Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Time based retirements

[Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se>]

Markos Chandras wrote:
> > I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this.
> > --
> > Doug Goldstein
> 
> Your tone is not appropriate for discussion.

Sorry Markos, I disagree with you. Doug makes it abundantly clear
that he wants to understand. I think we can all recognize that, in
particular since he writes it out plainly. This in turn means that
everyone could pretty easily look past how he feels about the status
quo, because that is not what the thread is about at all, and focus
on the discussion.


> bring it to the list with a better attitude

I don't think this is very helpful. Please keep in mind that Doug is
not criticizing *you*. He is questioning the process that you have
been following for a while. You've probably internalized the process
by now, you might identify with it, but still keep in mind that Doug
is wanting to understand the process, and has written absolutely
nothing about you.


> pick a fight

Seriously, come on Markos, give people more credit than that. Even if
you feel attacked that does not mean that they intended to attack you.

Please work hard to understand what people intend, when they write
things. It doesn't hurt to ask politely if they really intended to
offend and/or attack you.

It's incredibly helpful to say that you perceive something as hurtful
and/or unjust and ask if that was really intended, it is however not
helpful at all to deduce that what you perceieved as hurtful and/or
unjust *must mean* that someone intended to aggress against you. The
end result is that you (too) are perceived as being aggressive. Try
to accomplish the opposite instead.


Rich Freeman wrote:
> I think this is a topic worth discussing, but I think Markos was fair
> to point out that starting out with an aggressive post isn't the right
> way to go.

I do not perceive Doug's email as aggressive. It is obviously
inquiring, and as motivation for the inquiry it starts with Doug's
attitude to the perceived policy. Surely there must be room on the
gentoo-dev mailing list for people to use their attitude to motivate
starting a discussion.

If there is *not* room for an attitude, then that seems like rather
broken communication to me, which I think would be an important issue
in itself.


> Perhaps the wait time should be increased.

Duncan wrote:
> And... perhaps that policy in general needs a reexamination.

I suggest that we try to think outside the box.

I've mentioned Gerrit before. I recommend to study it now if you
haven't already used it in any project.

If a Gerrit runs in front of gentoo-x86.git (please just call it
gentoo.git instead) then the developer role changes a fair bit, and
suddenly the whole world can very easily contribute to the tree
without requiring any process beyond acquiring an OpenID from
anywhere.


Going back to Duncan's - admittedly long but still extremely
informative - email (thanks Duncan!) it is now clear to me that the
only concern, the sole driving factor, for retiring developers is
infra security. I think the same level of security could be
accomplished with a *significantly* less aggressive retirement
policy.

Leave the account but simply block access. One example implementation
is to move the SSH key to another location, and have a lightweight
method to move it back in place, with an absolute minimum of human
interaction and required time. Done.

If someone has at some point contributed to Gentoo then why not let
them keep their user around, should they want to come back. Of course
this doesn't work retroactively, but I think it would be a cool tip
of the hat to current and future developers.


//Peter