap about Gentoo dying like FreeBSD>

> I, for one, will personally stand against any such action on this list.
> If it comes down to it, I will personally approve _any_ non-spam posting
> to this list by _anyone_ for the sake of civil disobedience. I encourage
> others to take similar action. This type of administration cannot be
> allowed to establish itself as proper or "just" in any way.

Umm... so you just volunteered to do what we *want* you to do?  Good job
with that "civil disobedience" there, buddy.  :P

Can we get some more "civil disobedience" from the rest of you?  It will
definitely make this project a success and, I think, improve the general
attitude on this list.  That's right, folks!  We need more "civil
disobedience" in Gentoo!

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 03:11 -0400, Seemant Kulleen wrote:
> What I find absolutely astounding is how much power Ciaran (we all know
> the elephant in the room that motivates this newest council
> announcement) wields over Gentoo. 

*sigh*

Why is it that everyone always assumes everything the Council does is
"out to get Ciaran" rather than something we see as a good global
solution to our current problems?

Here's a little hint for all of you conspiracy theorists out there.

If all we wanted was to get rid of Ciaran, we'd just have a fucking vote
to get rid of Ciaran and make all of this *SO* much simpler on
ourselves.

We're trying to solve the problem of people, *ALL* people, treating each
other like complete crap on our lists.  The "problem" has been an issue
of discipline.  We've simply got too many people who are too scared to
take any actions to resolve these problems.  Why do you think Developer
Relations has all of these procedures and policies for retiring
developers?  Is it because we need all of that to determine if someone
has crossed the line?  No.  It's because we have a large number of
developers (or possibly even just a very vocal minority) who complain
about every single damn thing anyone ever does and it has been much
simpler to make up these ridiculous guidelines and rules to follow in an
attempt to curb the dissenters than it is to just deal with them.

I say drop the rules to something simple that makes sense, boot the
troublemakers, and ignore the dissenters.  I'll gladly help anyone make
up any procmail recipes they need to filter their mail.  Let's get back
to developing and leave the politics to Obama and Hillary.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 10:14 -0400, William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> What makes a developer only -dev list any different than developers only
> having a voice on #gentoo-dev?

It is a change from what we have now and all change is bad, mm'kay.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:25:21 -0700
Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Seriously, how about instead of these childish "if this happens, I'm
> taking my toys and going home" attitudes, you instead try to determine
> what you can do to improve a situation you see as bad for Gentoo with
> one you see as positive.  I've grown sick of all this talk and would
> really like to see some action from the peanut gallery.  I know this
> might be too much to ask from the armchair Council, but one can dream,
> can't they?

Perhaps the Council should stop going out of their way to screw around
with people when they do do something then. They could, for example,
stop trying to impose arbitrary, meaningless changes to which version
control system PMS uses (an issue which is of no technical relevance).
Perhaps that might stop dissuading contributions from people who can't
be bothered having to deal with silly political meddling from a Council
which is supposed to be providing technical assistance... Similarly,
they could help take care of all the silly arguments that are being
foisted off against attempts to provide a decent, adaptable replacement
for Gentoo's biggest stalling point.

> What *does* impact us severely is the perception that we're not doing
> anything about our problems.  I would much rather do something and be
> wrong than do nothing.  Doing nothing is *guaranteed* to not solve
> anything.

Perhaps you should do something about something that really is a
problem then, instead of wasting everyone's time on irrelevant issues
and blatantly false copyright claims.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 08:39 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> I just read an article about this [1]. To summarize, in a volunteer
> community, there needs to be more people enforcing the rules than
> people breaking them. A small group of proctors doesn't work -- we need
> everyone to join in to enforce our standards when someone violates them.

This was actually one of my primary motivators for calling for the
disbanding of the proctors, as KingTaco and I had already had several
discussions on the new list and I felt having a larger pool of potential
"proctors" helped us out much more than the small group ever could do.
Plus, the Council failed the proctors.  I don't mean by disbanding them.
Hopefully, they'll see in time that it was for the best.  We failed them
by not providing a better direction and clearer goals *before* we sent
them on their way.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:33:40 -0700
Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> wrote:
> We're trying to solve the problem of people, *ALL* people, treating
> each other like complete crap on our lists.

And three Council members come extremely high up the list of treating
people like crap. Or are [1], [2], [3] and [4] what you had in mind as
setting a good example?

[1]: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=177424#c13
[2]: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=174184#c3
[3]: http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_145909.xml
[4]: Your recent post about going off to France

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[darren kirby]

quoth the Chris Gianelloni:

> Seriously, how about instead of these childish "if this happens, I'm
> taking my toys and going home" attitudes, 

As opposed to the childish "I don't want to hear from a few outspoken users so 
let's close up the list" attitude?

> you instead try to determine 
> what you can do to improve a situation you see as bad for Gentoo with
> one you see as positive.  

And what exactly is the bloody point if all of the contributions from users 
are going to rot in some queue until they are no longer relevant? 

Can you explain to me how giving the devs _more_ work to do is going to help 
Gentoo when getting user contributions, bugfixes, ebuilds etc incorporated in 
a timely fashion is already one of the largest problems IMO?  

Seriously, call us all childish if you want, but you need to recognize that 
some of us users are seriously concerned about being alienated due to this 
proposal. If you insist on shutting out users like this you are basically 
giving us all the finger. I would expect this treatment from a SuperMegaCorp 
software vendor, not from Gentoo.

If I am still not clear, here is my opinion in one sentence: This is a very 
bad move which will do little but severely reduce the amount of goodwill from 
the user-contributors, and make it de facto more difficult, time consuming, 
and painful to contribute to Gentoo.

-d
-- 
darren kirby :: Part of the problem since 1976 :: http://badcomputer.org
"...the number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected..."
- Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, June 1972
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

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On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 10:35 -0700, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 10:14 -0400, William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> > What makes a developer only -dev list any different than developers only
> > having a voice on #gentoo-dev?
> 
> It is a change from what we have now and all change is bad, mm'kay.

+1

To new people who never knew of the -dev list as it is now, and start by
joining the -project list. I fail to see how it will make much if any
diff.

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
Gentoo/Java

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

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On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 12:04 -0600, darren kirby wrote:
> quoth the Chris Gianelloni:
> 
> > Seriously, how about instead of these childish "if this happens, I'm
> > taking my toys and going home" attitudes, 
> 
> As opposed to the childish "I don't want to hear from a few outspoken users so 
> let's close up the list" attitude?

Absolutely not. We very much do want to hear. But in a place specific to
just that :)

> Can you explain to me how giving the devs _more_ work to do is going to help

Seems like just the effort of forwarding an email from one list to
another. Not much effort there.

> Gentoo when getting user contributions, bugfixes, ebuilds etc incorporated in 
> a timely fashion is already one of the largest problems IMO?  

Exactly, your pointing out one of the potential largest negative issues
around Gentoo. Here's a possible solution. Let's not damn it to much
before at least giving it a go.

> Seriously, call us all childish if you want

Poor choice of words or analogies maybe. 

>  but you need to recognize that 
> some of us users are seriously concerned about being alienated due to this 
> proposal. If you insist on shutting out users like this you are basically 
> giving us all the finger. I would expect this treatment from a SuperMegaCorp 
> software vendor, not from Gentoo.

You could equate it to growth. But it's not about alienation at all.
It's about focus, and only effects those that know things as are.

To future devs and any new contributing users, they will see -dev as a
ml for developer interaction. They will see -project as a place for
interaction with the community.

I think all will find it beneficial in the long run. If we give it a
chance and some time. Should allow for better focus and greater
productivity on both front, dev <-> dev, devs <-> world.

In the end I put it to growth. So we can focus and make things better
all around. Not due to negativity, or etc. Even if everything is all
positive. If volume on any list gets to a point where it's productivity
declines. Action should be taken. Which isn't motivated by anything
negative.

I have unsubscribed from lists in the past due to the amount of volume
and hardly being able to follow. Pure positive technical development and
etc discussions. Just to much ;)

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
Gentoo/Java

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:44:03 -0400
"William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@gentoo.org> wrote:
> To future devs and any new contributing users, they will see -dev as a
> ml for developer interaction. They will see -project as a place for
> interaction with the community.

Wouldn't that be, uh, -user?

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chris Scullard]

Another user here throwing in his two cents (Gentoo must be rich by 
now). But I think that the mailing list absolutely needs changes. Like 
it or not, after the recent negative press, including the embarassing 
Daniel Robbins incident, this list has become a much higher-profile 
public face of Gentoo. For my own part, I have used this distro for 
years and never subscribed until all this bad press, and never posted 
until now that I see a potentially positive move coming under so much 
attack.

Jim Ramsay wrote:
> To my recollection, the recent flame wars have for the most part been
> between devs and non-devs.
>
>   
It's a funny old thing because I wanted to say exactly this, but to make 
the opposite point! After reading for a few months, I am shocked, not 
just at the way that some people are behaving - there will always be bad 
behaviour, but that non-devs are allowed to come here and gratuitously 
insult developers with apparent total immunity. Developers are subject 
to bans and forced "vacations" from the project, as they should be. But 
from my observation all the recent flamewars have either had non-devs at 
the center of them, or been outright started by them, and there is 
nothing anybody seems to be able to do about it. This is a ridiculous 
situation that should never be tolerated (and would not be in a 
healthier project) and it's perfectly reasonable to me that the council 
wants to address it.

I think the heart of the problem is people assuming they have rights 
that they should not have. The only people who should have a RIGHT to 
post to this list are developers, and for everyone else it should be 
considered a privilege - one that can be easily revoked. There's no 
reason why a project has any obligation to create a mailing list that 
their developers are required to use in the course of their duties AND 
where they are subject to abuse from random people.

For the people who are saying "if this change goes through, I'm out", I 
don't think that's helpful. It's natural for some non-dev contributors 
to feel that their contributions are being minimized by a move like 
this. But I think it has to be acknowledged that a change is necessary, 
and you should instead join the discussion about how this is actually 
going to be done. I for one think a blanket ban of non-devs from posting 
is going a bit far, especially since I'm sure devs value many of their 
comments. But that's just it - it should be up to the developers whom 
they want (and more importantly don't want) to interact with. I would 
propose a plan whereby non-devs can be removed by a vote from some set 
number of devs. Say, if 5 or 6 developers do not want a person posting 
on the list any more then that person ought to be banned. I think most 
contributors would not have to worry about this happening to them. 
That's just one suggestion, and I'm sure the council is open to hearing 
alternatives from others.

Chris
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

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On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 19:51 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:44:03 -0400
> "William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > To future devs and any new contributing users, they will see -dev as a
> > ml for developer interaction. They will see -project as a place for
> > interaction with the community.
> 
> Wouldn't that be, uh, -user?

No because that's where people go for help. Or to discuss usage of
Gentoo.

-project would be for people or etc looking to contribute to the Gentoo
project. Development and etc for anyone outside of the Gentoo project :)

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
Gentoo/Java

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RE: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Christina Fullam]

Darren kirby <bulliver@badcomputer.org> wrote:
>And what exactly is the bloody point if all of the contributions from
>users are going to rot in some queue until they are no longer relevant?

I think everyone is overlooking the part included previously:
"An additional method discussed was to have all non-dev emails on a
timeout, pick a number of hours, and then the email if not moderated
would be released. (non-dev sends his email, time period expires and no
one booted it, so the email rolls through)"

This means that non-dev emails will still be sent to the list, just at a
delay. This same delay can and will be exercised against developers
if the developer demonstrates a justification for it.
This also means that non-dev input will be accepted and viewed as it
always has, the only change is that there is a delay.

Kind regards,
Christina Fullam
Gentoo Developer Relations Lead | GWN Author

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 13:53 -0500, Chris Scullard wrote:
> Chris

Thanks for a level-headed response, Chris.

I think the biggest source of confusion is that few people went to
actually read the Council stuff from last meeting.  Some points of
contention that nobody seems to be getting:

- Nobody is planning on banning users
- Unmoderated mails will be auto-accepted after some timeout
- Whatever delay is decided can be imposed on developers, too, if they
give reason for it to be enforced on them (read, repeat offenders)
- This includes myself and the other Council members
- All developers will be able to moderate and all moderation is logged
- Developers/users will be able to appeal unfair moderation to devrel,
so action can be taken against people who moderate badly

That pretty much covers most of the assumptions people are making.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Thomas Tuttle]

On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:37:42 -0700, "Chris Gianelloni"
<wolf31o2@gentoo.org> said:
> On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 13:53 -0500, Chris Scullard wrote:
> > Chris
> 
> Thanks for a level-headed response, Chris.
> 
> I think the biggest source of confusion is that few people went to
> actually read the Council stuff from last meeting.  Some points of
> contention that nobody seems to be getting:
> 
> - Nobody is planning on banning users
> - Unmoderated mails will be auto-accepted after some timeout
> - Whatever delay is decided can be imposed on developers, too, if they
> give reason for it to be enforced on them (read, repeat offenders)
> - This includes myself and the other Council members
> - All developers will be able to moderate and all moderation is logged
> - Developers/users will be able to appeal unfair moderation to devrel,
> so action can be taken against people who moderate badly
> 
> That pretty much covers most of the assumptions people are making.

Yeah, it covers almost everything I just suggested, except one thing. 
Users who consistently contribute well, or are arch testers or other
relevant "official" contributors, should be able to skip the delay,
provided they continue to contribute positively.

Thanks,

Thomas Tuttle
-- 
Thomas Tuttle - ttuttle@ttuttle.net - http://www.ttuttle.net/

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[lnxg33k]

I'm (obviously) not a dev but contribute some from time to time. Not much more
can be said than has already been stated, but since (I believe) this thread
started out asking for input, I just wanted to toss in a negative vote.
Essentially I don't see it solving any problem and stepping on the toes of
current changes (-project for instance). As of late, it seems more traffic has
been generated due to non-development threads such as this than any other topic
-- take that as you will.

As for some very brief points, I have a few:
* Whether it's intented or not, the negative perception being projected on
non-devs will be there. Call it what you will, but essentially they'll be
outsiders.
* This original thread seems to be an attempt to lessen damaging posts to -dev
and yet does not address the possibility that these posts may come from current
devs. Chris Gianelloni seems to have modified the thread to include dev
moderation with the possibility of delays being applied to them via policy.
* While no delay duration has been set, I think one of the problems here
(again) is perception. Currently it's the idea of quick feedback from the source.
* This sounds like a boring, mundane, time consuming task to place on all
developers. As with most things, only a few will take the time to do their duty
as per policy dictates. This either means we'll have developer-devs doing paper
work or non-developer-devs in a developer position doing paper work -- an
overly simplistic view.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Seemant Kulleen]

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On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 10:33 -0700, Chris Gianelloni wrote:

> *sigh*

It seems impossible to have any sort of discussion with you (unless one
is in agreement with you, of course, and then one is "clear headed")
without eliciting a *sigh* -- I don't think it's particularly the
healthiest way to have one.  If you simply don't like disagreement, then
please be clear about that.

> Why is it that everyone always assumes everything the Council does is
> "out to get Ciaran" rather than something we see as a good global
> solution to our current problems?

Well, it would be great if the council can clearly outline what exactly
our current problems are.  Maybe if you presented those problems and
then presented the proposed solutions to them, things would be easier to
understand?


> Here's a little hint for all of you conspiracy theorists out there.
> 
> If all we wanted was to get rid of Ciaran, we'd just have a fucking vote
> to get rid of Ciaran and make all of this *SO* much simpler on
> ourselves.

This is again a disparaging and unhealthy way to have a discussion.  I'm
going to request that if you will respond to my notes, please do so with
some modicum of civility and respect.  If you find yourself unable to do
so, then please do not respond to me at all.

> We're trying to solve the problem of people, *ALL* people, treating each
> other like complete crap on our lists.  The "problem" has been an issue
> of discipline.  We've simply got too many people who are too scared to
> take any actions to resolve these problems.  Why do you think Developer
> Relations has all of these procedures and policies for retiring
> developers?  Is it because we need all of that to determine if someone
> has crossed the line?  No.  It's because we have a large number of
> developers (or possibly even just a very vocal minority) who complain
> about every single damn thing anyone ever does and it has been much
> simpler to make up these ridiculous guidelines and rules to follow in an
> attempt to curb the dissenters than it is to just deal with them.

Well, your own method of responding to my note is a good example of
treating others like crap.  How do we solve that?  The problem with
moderation is that nobody censors speech with which they agree, but
quick to censor that with which they don't.

So, here we have an example of one of the possible problems that you
alluded to earlier: a vocal minority unable to pick its battles, and
which engages in endless nitpicking.  Why not just have the "fucking
vote to get rid of [them] and make all of this *SO* much simpler on
ourselves" then? Why should the vast majority of people on this list
have to pay for what is, evidently, a minority?

If, on the other hand, it's not a minority, then doesn't that indicate
that the issue is on a deeper level?  And if so, wouldn't it be more
prudent to try and solve that one, instead?


> I say drop the rules to something simple that makes sense, boot the
> troublemakers, and ignore the dissenters.  I'll gladly help anyone make
> up any procmail recipes they need to filter their mail.  Let's get back
> to developing and leave the politics to Obama and Hillary.

This is a little worrisome, you know.  Perhaps you didn't mean this set
of statements to sound as all-encompassing as all that.  Isn't dissent
and disagreement the result of differing points of view, which could
actually benefit Gentoo?

My thought is this: everyone should try and evaluate their own behaviour
on this list, and the method in which they treat others.  If each of us
actually thought about the effects of our attitudes, this discussion
might well be moot.

Thanks,

Seemant




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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Robin H. Johnson]

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On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 08:13:53PM -0400, Seemant Kulleen wrote:
> My thought is this: everyone should try and evaluate their own behaviour
> on this list, and the method in which they treat others.  If each of us
> actually thought about the effects of our attitudes, this discussion
> might well be moot.
In the June meeting, I repeated my opinion that _every_ member of the
list (but esp.  the developers) should strive to hold themselves to
FreeNode's Catalyst (http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml) ideal.

This was related to the original goals of the CoC in the first place.
The CoC lost sight of the aim to get Gentoo to function better.

Whatever the council has tried, it seems that general history is being
repeated in microcosm with Gentoo: You cannot enforce morality nor
ethics.

At the same time, you cannot remove any that disrupt the community.
This includes both 
- Forcibly: There are plenty that believe dropping Mr McCreesh and Mr
  Long would improve the perceived health of the list. The opponents of
  such call this censorship.
- and 'not feeding the trolls' because as long as they have an interest
  in Gentoo itself, they will remain (for the same reason that
  developers stay).

Thus the council (both the present one, as well as the incoming council)
stand between a rock and a very hard place. They stand charged with
improving the perception of Gentoo, improving communication on the lists
AND not alienating any part of the community.

Gentoo's principles are that of an open community. Many of us developers
joined (esp. the older ones) because we had an itch of our own to
scratch, and as that itch moved around within Gentoo, so did we.

I was invited to join Gentoo for working on ufed and the QA level of
use.desc. After those, I picked up maintaining MySQL and PHP, because
the previous maintainers (woodchip and rphillips respectively) had gone.
From thence, I created the first PHP team (with coredumb and stuart),
and started drifted around. I've been drifting since, as my own needs
and itches take me to various realms of Gentoo. The only major areas
that I haven't made some impact in have been games, GNOME, KDE, and GUI
apps (reflecting that I spend most of my time on a terminal).

It used to be a rite of passage that a new developer would break
something because they didn't realize one of the side-effects of their
actions (seemant has experience there, which lead to revdep-rebuild),
and then helped to fix it up, better than it was before. One step
backwards, two steps forward. 

Compare it to now, and I read things like bug #184597, and I am ashamed
to see that 3 teams rebuffed a potential new developer. That degree of
elitism just hurts. I understand Gentoo has always been a meritocracy,
but it is an open one, that lets folk get started regardless.

How do we get Gentoo back to where it was? That I cannot answer. 

But I will state, that while I am not running for a council position
next year, I would like to remain with Gentoo a long time, even if it's
just an lone developer, with no work in Infrastructure or any other
leadership group (I'm in Infrastructure because my skills are helpful to
them).

I won't leave just because I disagree with some management decision that
Council makes. I might be stubborn and disenchanted for some time
(witness the many murmurs of discontent), but it's against my own best
interests to leave Gentoo. As it was put before, if you leave, the Fungi
will win.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux Developer & Council Member
E-Mail     : robbat2@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP   : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED  F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Josh Saddler]

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Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 08:13:53PM -0400, Seemant Kulleen wrote:
>> My thought is this: everyone should try and evaluate their own behaviour
>> on this list, and the method in which they treat others.  If each of us
>> actually thought about the effects of our attitudes, this discussion
>> might well be moot.
> In the June meeting, I repeated my opinion that _every_ member of the
> list (but esp.  the developers) should strive to hold themselves to
> FreeNode's Catalyst (http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml) ideal.
> 
> This was related to the original goals of the CoC in the first place.
> The CoC lost sight of the aim to get Gentoo to function better.
> 
> Whatever the council has tried, it seems that general history is being
> repeated in microcosm with Gentoo: You cannot enforce morality nor
> ethics.
> 
> At the same time, you cannot remove any that disrupt the community.
> This includes both 
> - Forcibly: There are plenty that believe dropping Mr McCreesh and Mr
>   Long would improve the perceived health of the list. The opponents of
>   such call this censorship.
> - and 'not feeding the trolls' because as long as they have an interest
>   in Gentoo itself, they will remain (for the same reason that
>   developers stay).

Good points from both Robin and Seemant, and I'm glad Robin brought up
the fact that there are other trolls on the list, though more crude and
less sophisticated in their approach. As we've seen, there are long-term
and short-term folks on the list who have some interest in their heads,
and that will also disrupt the community, regardless of whether forcible
action is taken.

> Thus the council (both the present one, as well as the incoming council)
> stand between a rock and a very hard place. They stand charged with
> improving the perception of Gentoo, improving communication on the lists
> AND not alienating any part of the community.

Alienation might happen regardless. It may not be a bad thing either;
neither good nor bad, simply something that happens. There are
polarizing issues plain and simple -- multiple package managers, PMS,
creating the CoC and similar, anything from the last year. If you try to
placate everyone, no one will end up happy and things grind to a halt.

> Compare it to now, and I read things like bug #184597, and I am ashamed
> to see that 3 teams rebuffed a potential new developer. That degree of
> elitism just hurts. I understand Gentoo has always been a meritocracy,
> but it is an open one, that lets folk get started regardless.

I think the charge of "elitism" is neither fair nor accurate. It seems
like simple smart decision-making: the teams have never had any prior
experience with that developer, despite his request in the bug to join
them. They haven't seen his technical skills. I know we wouldn't let
anyone in the GDP unless we'd seen a history of valuable contributions
and the candidate displayed considerable familiarity with GuideXML. It's
not applying some arbitrary elitism; it's maintaining technical
standards so that stuff doesn't break.

> How do we get Gentoo back to where it was? That I cannot answer. 

"Where it was" must be defined first. Where it was a year ago? Where it
was when there were fewer people? The further back in time you go, the
smaller the pool of users, developers, packages, and available tools &
technology. As more people showed up, more friction occurred. From what
I've seen there's always some constant level of friction, however low it
may ebb from time to time.

I remember that within the last few months there have been a few
low-level scattered queries about "how would it work" if some group of
developers forked. The primary sentiment behind such an occurence would
be to create a better (and smaller) community of developers and some
kind of different structure that allows for proper self-policing. This
sounds like what Gentoo may have been like when it was still relatively
new -- if Gentoo was ever manageable, that is. Is a fork the solution to
what you want? Who knows.


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Kumba]

Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> 
> I won't leave just because I disagree with some management decision that
> Council makes. I might be stubborn and disenchanted for some time
> (witness the many murmurs of discontent), but it's against my own best
> interests to leave Gentoo. As it was put before, if you leave, the Fungi
> will win.

for (i = 0; i < SOME_BIG_NUMBER; i++) {
	plusplus();
}


--Kumba

-- 
Gentoo/MIPS Team Lead

"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands 
do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."  --Elrond
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Will Briggs]

William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 19:51 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>> On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:44:03 -0400
>> "William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> To future devs and any new contributing users, they will see -dev as a
>>> ml for developer interaction. They will see -project as a place for
>>> interaction with the community.
>> Wouldn't that be, uh, -user?
> 
> No because that's where people go for help. Or to discuss usage of
> Gentoo.
> 
> -project would be for people or etc looking to contribute to the Gentoo
> project. Development and etc for anyone outside of the Gentoo project :)
> 

But -dev is where the substantial discussion takes place.  -dev would
still be the "inside loop."  And a community based project simply should
not exclude/reduce (even simply in perception) the community's
involvement in that loop.

Correct me if I'm reading you wrong but you seem, in your choice of
words, to be relegating non-devs to being "outside of the Gentoo
project."  And that is exactly the attitude we need to steer clear of,
and exactly the DNA that this proposal would inject.

I love/admire/adore/have great gratitude for our developers.  They are
certainly part of this project.  But, even as a lowly user - I am also.

Or perhaps I've just been reading too much Marx...

W.

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[William L. Thomson Jr.]

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On Sat, 2007-07-14 at 20:20 +1000, Will Briggs wrote:
>
> But -dev is where the substantial discussion takes place.  -dev would
> still be the "inside loop."  And a community based project simply should
> not exclude/reduce (even simply in perception) the community's
> involvement in that loop.

Well forgetting list names for a second. Put the problem another way.
There is no list at the moment, internal developers could use to
communicate only with other internal developers. Sure we could use
-core, but that's more for private stuff.

Devs might want to interact directly with other devs, without any
outside input. But do it in a transparent manner to keep the community
informed and a part of the process. Just not a part with input. That
does not mean the community is excluded. It's just sometimes you can
have to many opinions, and the ones a times that matter the most are the
ones actually doing the work. Which in turn become responsible for it.

> Correct me if I'm reading you wrong but you seem, in your choice of
> words, to be relegating non-devs to being "outside of the Gentoo
> project."  And that is exactly the attitude we need to steer clear of,
> and exactly the DNA that this proposal would inject.

It's just levels of separation as the organization grows. It's not an
attitude of separation, it's organization. It's not meant personally.
Fact is there are those inside the project and those outside. That's not
a good or bad thing, just how things are.

There is no means for those inside to work directly with each others
without outside influence. Not that the outside influence is not wanted,
that's not the point at all. It's purely about focus.

If we see a problem say on -dev, in the future. We know that's an
internal problem devs are trying to resolve or etc. Likely to get more
focus and/or prioritization. 

Fact is -dev's volume is getting to the point where it's productivity is
diminishing. Both with dev <-> dev and dev <-> world. The entire idea
here is to help correct that and makes things BETTER :)

Many will admit there are big problems now. This is just one attempt,
one way to address it.

> I love/admire/adore/have great gratitude for our developers.  They are
> certainly part of this project.  But, even as a lowly user - I am also.

FYI, every developer was a user at some point. In many ways they still
are. This by no means is intended to diminish, cut off, control, etc any
user input. That would effectively cut off any future recruiting
efforts. Which is not the idea at all.

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
Gentoo/Java

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Ferris McCormick]

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On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 20:13:53 -0400
Seemant Kulleen <seemant@gentoo.org> wrote:

So I should cut it, but I'm leaving it so you see what I'm responding
to.
Seemant, thanks.

> On Fri, 2007-07-13 at 10:33 -0700, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> 
> > *sigh*
> 
> It seems impossible to have any sort of discussion with you (unless one
> is in agreement with you, of course, and then one is "clear headed")
> without eliciting a *sigh* -- I don't think it's particularly the
> healthiest way to have one.  If you simply don't like disagreement, then
> please be clear about that.
> 
> > Why is it that everyone always assumes everything the Council does is
> > "out to get Ciaran" rather than something we see as a good global
> > solution to our current problems?
> 
> Well, it would be great if the council can clearly outline what exactly
> our current problems are.  Maybe if you presented those problems and
> then presented the proposed solutions to them, things would be easier to
> understand?
> 
> 
> > Here's a little hint for all of you conspiracy theorists out there.
> > 
> > If all we wanted was to get rid of Ciaran, we'd just have a fucking vote
> > to get rid of Ciaran and make all of this *SO* much simpler on
> > ourselves.
> 
> This is again a disparaging and unhealthy way to have a discussion.  I'm
> going to request that if you will respond to my notes, please do so with
> some modicum of civility and respect.  If you find yourself unable to do
> so, then please do not respond to me at all.
> 
> > We're trying to solve the problem of people, *ALL* people, treating each
> > other like complete crap on our lists.  The "problem" has been an issue
> > of discipline.  We've simply got too many people who are too scared to
> > take any actions to resolve these problems.  Why do you think Developer
> > Relations has all of these procedures and policies for retiring
> > developers?  Is it because we need all of that to determine if someone
> > has crossed the line?  No.  It's because we have a large number of
> > developers (or possibly even just a very vocal minority) who complain
> > about every single damn thing anyone ever does and it has been much
> > simpler to make up these ridiculous guidelines and rules to follow in an
> > attempt to curb the dissenters than it is to just deal with them.
> 
> Well, your own method of responding to my note is a good example of
> treating others like crap.  How do we solve that?  The problem with
> moderation is that nobody censors speech with which they agree, but
> quick to censor that with which they don't.
> 
> So, here we have an example of one of the possible problems that you
> alluded to earlier: a vocal minority unable to pick its battles, and
> which engages in endless nitpicking.  Why not just have the "fucking
> vote to get rid of [them] and make all of this *SO* much simpler on
> ourselves" then? Why should the vast majority of people on this list
> have to pay for what is, evidently, a minority?
> 
> If, on the other hand, it's not a minority, then doesn't that indicate
> that the issue is on a deeper level?  And if so, wouldn't it be more
> prudent to try and solve that one, instead?
> 
> 
> > I say drop the rules to something simple that makes sense, boot the
> > troublemakers, and ignore the dissenters.  I'll gladly help anyone make
> > up any procmail recipes they need to filter their mail.  Let's get back
> > to developing and leave the politics to Obama and Hillary.
> 
> This is a little worrisome, you know.  Perhaps you didn't mean this set
> of statements to sound as all-encompassing as all that.  Isn't dissent
> and disagreement the result of differing points of view, which could
> actually benefit Gentoo?
> 
> My thought is this: everyone should try and evaluate their own behaviour
> on this list, and the method in which they treat others.  If each of us
> actually thought about the effects of our attitudes, this discussion
> might well be moot.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Seemant
> 
> 
> 

Regards,
- -- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Sparc, Devrel)
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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Christina Fullam]

Christina Fullam wrote:
> I think everyone is overlooking the part included previously:
> (non-dev sends his email, time period expires and
> no one booted it, so the email rolls through)"

Ryan Hill <dirtyepic@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>Then what, exactly, is the damned point?  The problem this is
>>supposedly intended to solve is that -dev is too high-volume.  This
>>solution requires people to actually put MORE effort into reading -dev
>>than they previously did.  No one is going to actually do any
>>monitoring, so all you've done is made posts from non-dev accounts
>>time delayed.  Why?

I suppose the problem is high-volume and excessive flaming/trolling/OT.
The proposed solution asks that every developer take an active role,
yes, so that could easily equal more work - but I have little doubts
that there are developers that will take an interest in doing it.

However, all that aside, here is another way this change could be
implemented:

-core stays private. I really dont see the need to change IMO.
-project (call it what you will) would be for the off topic, non
development emails that we so commonly see. this list would be optional
for all developers.
-dev (no preference for the name) would be for development discussion
for devs and non-devs alike. everyone would all start out on a
whitelist. any developer could opt to move a dev or non-dev to the
moderated list (meaning their emails would be delayed allowing for
moderation or simple release after a given time period).
The check and balance for this would be that if any developer was found
to be moderating someone unnecessarily, that developer themself would be
moved to the moderated list by devrel for a time period without any
access rights to change anything further themselves. Repeat offenders
would be reviewed by devrel for further action if needed. this list
would be required for all developers.

I dont think for a moment that it is only non-devs causing this
excessive amount of email which often results in flaming/trolling. I do
agree that everyone should be bound by the same rules.

Thoughts?

-- 
Kind regards,
Christina Fullam
Gentoo Developer Relations Lead | GWN Author
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Re: ML changes

[Ryan Hill]

Christina Fullam wrote:

> I suppose the problem is high-volume and excessive flaming/trolling/OT.
> The proposed solution asks that every developer take an active role,
> yes, so that could easily equal more work - but I have little doubts
> that there are developers that will take an interest in doing it.
> 
> However, all that aside, here is another way this change could be
> implemented:
> 
> -core stays private. I really dont see the need to change IMO.

Agreed.

> -project (call it what you will) would be for the off topic, non
> development emails that we so commonly see. this list would be optional
> for all developers.

Agreed.  Though "off-topic" could be replaced by "non-technical".

> -dev (no preference for the name) would be for development discussion
> for devs and non-devs alike. everyone would all start out on a
> whitelist. any developer could opt to move a dev or non-dev to the
> moderated list (meaning their emails would be delayed allowing for
> moderation or simple release after a given time period).
>
> The check and balance for this would be that if any developer was found
> to be moderating someone unnecessarily, that developer themself would be
> moved to the moderated list by devrel for a time period without any
> access rights to change anything further themselves. Repeat offenders
> would be reviewed by devrel for further action if needed. this list
> would be required for all developers.

I'd prefer short-term banning to moderating.  Once an individual is
moderated, who is expected to review their mails?  Who is reviewing the
reviews?  Is devrel really prepared, in resources and spirit, to
evaluate every email sent by a moderated individual?

If you feel you are, then you have my support.


> I dont think for a moment that it is only non-devs causing this
> excessive amount of email which often results in flaming/trolling. I do
> agree that everyone should be bound by the same rules.

Agreed.

> Thoughts?


-- 
dirtyepic                 salesman said this vacuum's guaranteed
 gentoo org          it could suck an ancient virus from the sea
  9B81 6C9F E791 83BB 3AB3  5B2D E625 A073 8379 37E8 (0x837937E8)

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Dawid Węgliński]

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Dnia 14-07-2007, sob o godzinie 14:03 -0700, Christina Fullam
napisał(a):
[ .. ]
> -core stays private. I really dont see the need to change IMO.
> -project (call it what you will) would be for the off topic, non
> development emails that we so commonly see. this list would be optional
> for all developers.
> -dev (no preference for the name) would be for development discussion
> for devs and non-devs alike. everyone would all start out on a
> whitelist. any developer could opt to move a dev or non-dev to the
> moderated list (meaning their emails would be delayed allowing for
> moderation or simple release after a given time period).
> The check and balance for this would be that if any developer was found
> to be moderating someone unnecessarily, that developer themself would be
> moved to the moderated list by devrel for a time period without any
> access rights to change anything further themselves. Repeat offenders
> would be reviewed by devrel for further action if needed. this list
> would be required for all developers.
I agree w/ that.
> 
> I dont think for a moment that it is only non-devs causing this
> excessive amount of email which often results in flaming/trolling. I do
> agree that everyone should be bound by the same rules.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> -- 
> Kind regards,
> Christina Fullam
> Gentoo Developer Relations Lead | GWN Author
-- 
,-----------------------------.
| Dawid Węgliński             |
| cla@gentoo.org              |
| cla @ irc.freenode.net      |
| GPG: 295E72D9               |
`-----------------------------'


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Daniel Drake]

Mike Doty wrote:
> All-
> 
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.

I'm not keen on this idea. I like the "traditional" unmoderated mailing 
list scheme used in open source projects everywhere, including this one 
at present.

The Gentoo development community is much more closed than the 
development communities of most other open source projects (for good 
reasons), and I wouldn't like to see it close up further. Moderation 
would be used to exclude certain discussion, but the real solution for 
that is just to teach people to ignore the idiots. (yep, not easy in 
some cases!)

I'm also not sure that the proposal solves any problems -- I glanced 
over the last few weeks of mail and didn't see any that I would reject 
from a moderation queue.

I do like the "gentoo-politics" idea that came up a few weeks ago, which 
was to move politics off gentoo-dev and to another list, but I'd view it 
from another perspective (and avoid the words 'politics'): make 
gentoo-dev for development topics only, and have another list for the 
rest. But, I suspect we'd come back to the same problem on both lists, 
where some people are too keen to talk and deviate too far away from 
technical discussion.

Daniel

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen]

On Friday 13 July 2007 01:17, Marius Mauch wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:43:59 -0700
>
> "Chrissy Fullam" <musikc@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > An additional method discussed was to have all non-dev emails on
> > a timeout, pick a number of hours, and then the email if not
> > moderated would be released. (non-dev sends his email, time period
> > expires and no one booted it, so the email rolls through)
>
> For what it's worth, _IF_ this proposal goes through I'd strongly prefer
> that mode of operation, so that moderation can't become a limiting
> factor.
>
> Marius
>
> PS: Am I the only one who missed both reminders for the meeting?
No, I missed them and the meeting as well:-(

Before I recently joined the council I was against implementing the Proctors 
but now that we they apparently have been disbanded I think we're better off 
with an open -dev than some form of moderation. Flamefest contributors should 
be temporarily blacklisted.

We can have a -dev-announce or -dev-info for devs that don't want to wade 
through all the mails here on -dev.

We still need -core for private communications and need input on -dev from 
non-devs. As a very busy person I wouldn't want the extra burden of 
moderating emails to -dev.

/me smacks himself for missing the meeting

-- 
Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen
Gentoo Linux Security Team
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen]

On Friday 13 July 2007 03:41, Daniel Ostrow wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 13:24 -0700, Mike Doty wrote:
<alot of good stuff snipped>

Works for me.

-- 
Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen
Gentoo Linux Security Team
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Will Briggs]

William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:

> Fact is -dev's volume is getting to the point where it's productivity is
> diminishing. Both with dev <-> dev and dev <-> world. The entire idea
> here is to help correct that and makes things BETTER :)

I hear you.  (Although I disagree that there is a relationship between
SNR and dev <-> dev and dev <-> world.)

And you're right that this is something that is a result of the
organisation growing.  And so the question we must face is _how_ do we
want it to grow.

At the moment gentoo-dev is a "one big noisy room" forum.  This is seen
as a "problem"

Propose solutions have included:

1) The "Let's divide up the room" solution - (and so we have proposals
for gentoo-politics, gentoo-flamewar and other more "specialised" fora)

2) The "Let's reduce the people in the room" solution (which is what the
OP's porposal is in essence)

The first doesn't work because it's well nigh impossible to enforce what
is on or off topic.

The second "solution" begs the question of "who do we let in the room?"
 I submit to you that demarcating based on dev status is a Bad Idea.
Some devs make the room less productive, some non-devs would make the
room more productive.
Unfortunately, demarcation of insiders and outsiders by any other means
would be arbitrary.

We arrive at the the third "solution"

3) People in the room can choose to take part in some conversations and
ignore others as they see fit.

This is basically the first two solutions implemented personally rather
than globally.

It's easily implemented through filters and sheer common sense.

Oh, and it's also the status quo.

W.

PS. My heart rate and the alarm bells of being close to repeating myself
indicate that I'm close to being fuel for flame here.  Please excuse if
I don't continue to post.  Not being rude, just exercising some of that
common sense.



-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Re: ML changes

[Steve Long]

Christina Fullam wrote:

> I suppose the problem is high-volume and excessive flaming/trolling/OT.
> The proposed solution asks that every developer take an active role,
> yes, so that could easily equal more work - but I have little doubts
> that there are developers that will take an interest in doing it.
>
It's odd though, that several have remarked how the list has been improving
recently, and the most off-topic distraction imo has been this entire
thread, based on meetings which were not exactly carried out in a
transparent manner. Instead, the list was simply told that this what "We"
were going to do. It doesn't strike me as a good way to establish consensus
nor as inspiring leadership.

> However, all that aside, here is another way this change could be
> implemented:
>
I am still unsure as to the need for the change. It hasn't been fully
established that this change is the correct solution afaics. The long
discussion that led to the establishment of the proctors came up with a
markedly different consensus of the way forward. Now this is imposed (a
week to comment before the motion is voted on.)

> -core stays private. I really dont see the need to change IMO.
Agreed.

> -project (call it what you will) would be for the off topic, non
> development emails that we so commonly see. this list would be optional
> for all developers.
> -dev (no preference for the name) would be for development discussion
> for devs and non-devs alike.
I can see that working if you implement some of the proposed technical
fixes, eg so that an Off-Topic discussion can be directed to project.

> everyone would all start out on a 
> whitelist. any developer could opt to move a dev or non-dev to the
> moderated list (meaning their emails would be delayed allowing for
> moderation or simple release after a given time period).
The trouble I have with this is that a distinction is drawn between the two
groups, and one group (with a history of disdain to the other, as well as
of flaming) is given more power. Sounds like a social experiment waiting to
happen.

> The check and balance for this would be that if any developer was found
> to be moderating someone unnecessarily, that developer themself would be
> moved to the moderated list by devrel for a time period without any
> access rights to change anything further themselves. Repeat offenders
> would be reviewed by devrel for further action if needed. this list
> would be required for all developers.
>
So the only course of appeal is to a subset of the minority group. I note
that the appeal mechanism hasn't even been discussed, so I am unsure as to
just how transparent it will be. Further if it's only devs who have any
input, I don't have any confidence in it actually achieving the aims, ie a
mailing list which is a good place for *all* to discuss development.

As someone else pointed out, any of A, B, or C could squash a post agreeing
with X, Y or Z, no doubt feeling justified. I don't believe that overworked
devs are going to be that sympathetic to appeals, and it seems like a
bureaucratic nightmare.

To say that people don't identify with their peers is disingenous, and given
that they do, moderation by only one side seems to lack credibility. At
least with the proctors, you were drawing from the existing Gentoo
moderators, across all channels, so had some assurance of experience and
competence, as well as the confidence of users.

> I dont think for a moment that it is only non-devs causing this
> excessive amount of email which often results in flaming/trolling. I do
> agree that everyone should be bound by the same rules.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
Only that if you want us all to be bound by the same rules, giving yet more
power to _individual_ devs is not the way to do it.

Here's an idea: ask the people who've got the experience to do the job. They
may not always be sympathetic, but they are at least always professional.

Also, since it has emerged from this discussion that there is no internal
development list, maybe it would be good to set one up? I dunno, it may
well be that drobbins et al intentionally made it so that all development
discussion had to be done in conjunction with users, and not just to get
their input. After all, a developer who cannot deal with non-devs still has
some growth to achieve, imo, and Gentoo once had the aim of producing devs
who were a credit to the team.


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Matthias Langer]

On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 13:24 -0700, Mike Doty wrote:
> All-
> 
> We're going to change the -dev mailing list from completely open to where only
> devs can post, but any dev could moderate a non-dev post.  devs who moderate in
>  bad posts will be subject to moderation themselves.  in addition the
> gentoo-project list will be created to take over what -dev frequently becomes.
>  there is no requirement to be on this new list.
> 
> This will probably remove the need for -core(everything gets leaked out anyway)
> but that's a path to cross later.
> 
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now would be
> the time.
> 
> --taco

no offense, but this is one of the worst proposals i've ever read on
this list; why? because, one of gentoo's major problems is that it is
becoming more and more a toy exclusively for its own developers. by
banning non-dev contributors from this list some of you may feel better
- but gentoo as a whole will probably suffer. silencing people doesn't
make their opinions invalid. what gentoo needs in my opinion is a clear
structure, strict and unmistakable rules about what $dev may do and what
$dev must not do, and ways to enforce these rules; this, and not
moderating or restricting communication channels, would improve the way
people are working together.

as this may be my last post - and it seems to fit in quite nicely - i
also want to say:

gentoo's problem is not that ciaranm is a troll. the problem is that
ciaranm is not a troll.
  

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Andrew Gaffney]

Matthias Langer wrote:
> by banning non-dev contributors from this list some of you may feel better
> - but gentoo as a whole will probably suffer. silencing people doesn't
> make their opinions invalid.

I keep seeing this argument over and over again. Many people are just completely 
misunderstanding.

This is not a blanket silencing of any non-dev on the list. This is simply 
delaying the posting of messages from non-devs (and even devs that have 
"improperly" moderated in the past). If nobody moderates a particular message to 
the list within a set amount of time, the message passes through.

Making the list "moderated" isn't the same as making a channel moderated on IRC. 
Anyone will still be able to speak, just with a slight delay, which allows us to 
maintain a good signal-to-noise ratio, and hopefully prevent re-occurrences of 
some of the nastier flamewars we've seen on the list lately.

-- 
Andrew Gaffney                                 http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
Gentoo Linux Developer             Catalyst/Installer + x86 release coordinator
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Will Briggs]

Andrew Gaffney wrote:
> Matthias Langer wrote:
>> by banning non-dev contributors from this list some of you may feel
>> better
>> - but gentoo as a whole will probably suffer. silencing people doesn't
>> make their opinions invalid.
> 
> I keep seeing this argument over and over again. Many people are just
> completely misunderstanding.
> 
> This is not a blanket silencing of any non-dev on the list. This is
> simply delaying the posting of messages from non-devs (and even devs
> that have "improperly" moderated in the past). If nobody moderates a
> particular message to the list within a set amount of time, the message
> passes through.
> 
> Making the list "moderated" isn't the same as making a channel moderated
> on IRC. Anyone will still be able to speak, just with a slight delay,
> which allows us to maintain a good signal-to-noise ratio, and hopefully
> prevent re-occurrences of some of the nastier flamewars we've seen on
> the list lately.
> 

Oh dear.  "slight delay" in an email list forum?  That's like saying
"you can take part in this face-to-face conversation but you have to
wait 30 seconds before you can say anything"  In effect you reduce that
person to an on-looker who can throw in the occassional comment.  The
comments themselves are reduced in their relevance or impact because by
the time they are heard, the conversation has moved on.

In effect, it's a ban: at the very least a two-tier system demarcated
along ill-chosen lines (dev / non-dev).

Calling the proposal a "ban" is not misunderstanding - it's simply
foresight.

At the very least, this is exactly the sort of reaction you get when you
exercise poor change management in a context where all participants (dev
and non-dev) are heavily invested in the success of the whole.

W.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Donnie Berkholz]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 446 bytes --]

Matthias Langer wrote:
> no offense, but this is one of the worst proposals i've ever read on
> this list; why? because, one of gentoo's major problems is that it is
> becoming more and more a toy exclusively for its own developers. 

Gentoo's always been exclusively for the developers. Nobody's paying us
to do this. It just so happens that the things we want to do also
benefit other people, and so they use them.

Thanks,
Donnie


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Andrew Gaffney]

Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> Matthias Langer wrote:
>> no offense, but this is one of the worst proposals i've ever read on
>> this list; why? because, one of gentoo's major problems is that it is
>> becoming more and more a toy exclusively for its own developers. 
> 
> Gentoo's always been exclusively for the developers. Nobody's paying us
> to do this. It just so happens that the things we want to do also
> benefit other people, and so they use them.

That was my thought as well. We (the developers) owe nothing to the community at 
large. We are volunteers, and if we want to treat Gentoo as our own personal toy 
(which we currently aren't), then so be it.

-- 
Andrew Gaffney                                 http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
Gentoo Linux Developer             Catalyst/Installer + x86 release coordinator
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Vlastimil Babka]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Andrew Gaffney wrote:
> Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>> Matthias Langer wrote:
>>> no offense, but this is one of the worst proposals i've ever read on
>>> this list; why? because, one of gentoo's major problems is that it is
>>> becoming more and more a toy exclusively for its own developers. 
>>
>> Gentoo's always been exclusively for the developers. Nobody's paying us
>> to do this. It just so happens that the things we want to do also
>> benefit other people, and so they use them.
> 
> That was my thought as well. We (the developers) owe nothing to the
> community at large. We are volunteers, and if we want to treat Gentoo as
> our own personal toy (which we currently aren't), then so be it.

Are you people serious? Let's ban nondevs from bugzilla then? Close
#gentoo, disband PR, etc? Not sure if we can keep any sponsors then...

- --
Vlastimil Babka (Caster)
Gentoo/Java
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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Michael Krelin]

> 
> That was my thought as well. We (the developers) owe nothing to the 
> community at large. We are volunteers, and if we want to treat Gentoo as 
> our own personal toy (which we currently aren't), then so be it.
> 

Of course Gentoo owes to the community a lot. A lot of its progress, 
progress of the applications included, etc. But it's not a matter of 
obligation. Being nice to others is a nice thing to do and a way to look 
better too. The opposite is... well, the opposite.

Love,
H
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Michael Cummings]

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Hash: SHA1

Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> Are you people serious? Let's ban nondevs from bugzilla then? Close
> #gentoo, disband PR, etc? Not sure if we can keep any sponsors then...

...or devs...

Seriously, no users == no community. Why? Because devs don't get along
with each other well enough to qualify as a community. It's really the
untold masses that make Gentoo a community. What's one of the top
resources cited as the greatness of Gentoo? The wiki. Which isn't even
official or sanctioned, but that is instead run largely by the community
at large.

Bah. This entire debate is extremely disheartening. How many devs out
there sprung from the ground pre-formed, and how many started out as
users in the community? *That* is the pool from which we draw our ranks,
from which we get our support and direction. This elitist attitude is
what drives the rationale devs to be hermits and just answer to their
small piece of the pie - because we don't give two figs about who's ego
is mightiest, just that we are producing something useful that makes us
happy, without breaking things for those dependent on us, the users.

Talk like this, especially from people I respected, makes me question
just what its worth to keep going. If Gentoo is only about the devs,
well, I'm happy with the way things are now, they work for me, so no
sense in working any further on perl-land.

Bah.


- --

- -----o()o----------------------------------------------
Michael Cummings   |    #gentoo-dev, #gentoo-perl
Gentoo Perl Dev    |    on irc.freenode.net
Gentoo/SPARC
Gentoo/AMD64
GPG: 0543 6FA3 5F82 3A76 3BF7  8323 AB5C ED4E 9E7F 4E2E
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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Marius Mauch]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2139 bytes --]

On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:42:44 -0400
Michael Cummings <mcummings@gentoo.org> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> > Are you people serious? Let's ban nondevs from bugzilla then? Close
> > #gentoo, disband PR, etc? Not sure if we can keep any sponsors
> > then...
> 
> ...or devs...
> 
> Seriously, no users == no community. Why? Because devs don't get along
> with each other well enough to qualify as a community. It's really the
> untold masses that make Gentoo a community. What's one of the top
> resources cited as the greatness of Gentoo? The wiki. Which isn't even
> official or sanctioned, but that is instead run largely by the
> community at large.
> 
> Bah. This entire debate is extremely disheartening. How many devs out
> there sprung from the ground pre-formed, and how many started out as
> users in the community? *That* is the pool from which we draw our
> ranks, from which we get our support and direction. This elitist
> attitude is what drives the rationale devs to be hermits and just
> answer to their small piece of the pie - because we don't give two
> figs about who's ego is mightiest, just that we are producing
> something useful that makes us happy, without breaking things for
> those dependent on us, the users.
> 
> Talk like this, especially from people I respected, makes me question
> just what its worth to keep going. If Gentoo is only about the devs,
> well, I'm happy with the way things are now, they work for me, so no
> sense in working any further on perl-land.

I think you're misinterpreting those statements.
Consider if you have choose if you spend your time implementing a
feature that you personally want to have or one that a user wants (and
is of no use to yourself), which one would you choose, assuming that
both have the same cost?
It's all about priority, nothing more, nothing less.

Marius

-- 
Public Key at http://www.genone.de/info/gpg-key.pub

In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be
Light.' And there was still nothing, but you could see a bit better.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Andrew Gaffney]

Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Andrew Gaffney wrote:
>> Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>>> Matthias Langer wrote:
>>>> no offense, but this is one of the worst proposals i've ever read on
>>>> this list; why? because, one of gentoo's major problems is that it is
>>>> becoming more and more a toy exclusively for its own developers. 
>>> Gentoo's always been exclusively for the developers. Nobody's paying us
>>> to do this. It just so happens that the things we want to do also
>>> benefit other people, and so they use them.
>> That was my thought as well. We (the developers) owe nothing to the
>> community at large. We are volunteers, and if we want to treat Gentoo as
>> our own personal toy (which we currently aren't), then so be it.
> 
> Are you people serious? Let's ban nondevs from bugzilla then? Close
> #gentoo, disband PR, etc? Not sure if we can keep any sponsors then...

You misunderstand. I'm not saying that all non-devs can get bent and their 
opinions be damned. I'm just saying that at the core, Gentoo is still the same 
as it was "back in the day". Gentoo isn't a commercial distribution, and nobody 
pays us, so we can do anything we want, whether the user community at large 
likes it or not. We ultimately answer only to ourselves.

-- 
Andrew Gaffney                                 http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
Gentoo Linux Developer             Catalyst/Installer + x86 release coordinator
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Andrew Gaffney]

Marius Mauch wrote:
> I think you're misinterpreting those statements.
> Consider if you have choose if you spend your time implementing a
> feature that you personally want to have or one that a user wants (and
> is of no use to yourself), which one would you choose, assuming that
> both have the same cost?
> It's all about priority, nothing more, nothing less.

Yep, this is all anyone is trying to say. We aren't paid, so we work on what we 
feel like working on, and do what we feel like doing (within reason).

-- 
Andrew Gaffney                                 http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
Gentoo Linux Developer             Catalyst/Installer + x86 release coordinator
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Richard Freeman]

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Andrew Gaffney wrote:
> 
> Yep, this is all anyone is trying to say. We aren't paid, so we work on
> what we feel like working on, and do what we feel like doing (within
> reason).
> 

This is the great difficulty with any open-source project, and yet most
work fairly well (including Gentoo despite all the talk in the last few
months).

Nobody is paying the devs to be devs.  Nobody is paying the ATs to be
ATs, nobody is paying the formum mods to keep things clean.  Nobody is
paying the users to submit bugs, or to humor the flamewars that often
follow in bugzilla.

Why are the users here?  Gentoo meets a need.

Why are the devs here?  Gentoo meets a need.

While they might have different roles, ultimately we all benefit from
working well together.  What the project needs to do is to create an
environment where each can succeed without burning out.  This requires
effort on all parts, and the occasional application of moderation
between the brain/keyboard interface (regardless of one's stance on ML
moderation I think we can all agree on this point).

I think that this particular debate is coming across fairly divisively,
and has the potential to be very damaging.  I think we need to choose
our words carefully.

Ultimately we're all here to scratch an itch of some kind.  To the
extent that devs work on projects that might not benefit themselves
personally we need to recognize and appreciate their charity.  For their
part devs have to realize that users often do recognize this and often
do try to go out of their way to humor some devs abrasive retorts in
bugzilla/etc (and this does not in ANY way apply to all, or even most,
devs).  There are both devs and users which give the larger population a
bad reputation, even though their individual contributions might warrant
their continued participation in Gentoo - and we all need to recognize this.

The fact is we all get further ahead in life when we learn to work
together.  Some here might not be in the working world yet - trust me -
corporate IT is a whole different beast whether you're working for a
start-up or an enterprise - say something rash to a customer or partner
and you might never work in the industry again (and that goes both ways
in the vendor/customer relationship).  For those already in the "real
world" - it is nice to have a project where one can pick and choose what
one works on without having to "keep one's guard up" - but all
interactions in life require some level of care if we ant to work together.

Ultimately fostering some level of professionalism has to be a goal of
the project.  It doesn't have to be so dry that there isn't any fun -
but raging flamewars will cause the project to bleed contributors,
future-contributors, and sponsors (those nice infrastructure servers
require power, bandwidth, hardware, and people to run them).  And we
don't need the bureaucracy associated with most large IT organizations
to accomplish this - just being polite goes a long way.  When somebody
treats you as if you're their personal slave do feel free to point it
out, but do so nicely and they'll probably get the point and bug you a
whole lot less in the future than if they just get a snappy retort.  And
extreme problem cases can always be dealt with using technical means
(bans/etc).
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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Thomas Tuttle]

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 23:54:44 -0400, "Daniel Drake" <dsd@gentoo.org>
said:
> I do like the "gentoo-politics" idea that came up a few weeks ago, which 
> was to move politics off gentoo-dev and to another list, but I'd view it 
> from another perspective (and avoid the words 'politics'): make 
> gentoo-dev for development topics only, and have another list for the 
> rest. But, I suspect we'd come back to the same problem on both lists, 
> where some people are too keen to talk and deviate too far away from 
> technical discussion.

On IRC, when a conversation wanders offtopic, one of the ops just nudges
the participants and says "hey, you should move your conversation to
#gentoo-foo" (or "##foo" or whatever).  Wouldn't it be easy enough for
someone to do that here?  It'd be pretty easy to specify what's on- and
off-topic for each list, and it would be friendlier than moderation,
just like it's friendlier for IRC ops to ask you nicely to switch
channels than to simply kick you out.

--Thomas Tuttle
-- 
Thomas Tuttle - ttuttle@ttuttle.net - http://www.ttuttle.net/

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Donnie Berkholz]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 562 bytes --]

On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:42:44 -0400
Michael Cummings <mcummings@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Talk like this, especially from people I respected, makes me question
> just what its worth to keep going. If Gentoo is only about the devs,
> well, I'm happy with the way things are now, they work for me, so no
> sense in working any further on perl-land.

You're still doing the work because you want to do it. The benefit to
you is that it fulfills you somehow, which means you're doing it for
yourself. You're interpreting things more narrowly.

Thanks,
Donnie

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[George Prowse]

Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> Matthias Langer wrote:
>   
>> no offense, but this is one of the worst proposals i've ever read on
>> this list; why? because, one of gentoo's major problems is that it is
>> becoming more and more a toy exclusively for its own developers. 
>>     
>
> Gentoo's always been exclusively for the developers. Nobody's paying us
> to do this. It just so happens that the things we want to do also
> benefit other people, and so they use them.
>
>   
That is possibly the most pathetic, misjudged and harmful (to Gentoo) 
post I have ever read. You should be ashamed.

Just because developers develop because they want to doesn't mean they 
dont want to be part of a community, if that wasn't the case then none 
of the current developers would have originally been part of the 
userbase to begin with.

Gentoo is becoming a joke, how many more developers have to leave? How 
many more harmful articles will it take? Users have left in droves and 
you seem to be becoming more and more insular the worse it gets.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Donnie Berkholz]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1253 bytes --]

On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:16:45 +0100
George Prowse <cokehabit@gmail.com> wrote:

> Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > Matthias Langer wrote:
> >   
> >> no offense, but this is one of the worst proposals i've ever read
> >> on this list; why? because, one of gentoo's major problems is that
> >> it is becoming more and more a toy exclusively for its own
> >> developers. 
> >
> > Gentoo's always been exclusively for the developers. Nobody's
> > paying us to do this. It just so happens that the things we want to
> > do also benefit other people, and so they use them.
> >
> >   
> That is possibly the most pathetic, misjudged and harmful (to Gentoo) 
> post I have ever read. You should be ashamed.

Well, I'm not. I have no idea what you read, but it doesn't appear to
be what I wrote.

> Just because developers develop because they want to doesn't mean
> they dont want to be part of a community, if that wasn't the case
> then none of the current developers would have originally been part
> of the userbase to begin with.

What relevance does this have to anything I said? I wasn't addressing
anything about being part of communities; I was addressing the
motivation of volunteers contributing to Gentoo.

Thanks,
Donnie

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Peter Weller]

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On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:24:32 -0700
Mike Doty <kingtaco@gentoo.org> wrote:

> All-
> 
[..snip..]
> 
> We're voting on this next council meeting so if you have input, now
> would be the time.
> 
> --taco

Eeer, I think this is one of the most idiotic ideas I've heard since
I started using Gentoo.

As I've seen before in various projects, a blacklist is *much* easier
to maintain than a whitelist, it makes *much* more sense to get a team
of people (not necessarily developers?) to moderate the Mailing Lists,
to a standard, complete, set of rules - was the CoC complete when the
Proctors started? Could this be why the idea didn't work originally?

A Mailing List should be treated like the forums and IRC, those who
misbehave get a warning. Then if they continue, a ban. They had their
chance, they fucked up, sod them.

And now there's people polluting the Mailing List with the freakin'
weather in what seems to be some form of a protest to the ML changes.
This is stupid. Don't make the changes. Make a complete set of rules for
moderation, appoint a suitable team of developers (and users?) to
moderate the mailing list, make sure that they've had experience in
moderation. Pick moderators from various timezones to ensure a timely
stop to any potential flamewars. Teach the people using the mailing
list that there is NO excuse for misbehaviour. A ban is a ban, you
can't get around it. No bribing high-up council members or devrel
members to get you unbanned. This will bring about a fall in the
system. The moderators should get the final word, end of. Keep
discussions *technical*, attempt not to bring personal differences into
the public. Take it off-list, just as you would PM someone on the
forums or IRC. It's the same thing.

Anyway, those are just my 2 cents.

welp

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 21:02:07 +0100
Peter Weller <welp@gentoo.org> 
> The moderators should get the final word, end of.

That would only work if Gentoo could find decent moderators who are
prepared to put lots of effort into work that is, let's face it,
entirely unnecessary and serving no point beyond letting a few people
able to be seen to be 'doing something'.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 13:14 +1000, Will Briggs wrote:
> Oh dear.  "slight delay" in an email list forum?  That's like saying
> "you can take part in this face-to-face conversation but you have to
> wait 30 seconds before you can say anything"  In effect you reduce that
> person to an on-looker who can throw in the occassional comment.  The
> comments themselves are reduced in their relevance or impact because by
> the time they are heard, the conversation has moved on.

On a mailing list?

We're not talking IRC here.  We're talking mailing lists.

I can take a nap, a full 8 hour sleep, or many times even take the
WEEKEND OFF FROM GENTOO and still manage to come back and give useful
input.  Email isn't exactly instant and nobody who runs a mail server
will even pretend that it is.  Adding a, say, 3 hour delay between
posting and the timeout, doesn't seem to me like it would affect much of
anything.  After all, I managed to not touch my email since Friday and I
am still managing to participate in this conversation.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 06:45 -0500, Andrew Gaffney wrote:
> That was my thought as well. We (the developers) owe nothing to the community at 
> large. We are volunteers, and if we want to treat Gentoo as our own personal toy 
> (which we currently aren't), then so be it.

Exactly.

I work on Gentoo because I want to work on it.  It scratches an itch
that I have.  I like using it personally and also professionally.  I
find it easier to help improve Gentoo, thereby making it better for
myself, than to simply ask others to fix it for me and hope that they're
interested in changing things in the same manner as I am.  This is
exactly why I became a developer and why I still am a developer.

That being said, I know that I, as well as many other Gentoo developers,
will gladly accept payment to work on what YOU want me to work on, but
until such time as I am in someone else's employ, I'll be working on
what I choose to work on myself.

If you don't like what a developer is working on or would rather they
work on something that interests you, offer to pay them.  Unless they're
your employee, they owe you nothing.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 14:37 +0200, Michael Krelin wrote:
> > 
> > That was my thought as well. We (the developers) owe nothing to the 
> > community at large. We are volunteers, and if we want to treat Gentoo as 
> > our own personal toy (which we currently aren't), then so be it.
> > 
> 
> Of course Gentoo owes to the community a lot. A lot of its progress, 
> progress of the applications included, etc. But it's not a matter of 
> obligation. Being nice to others is a nice thing to do and a way to look 
> better too. The opposite is... well, the opposite.

Well said...

Remember that if we really didn't give a crap about the community, we
wouldn't be writing open source software.  If we didn't care about the
users, we wouldn't release our software to them.  We wouldn't have a bug
tracker, forums, and all the other things that we do and maintain solely
for the community.

To phrase it in another manner that might make more sense, any given
developer is going to be more interested in fixing/changing what is
important or interesting to them than what some group of users wants
them to fix/change.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[George Prowse]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 13:14 +1000, Will Briggs wrote:
>> Oh dear.  "slight delay" in an email list forum?  That's like saying
>> "you can take part in this face-to-face conversation but you have to
>> wait 30 seconds before you can say anything"  In effect you reduce that
>> person to an on-looker who can throw in the occassional comment.  The
>> comments themselves are reduced in their relevance or impact because by
>> the time they are heard, the conversation has moved on.
> 
> On a mailing list?
> 
> We're not talking IRC here.  We're talking mailing lists.
> 
> I can take a nap, a full 8 hour sleep, or many times even take the
> WEEKEND OFF FROM GENTOO and still manage to come back and give useful
> input.  Email isn't exactly instant and nobody who runs a mail server
> will even pretend that it is.  Adding a, say, 3 hour delay between
> posting and the timeout, doesn't seem to me like it would affect much of
> anything.  After all, I managed to not touch my email since Friday and I
> am still managing to participate in this conversation.
> 
This is going to crash and burn but wouldn't it be an ideal job 
description for the proctors? Instead of telling people off they could 
just stop people posting. That way you dont even get to know that they 
are even there.

Seeing as most of them are forum mods there could even be a "why was I 
blocked?" thread in Feedback...

Their decision to forward emails to a -politics (or whatever it was) ML 
would be a great one
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 23:30 +0100, George Prowse wrote:
> This is going to crash and burn but wouldn't it be an ideal job 
> description for the proctors? Instead of telling people off they could 
> just stop people posting. That way you dont even get to know that they 
> are even there.

Seeing as how our original ideas for how the proctors would work pretty
much fell exactly in line with this, I would say "yes" to your question.

Of course, I now tend to agree that having a larger pool of mods for
gentoo-dev is probably better.  It allows any developer to participate,
reducing the "good ol' boy" argument, since participation is open to all
developers.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Will Briggs]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 13:14 +1000, Will Briggs wrote:
>> Oh dear.  "slight delay" in an email list forum?  That's like saying
>> "you can take part in this face-to-face conversation but you have to
>> wait 30 seconds before you can say anything"  In effect you reduce that
>> person to an on-looker who can throw in the occassional comment.  The
>> comments themselves are reduced in their relevance or impact because by
>> the time they are heard, the conversation has moved on.
> 
> On a mailing list?
> 
> We're not talking IRC here.  We're talking mailing lists.
> 
> I can take a nap, a full 8 hour sleep, or many times even take the
> WEEKEND OFF FROM GENTOO and still manage to come back and give useful
> input.  Email isn't exactly instant and nobody who runs a mail server
> will even pretend that it is.  Adding a, say, 3 hour delay between
> posting and the timeout, doesn't seem to me like it would affect much of
> anything.  After all, I managed to not touch my email since Friday and I
> am still managing to participate in this conversation.
> 

1) The smaller the moderation time, the smaller the benefit of having
moderation at all.  The greater the moderation time, the greater the
"penalty" for not being one of the "in crowd."   3 hours is an
interesting figure to consider in this light and I would love to see
some justification as to why that is the "sweet spot" (if, in fact, a
sweet spot exists)

2) I agree - I too sleep between reading gentoo-dev.  But the difference
is that you are talking about a delay in reading the list (like, for,
yeah, sleep).  The proposal, however, is a delay between between your
awareness of the current state of the conversation (and your writing of
a reply), and the actual distribution of your reply.

So, for instance: someone asks a (technical) question, no-one has
replied, so I reply.  $moderation_delay later my answer is distributed,
but in the mean time n other people have answered.  I (or they depending
on whether they were moderated as well) look like an idiot, and the end
result is more noise on the list, not less.

And you can throw in a whole other bunch of the sorts of thing that can
happen in the delay between reading & writing, and the actual
distribution of the email --> clarifications, retractions (Don't worry
I've solved it emails), solutions, and even warnings from people that
the thread is off-topic!

This is only compounded when the thread needs a bit of "to and fro" (the
"when you said X, did you mean X+Z?" type email).

Email being what it is there are always posts that "pass in the night"
and double-ups and delays.  These, while minimal, are one of email's
inherent frustrations.  The proposal simply amplifies that frustration.

Moderation delay is not the same thing as having a sleep between
readings of the list.

W.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[George Prowse]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 06:45 -0500, Andrew Gaffney wrote:
>> That was my thought as well. We (the developers) owe nothing to the community at 
>> large. We are volunteers, and if we want to treat Gentoo as our own personal toy 
>> (which we currently aren't), then so be it.
> 
> Exactly.
> 
> I work on Gentoo because I want to work on it.  It scratches an itch
> that I have.  I like using it personally and also professionally.  I
> find it easier to help improve Gentoo, thereby making it better for
> myself, than to simply ask others to fix it for me and hope that they're
> interested in changing things in the same manner as I am.  This is
> exactly why I became a developer and why I still am a developer.
> 
> That being said, I know that I, as well as many other Gentoo developers,
> will gladly accept payment to work on what YOU want me to work on, but
> until such time as I am in someone else's employ, I'll be working on
> what I choose to work on myself.
> 
> If you don't like what a developer is working on or would rather they
> work on something that interests you, offer to pay them.  Unless they're
> your employee, they owe you nothing.
> 
Maybe you should change the Gentoo philosophy: 
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/philosophy.xml

Us, the Gentoo Proletariat, respect the developers because of the great 
work they do for free but that doesn't absolve you of any responsibility 
towards Gentoo, quite the opposite. The Gentoo philosophy and how it 
states the need for Gentoo to accomodate the needs of it's users 
establishes a minimum level of responsibility from the Distro to it's 
userbase so basically stating "I do what I want and how I want" is not 
in keeping with the way Gentoo was meant to be run and shouldn't be how 
it is being run at this moment in time.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Michael Krelin]

> On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 14:37 +0200, Michael Krelin wrote:
>>> That was my thought as well. We (the developers) owe nothing to the 
>>> community at large. We are volunteers, and if we want to treat Gentoo as 
>>> our own personal toy (which we currently aren't), then so be it.
>>>
>> Of course Gentoo owes to the community a lot. A lot of its progress, 
>> progress of the applications included, etc. But it's not a matter of 
>> obligation. Being nice to others is a nice thing to do and a way to look 
>> better too. The opposite is... well, the opposite.
> 
> Well said...
> 
> Remember that if we really didn't give a crap about the community, we
> wouldn't be writing open source software.  If we didn't care about the
> users, we wouldn't release our software to them.  We wouldn't have a bug
> tracker, forums, and all the other things that we do and maintain solely
> for the community.

I didn't doubt Gentoo attitude towards community. This is why statements 
like the one above strike me as exceedingly out of place.

> To phrase it in another manner that might make more sense, any given
> developer is going to be more interested in fixing/changing what is
> important or interesting to them than what some group of users wants
> them to fix/change.

This is an attempt to make sense of the statement, which, interpreted 
this way is absolutely irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Love,
H
-- 
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RE: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Chrissy Fullam]

Could we try to keep this thread, and all the similarly named ones, on
topic? The pointing fingers, trash talking, etc is not furthering anything.
If you don't like councils opinion, or someone elses opinion, well respect
them enough to allow them their own opinion.
The real topic at hand is about this mailing list and the proposed changes.
If you don't like those proposed changes, please think it through and make
alternative suggestions. 

The original proposed idea:
* Make -dev a moderated mailing list, imposing a delay on all emails sent by
non-developers and adding devs to that same list as needed. All emails
should be of a development nature and should stay on topic. Devs retain the
right to discard moderated emails if they are off topic or inappropriate.
Devs found to be abusing this privilege would undergo review by devrel for
further action. Devs would be required to be on this list.
* Make a new mailing list for the off topic conversations to go to. Not a
requirement for devs to join but a place to continue on a topic that really
isnt development related.

I really don't think anyone on council honestly believes that there are no
good alternative ideas out there so the we as the community need to come up
with those alternatives. 

Kind regards,
Christina Fullam
Gentoo Developer Relations Lead | GWN Author

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[George Prowse]

Chrissy Fullam wrote:
> Could we try to keep this thread, and all the similarly named ones, on
> topic? The pointing fingers, trash talking, etc is not furthering anything.
> If you don't like councils opinion, or someone elses opinion, well respect
> them enough to allow them their own opinion.
> The real topic at hand is about this mailing list and the proposed changes.
> If you don't like those proposed changes, please think it through and make
> alternative suggestions. 
> 
> The original proposed idea:
> * Make -dev a moderated mailing list, imposing a delay on all emails sent by
> non-developers and adding devs to that same list as needed. All emails
> should be of a development nature and should stay on topic. Devs retain the
> right to discard moderated emails if they are off topic or inappropriate.
> Devs found to be abusing this privilege would undergo review by devrel for
> further action. Devs would be required to be on this list.
> * Make a new mailing list for the off topic conversations to go to. Not a
> requirement for devs to join but a place to continue on a topic that really
> isnt development related.
> 
> I really don't think anyone on council honestly believes that there are no
> good alternative ideas out there so the we as the community need to come up
> with those alternatives. 
> 
Stopping or postponing technical posts on -dev will always be counter 
productive. Just create a topic in another list (-politics sounds a good 
one), forward all further responses there and if necessary create a new 
post to -dev to carry on the original discussion. The people involved in 
the -politics discussion can then carry it on somewhere else.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Paul de Vrieze]

On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:11:55 Seemant Kulleen wrote:
>
> This leaves two courses of action.
>
> 1. Officially install him as such; or
> 2. Stop letting him wield his power over you.  (yes, you, not us --
> concentrate on how much you let him affect you).

I guess you know my vote. Option 1 is unacceptable.

Paul

ps. Not that I've been letting him do so, but I've been otherwise occupied.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Paul de Vrieze]

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 01:34:17 Thomas Tuttle wrote:
>
> Personally, I prefer quicker mechanisms to slower ones, but some people
> dislike real-time communications because they can interrupt their work
> constantly.  I think what's important is not the signal-to-noise ratio,
> per se, but the relevant-to-irrelevant ratio.  To me, it makes no
> difference whether the traffic that I don't care about is spam/trolls or
> just discussion of another project.  So I'd support -dev being for
> coordination of core development and -project being for other things, so
> that people can read all of -dev easily and simply pay attention to only
> what they want to see on -project.  But I see no reason to moderate
> either -- #-dev is moderated because IRC is an easy medium to disrupt.
> It's a lot harder to wander on to a mailing list and start trolling, and
> it's easier to block.

Many people also have very little time to invest into gentoo. For those it is 
not possible to be on IRC often, while for e-mail you can indeed save up 
things until the end of the day and reply when it is convenient to you. As 
such a -dev mailing list is much more useful than a #-dev IRC channel. 
Ignoring the list is ignoring many developers who want to do work instead of 
monitoring IRC.

Paul

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