[gentoo-dev] What is "official"?

[gentoo-dev] What is "official"?

[Stuart Herbert]

Hi,

One of the issues that the o.g.o project has brought to a head is the
definition of what is "official" and what is not "official" when it
comes to Gentoo.  The term is already being thrown about in the
Project Sunrise thread; I'm sure it'll come up again in future.

It's an issue I think we should discuss and find an agreement on.

Personally, I think what makes something official or not is 100% down
to who does it.  I think something is official if it is done by the
project (where a project matches the definition in the metastructure
project) responsible for whatever we're applying the label "official"
to, then that's all that matters.

So (picking something entirely at random for an example), if the Java
project had an overlay somewhere (say, on gentooexperimental.org),
because it's their overlay, the overlay is "official".  Doesn't matter
where it is hosted - all that matters is that it is run by the Java
project.

Equally (because it is the hot topic of the moment), Project Sunrise's
overlay would be "official" because they're a Gentoo project.  The way
to stop them being "official" is simply to have the Council pass a
resolution to shut down the project.

I think the other side of the term "official" is clarifying the scope
of how far something can be "official".  Using the Java project as an
example again (sorry guys :), the Java team can put in place
"official" policies and procedures for what their team does, but that
doesn't make them mandatory for the whole Gentoo project.  Other
developers remain free to form competitive projects, and put their own
"official" policies and procedures in place if they wish.

(I hope I explained that last bit properly.  What I'm trying to do is
keep in mind the terms of the metastructure document, which explicitly
allow for two or more teams to be competing with each other).

What are the alternatives?  If a project's activities are not
automatically "official", then who gets to decide, and how is that
decision made?  How can that decision be made fairly, without
contradicting the metastructure, and without giving rise to any
accusations of 'cabals'?

Best regards,
Stu
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gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] What is "official"?

[Carsten Lohrke]

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In my eyes only the main tree is official. The overlays are development niches 
(and as such perfectly fine), to speed up development without causing much 
trouble in the main tree. The problem is that overlay.g.o is seemingly 
official, because we host it. It should be made more clear that this isn't 
the case.


Carsten

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Re: [gentoo-dev] What is "official"?

[Ned Ludd]

Keeping it simple...

If it's hosted on gentoo infrastructure it's official.
If it's hosted on gentooexp.org/SF/Non infra then it's not official.


On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 10:32 +0100, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> One of the issues that the o.g.o project has brought to a head is the
> definition of what is "official" and what is not "official" when it
> comes to Gentoo.  The term is already being thrown about in the
> Project Sunrise thread; I'm sure it'll come up again in future.
> 
> It's an issue I think we should discuss and find an agreement on.
> 
> Personally, I think what makes something official or not is 100% down
> to who does it.  I think something is official if it is done by the
> project (where a project matches the definition in the metastructure
> project) responsible for whatever we're applying the label "official"
> to, then that's all that matters.
> 
> So (picking something entirely at random for an example), if the Java
> project had an overlay somewhere (say, on gentooexperimental.org),
> because it's their overlay, the overlay is "official".  Doesn't matter
> where it is hosted - all that matters is that it is run by the Java
> project.
> 
> Equally (because it is the hot topic of the moment), Project Sunrise's
> overlay would be "official" because they're a Gentoo project.  The way
> to stop them being "official" is simply to have the Council pass a
> resolution to shut down the project.
> 
> I think the other side of the term "official" is clarifying the scope
> of how far something can be "official".  Using the Java project as an
> example again (sorry guys :), the Java team can put in place
> "official" policies and procedures for what their team does, but that
> doesn't make them mandatory for the whole Gentoo project.  Other
> developers remain free to form competitive projects, and put their own
> "official" policies and procedures in place if they wish.
> 
> (I hope I explained that last bit properly.  What I'm trying to do is
> keep in mind the terms of the metastructure document, which explicitly
> allow for two or more teams to be competing with each other).
> 
> What are the alternatives?  If a project's activities are not
> automatically "official", then who gets to decide, and how is that
> decision made?  How can that decision be made fairly, without
> contradicting the metastructure, and without giving rise to any
> accusations of 'cabals'?
> 
> Best regards,
> Stu
-- 
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] What is "official"?

[Kevin F. Quinn]

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On Fri, 09 Jun 2006 07:50:27 -0400
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Keeping it simple...
> 
> If it's hosted on gentoo infrastructure it's official.
> If it's hosted on gentooexp.org/SF/Non infra then it's not official.

I think this is the best way to define it.  Anything on Gentoo
infrastructure has to have broad support from the Gentoo community.
Anything elsewhere can do whatever it wants.

We could take a leaf from the GNU book, and register nongentoo.org if
infra wish to host stuff that is not official (c.f. savannah.gnu.org vs
savannah.nongnu.org).  Then sunrise could go on overlays.nongentoo.org

Official means supported, however supported does not necessarily mean
official.  Just because some people support something doesn't make it
"official".  For example, if a project is official, then it's not
acceptable for devs to just ignore a problem related to the
project in stuff that isn't part of the project (at the very
least the problem should be referred to the project).

What I'm getting at is that "officialness" can be thought of in terms
of the effects it has, "how does the way something official is dealt
with differ from something unofficial?".  My take is that official stuff
is something that all devs accept some level of responsibility for.
Thus official stuff is supported by the dev community as a whole. If
something isn't supported by the dev community as a whole, in that a
reasonable portion of the dev community actively discourage it, then it
shouldn't be official.  Works both ways, of course - official projects
need to make reasonable efforts not to cause pain for everyone else.

> On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 10:32 +0100, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > One of the issues that the o.g.o project has brought to a head is
> > the definition of what is "official" and what is not "official"
> > when it comes to Gentoo.  The term is already being thrown about in
> > the Project Sunrise thread; I'm sure it'll come up again in future.
> > 
> > It's an issue I think we should discuss and find an agreement on.
> > 
> > Personally, I think what makes something official or not is 100%
> > down to who does it.  I think something is official if it is done
> > by the project (where a project matches the definition in the
> > metastructure project) responsible for whatever we're applying the
> > label "official" to, then that's all that matters.

I think this delegates "officialness" too much.  I don't think a
project should encourage something that directly contadicts what is
official in a broader sense.

> > So (picking something entirely at random for an example), if the
> > Java project had an overlay somewhere (say, on
> > gentooexperimental.org), because it's their overlay, the overlay is
> > "official".  Doesn't matter where it is hosted - all that matters
> > is that it is run by the Java project.

My argument would be that the experimental overlay would not be
official for Gentoo as a whole.  For example, any problems caused by
people using stuff from the experimental overlay (such that
returning to the official tree would eliminate the problem) could be
RESOLVED/INVALID.  We come back to the same thing; how can anyone be
expected to maintain stuff against a sea of unofficial overlays?

> > Equally (because it is the hot topic of the moment), Project
> > Sunrise's overlay would be "official" because they're a Gentoo
> > project.  The way to stop them being "official" is simply to have
> > the Council pass a resolution to shut down the project.

With regards sunrise, I think a good solution would be to start it as
an unofficial project.  If in the long term it proves acceptable to the
community as a whole, it could become official.  One thing that is a
distasteful is the way sunrise is presented as a fait-accompli,
when prior discussion on this list had clearly implied (to my mind
at least) that overlays.g.o would not be used for such a thing.

> > I think the other side of the term "official" is clarifying the
> > scope of how far something can be "official".  Using the Java
> > project as an example again (sorry guys :), the Java team can put
> > in place "official" policies and procedures for what their team
> > does, but that doesn't make them mandatory for the whole Gentoo
> > project.  Other developers remain free to form competitive
> > projects, and put their own "official" policies and procedures in
> > place if they wish.
> > 
> > (I hope I explained that last bit properly.  What I'm trying to do
> > is keep in mind the terms of the metastructure document, which
> > explicitly allow for two or more teams to be competing with each
> > other).

This is about delegation, which is fine - however I don't think it's a
good idea to have two conflicting official positions.  With regards
Gentoo-wide policy

> > 
> > What are the alternatives?  If a project's activities are not
> > automatically "official", then who gets to decide, and how is that
> > decision made?  How can that decision be made fairly, without
> > contradicting the metastructure, and without giving rise to any
> > accusations of 'cabals'?
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > Stu


-- 
Kevin F. Quinn

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Re: [gentoo-dev] What is "official"?

[Henrik Brix Andersen]

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On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 09:22:08PM +0200, Kevin F. Quinn wrote:
> On Fri, 09 Jun 2006 07:50:27 -0400
> Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > Keeping it simple...
> > 
> > If it's hosted on gentoo infrastructure it's official.
> > If it's hosted on gentooexp.org/SF/Non infra then it's not official.
> 
> I think this is the best way to define it.  Anything on Gentoo
> infrastructure has to have broad support from the Gentoo community.
> Anything elsewhere can do whatever it wants.

I fully agree with you and Ned on this.

> We could take a leaf from the GNU book, and register nongentoo.org if
> infra wish to host stuff that is not official (c.f. savannah.gnu.org vs
> savannah.nongnu.org).  Then sunrise could go on overlays.nongentoo.org

That's not a half bad idea, actually. Question is - does infra want to
host unofficial projects?

Regards,
Brix
-- 
Henrik Brix Andersen <brix@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Metadistribution | Mobile computing herd

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Re: [gentoo-dev] What is "official"?

[Lance Albertson]

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Stuart Herbert wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> One of the issues that the o.g.o project has brought to a head is the
> definition of what is "official" and what is not "official" when it
> comes to Gentoo.  The term is already being thrown about in the
> Project Sunrise thread; I'm sure it'll come up again in future.
> 
> It's an issue I think we should discuss and find an agreement on.
> 
> Personally, I think what makes something official or not is 100% down
> to who does it.  I think something is official if it is done by the
> project (where a project matches the definition in the metastructure
> project) responsible for whatever we're applying the label "official"
> to, then that's all that matters.

Its a matter of PR in most cases. Infrastructure has been trying hard to
make sure any project we host still provides Gentoo with decent PR. Its
easy for us to say that if its not on Gentoo's servers, then we can't
fully support it. Its the whole liability thing. (That's why we moved
all the servers in the rsync.g.o rotation into our control).

User X sees something on *.gentoo.org and assumes that its being
properly taken care of and managed. If its non-*.gentoo.org, then they
can be safe to assume its not entirely under the arms of Gentoo. Now, we
can have experimental stuff on gentoo infra, but the key thing here is
it needs to be properly maintained and managed.

Say in the case with sunrise, I think a lot of people are concerned with
 the people managing that project won't be able to handle all the
different types of issues people are worried about. Perhaps its also a
trust issue also, I'm not sure.

> So (picking something entirely at random for an example), if the Java
> project had an overlay somewhere (say, on gentooexperimental.org),
> because it's their overlay, the overlay is "official".  Doesn't matter
> where it is hosted - all that matters is that it is run by the Java
> project.

Right, and if ge.org gets hacked, its pretty obvious that it wasn't
officially part of Gentoo anyways. To me "official" means that we (as a
group of developers) agree to support something in some fashion and
everyone is held accountable for it since its on Gentoo's central resources.

> Equally (because it is the hot topic of the moment), Project Sunrise's
> overlay would be "official" because they're a Gentoo project.  The way
> to stop them being "official" is simply to have the Council pass a
> resolution to shut down the project.

It would have helped if the project had discussed it on ML's *before*
announcing it to the world and then ignoring all discussion about it.
I'm pretty sure that the whole attitude they've shown thus far has
degraded their trust among developers for the project.

The discussion about overlays several months ago specifically was
against these types of repos being included, yet it somehow got by?
There was trust involved there that if o.g.o became to being, that it
would try and keep such repos out.

> I think the other side of the term "official" is clarifying the scope
> of how far something can be "official".  Using the Java project as an
> example again (sorry guys :), the Java team can put in place
> "official" policies and procedures for what their team does, but that
> doesn't make them mandatory for the whole Gentoo project.  Other
> developers remain free to form competitive projects, and put their own
> "official" policies and procedures in place if they wish.

The trouble here is, those policies don't probably incur more bug
traffic for *everyone*. There's lots of ways of doing this and most
people want it done in such a manner to reduce bug traffic, bad PR, and
an agreed upon policy.

> (I hope I explained that last bit properly.  What I'm trying to do is
> keep in mind the terms of the metastructure document, which explicitly
> allow for two or more teams to be competing with each other).

I don't think the real argument is a competing team. If it is, what
teams is it? I'm not sure I understand your point here in relation to
the current stuff going on.

> What are the alternatives?  If a project's activities are not
> automatically "official", then who gets to decide, and how is that
> decision made?  How can that decision be made fairly, without
> contradicting the metastructure, and without giving rise to any
> accusations of 'cabals'?

The decision should be made on our development list for the most part.
If it seems that most people don't have a problem with it, then it
should ok to assume that its 'more' official. Now if its discussed and
several people point out issues with a project, and the project either
denies or ignores the issues that are brought up, then I would question
its official status.  We're all peers in the same group and we should
all respect each other's opinions. If such a project cannot work with
their peers on resolving the issue then it to me the project doesn't
belong in Gentoo nor be included as official.

-- 
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

---
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ramereth/irc.freenode.net


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Re: [gentoo-dev] What is "official"?

[Luis Francisco Araujo]

Everything maintained by the Gentoo project, instead than for the Gentoo 
project.

Stuart Herbert wrote:
> Hi,
>
> One of the issues that the o.g.o project has brought to a head is the
> definition of what is "official" and what is not "official" when it
> comes to Gentoo.  The term is already being thrown about in the
> Project Sunrise thread; I'm sure it'll come up again in future.
>
> It's an issue I think we should discuss and find an agreement on.
>
> Personally, I think what makes something official or not is 100% down
> to who does it.  I think something is official if it is done by the
> project (where a project matches the definition in the metastructure
> project) responsible for whatever we're applying the label "official"
> to, then that's all that matters.
>
> So (picking something entirely at random for an example), if the Java
> project had an overlay somewhere (say, on gentooexperimental.org),
> because it's their overlay, the overlay is "official".  Doesn't matter
> where it is hosted - all that matters is that it is run by the Java
> project.
>
> Equally (because it is the hot topic of the moment), Project Sunrise's
> overlay would be "official" because they're a Gentoo project.  The way
> to stop them being "official" is simply to have the Council pass a
> resolution to shut down the project.
>
> I think the other side of the term "official" is clarifying the scope
> of how far something can be "official".  Using the Java project as an
> example again (sorry guys :), the Java team can put in place
> "official" policies and procedures for what their team does, but that
> doesn't make them mandatory for the whole Gentoo project.  Other
> developers remain free to form competitive projects, and put their own
> "official" policies and procedures in place if they wish.
>
> (I hope I explained that last bit properly.  What I'm trying to do is
> keep in mind the terms of the metastructure document, which explicitly
> allow for two or more teams to be competing with each other).
>
> What are the alternatives?  If a project's activities are not
> automatically "official", then who gets to decide, and how is that
> decision made?  How can that decision be made fairly, without
> contradicting the metastructure, and without giving rise to any
> accusations of 'cabals'?
>
> Best regards,
> Stu

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] What is "official"?

[Josh Saddler]

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To me, "official" means it's found anywhere within the gentoo.org/ webspace.
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