[gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Doug Goldstein]

I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers
that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity
packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still
contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits
(e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc).

I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable
resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they
get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's
how they are to be treated that they can be retired. When they finally
want to contribute again they have the lovely uphill of our dreadfully
painful recruitment process.

I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this.
-- 
Doug Goldstein

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Peter Stuge]

Doug Goldstein wrote:
> I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this.

I guess that it's a bias. Everyone wants active developers.

One way to achieve that is to retire anyone who isn't active.

I would prefer another approach, but I also understand that Gentoo
has had massive people issues in the past.


//Peter

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Doug Goldstein <cardoe@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable
> resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they
> get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's
> how they are to be treated that they can be retired.

Could anybody post the text of one of these "nasty grams?"

I can understand the sense in just checking in to make sure a
developer still is interested in Gentoo and wants to retain cvs
access.  However, I think the bar for keeping access should be kept
low - they shouldn't be forced to go find some trivial change to make
just to get their name in the logs.

Sure, sometimes real life gets busy, but if a dev still runs Gentoo
and has interest they're fairly likely to return when life settles
down.

Quantity of contribution is not nearly as important as the
contributions being net-positive.

Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Matt Turner]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein <cardoe@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers
> that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity
> packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still
> contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits
> (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc).
>
> I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable
> resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they
> get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's
> how they are to be treated that they can be retired. When they finally
> want to contribute again they have the lovely uphill of our dreadfully
> painful recruitment process.
>
> I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this.
> --
> Doug Goldstein
>

Probably best to give an example.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Peter Stuge]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> I think the bar for keeping access should be kept low - they
> shouldn't be forced to go find some trivial change to make just
> to get their name in the logs.

When I first started looking into becoming a Gentoo developer I got a
very strong and very clear impression that this would be absolutely
neccessary not to get kicked out again. I still find that really
unfriendly, just like all the other bad stuff about Gentoo.

I've since understood that the documentation I had read is simply
incorrect, does not reflect reality, but it seemed quite
authoritative when I read it.

Desinformation is IMO always worse than no information.


//Peter

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Peter Stuge]

Peter Stuge wrote:
> > I think the bar for keeping access should be kept low - they
> > shouldn't be forced to go find some trivial change to make just
> > to get their name in the logs.
> 
> When I first started looking into becoming a Gentoo developer I got a
> very strong and very clear impression that this would be absolutely
> neccessary not to get kicked out again. I still find that really
> unfriendly, just like all the other bad stuff about Gentoo.

To be clear, by unfriendly I mean the things I subjectively consider
make Gentoo less awesome *for me*. There aren't many of them but
there are a few. I understand that they all have their reason for
being there. I don't neccessarily agree with them, but that's not the
point, just like it isn't the point that there is some stuff that I
don't like.


> Desinformation is IMO always worse than no information.

This line is the point.


//Peter

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

["Paweł Hajdan, Jr."]

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On 12/20/12 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein wrote:
> I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers
> that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity
> packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still
> contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits
> (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc).

Dough, thank you for rising the issue.

I'm receiving the undertakers@ e-mail, so I have a pretty good view of
what's happening.

I have several suggestions how we can improve things:

1. 3 months is too short period anyway.

2. Think through what the goals are. We do not want to retire as many
people as possible. We do not want to frustrate people who do contribute
to Gentoo. We do not want to discourage people who consider becoming new
developers. At least I don't.

3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider
maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in
metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a
formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other
people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package.

4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained.
Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good.
They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs
access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with
that as long as things are maintained properly.

5. Remember that cvs/bugzilla activity is not the only way of
contributing. It's probably most tanglible and very needed, but let's
not reduce real people and their real world situations, and their effort
to contribute to just dates and numbers.

Paweł



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[gentoo-dev] Re: Time based retirements

[Duncan]

Rich Freeman posted on Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:33:55 -0500 as excerpted:

> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Doug Goldstein <cardoe@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
>> I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable resource
>> that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they get a
>> nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's how
>> they are to be treated that they can be retired.
> 
> Could anybody post the text of one of these "nasty grams?"
> 
> I can understand the sense in just checking in to make sure a developer
> still is interested in Gentoo and wants to retain cvs access.  However,
> I think the bar for keeping access should be kept low - they shouldn't
> be forced to go find some trivial change to make just to get their name
> in the logs.
> 
> Sure, sometimes real life gets busy, but if a dev still runs Gentoo and
> has interest they're fairly likely to return when life settles down.

Obviously I can't post the text of one of these "nasty grams", but I was 
around when the idea was first discussed and then implemented, by 
undertakers and infra, with the blessing of either council or whatever it 
was that came before (I was young in gentoo back then and didn't have a 
clear understanding of how it all worked, but when I started, drobbins 
was still around, but in the process of setting up the foundation and etc 
so he could leave gentoo in good shape when he did retire, and IIRC/
AFAIK, he had turned things over to some sort of interrim executive 
committee... and I don't recall whether the events here predated what we 
call council today, or not).

You're essentially correct, Rich.  IIRC (and all this based on my 
possibly inaccurate understanding), at least one of the initial triggers 
was infra's concern, I believe after some other distro had a headline 
breakin when an inactive dev had their system penetrated and their 
credentials stolen, that the at-the-time-something like 500+ devs on the 
rolls, with something under 300 having any CVS or list activity at all 
within the last six months or some such (so about half were even 
minimally "active", this was of course before overlays became in any way 
widespread or more than personal overlays, tho some devs did make theirs 
publicly available), wasn't healthy, and was taking too much risk, due to 
the number of still active but potentially abandoned credentials out 
there, possibly free for the taking, with the credentialed no longer 
active, so they'd not even notice the activity in their name, that they 
hadn't done!

The other primary concern was QA related, all those effectively abandoned 
packages could now be put up for adoption by new maintainers or for 
maintainer-needed or treecleaning, as appropriate based on open bug 
count, etc.

As it was originally setup, the idea was that anybody without an away 
file explaining the situation, that hadn't had sufficient activity (CVS 
or list, I believe two commits or posts was to be considered sufficiently 
active) for at least (I believe) 90 days, would get an inquiry note from 
undertakers.  That level of the process was supposed to be mostly 
scripted, a script was to be run periodically that would check for away 
files, cvs commits, and list posts, and would generate a list of inactive 
devs and the notices automatically, altho I THINK actually SENDING the 
notices might have required undertaker action, in which case the human 
doing that was supposed to review them for sanity.

The idea was *NOT* that it would be a "nastygram", simply a note of 
concern, asking what was going on and if the dev was still interested in 
gentoo, or if they wanted to retire.  Again, the primary interest, as 
best I know, was security.  All those potentially unsupervised access 
credentials laying around for the taking, should someone get access to 
the inactive dev's computers, etc.

If they were still interested, at the first level (which was IIRC 90 
days), all they had to do was reply, saying so.  *ONLY*, and this was a 
point that everyone took pains to ensure was specifically made, if people 
didn't reply (or replied that they were no longer interested in gentoo), 
were they ultimately retired.

** It's also worth pointing out that a simple away file listing something 
reasonable (that wasn't itself expired by this much time, but that bit 
wasn't automated, the automated script simply checked for an away file, 
period) would immediately shut down the process.

I believe there was a second level that actually triggered the beginning 
of the undertaker process, at the 180 day (probably plus 30 days to give 
a last chance for a reply, which would have made it 210 days total, but 
I'm not positive on that).  By this point, the thinking went, a dev 
really SHOULD have had at LEAST the time to setup an away file, or simply 
reply with an explanation so they could be entered in an ignore list, if 
they weren't already active once again.

But, the argument went, anybody that couldn't post AT LEAST two messages 
or do two commits in six months (I believe the magic number was two)... 
arguably was likely not following gentoo closely enough any more to be 
sure their commits, if they DID make any, weren't more of a danger to the 
now moved on tree than a help, in any case.

AFAIK the policy was a bit controversial even then, but nobody could 
really refute the argument, particularly given the other distros breakins 
in the headlines due to the exploitation of still-active credentials for 
year-inactive devs.

And IIRC it DID allow gentoo to bring its headcount down to something a 
bit more in line with the active dev count.  Plus, with the retirement of 
those devs, the packages they maintained that had been effectively 
abandoned, were now actually announced for adoption and if there were no 
takers, they were marked maintainer-needed and/or tree-cleaned as 
appropriate.  That in turn helped clean up the tree rather noticeably in 
the initial six to eight months after the policy went into effect, as 
well.

Meanwhile, it didn't hurt activity measurably at all.  Because if people 
WERE still interested, they could easily show it, by simply replying and/
or setting an appropriate away, or by taking the encouragement to up 
their activity level just a bit.

But, as I said, that was well before overlays.gentoo.org and layman.  
Even if the original policy is still considered sound in general, it 
should arguably be updated (along with the scripts that do the checks) to 
include at least the main project overlays.  OTOH, an argument could 
equally be made that those aren't actual contributions to THE GENTOO 
TREE, and that in many/most cases, gentoo developer credentials aren't 
actually necessary for the main project overlays, in any case, so if 
that's where a dev's activity is, and they can't make at least the 
minimum main tree commits OR list posts, then the original argument still 
applies.

So the overlays policy could be debated either way, but it DOES need to 
be discussed, and the general inactivity retirement policy should be 
updated to reflect the actual decision, whatever it may be.

And... perhaps that policy in general needs a reexamination.

Regardless, it's possible that the "nastygrams" aren't worded 
particularly well, and that they could be worded better, even if the 
policy is retained.  However, that's hard to say, without a hard example 
of such a "nastygram" posted.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Pacho Ramos]

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El jue, 20-12-2012 a las 21:21 -0600, Doug Goldstein escribió:
> I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers
> that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity
> packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still
> contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits
> (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc).
> 
> I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable
> resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they
> get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's
> how they are to be treated that they can be retired. When they finally
> want to contribute again they have the lovely uphill of our dreadfully
> painful recruitment process.
> 
> I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this.

I have just explained it at:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101792#c17


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Pacho Ramos]

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El jue, 20-12-2012 a las 21:21 -0600, Doug Goldstein escribió:
> I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers
> that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity
> packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still
> contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits
> (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc).
> 
> I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable
> resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they
> get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's
> how they are to be treated that they can be retired. When they finally
> want to contribute again they have the lovely uphill of our dreadfully
> painful recruitment process.
> 
> I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this.

I have just explained it at:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101792#c17



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Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Pacho Ramos]

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El jue, 20-12-2012 a las 21:30 -0800, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr." escribió:
> On 12/20/12 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein wrote:
> > I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers
> > that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity
> > packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still
> > contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits
> > (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc).
> 
> Dough, thank you for rising the issue.
> 
> I'm receiving the undertakers@ e-mail, so I have a pretty good view of
> what's happening.
> 
> I have several suggestions how we can improve things:
> 
> 1. 3 months is too short period anyway.
> 
> 2. Think through what the goals are. We do not want to retire as many
> people as possible. We do not want to frustrate people who do contribute
> to Gentoo. We do not want to discourage people who consider becoming new
> developers. At least I don't.
> 
> 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider
> maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in
> metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a
> formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other
> people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package.
> 
> 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained.
> Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good.
> They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs
> access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with
> that as long as things are maintained properly.
> 
> 5. Remember that cvs/bugzilla activity is not the only way of
> contributing. It's probably most tanglible and very needed, but let's
> not reduce real people and their real world situations, and their effort
> to contribute to just dates and numbers.
> 
> Paweł
> 
> 

Also I must note that I am currently only looking to people with 0
commits AND bugs assigned to them, if they don't have unresolved bugs
for a long time I usually tend to leave them. 

Also, before sending first mail, I also send them a mail to set their
devaway message and handle his bugs and if they don't have time to
reassign his packages, I do it for them.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Dirkjan Ochtman]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 6:30 AM, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr."
<phajdan.jr@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider
> maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in
> metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a
> formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other
> people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package.
>
> 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained.
> Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good.
> They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs
> access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with
> that as long as things are maintained properly.

+1000. The point is not to retire developers. To point is to make sure
we have a clear picture of what packages are (somewhat actively) being
maintained. Perhaps the undertakers project (or some other project)
should focus more on package maintenance history than activity
history.

Cheers,

Dirkjan

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Brian Dolbec]

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On Thu, 2012-12-20 at 21:30 -0800, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr." wrote:
> On 12/20/12 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein wrote:
> > I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers
> > that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity
> > packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still
> > contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits
> > (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc).
> 
> Dough, thank you for rising the issue.
> 
> I'm receiving the undertakers@ e-mail, so I have a pretty good view of
> what's happening.
> 
> I have several suggestions how we can improve things:
> 
> 1. 3 months is too short period anyway.
> 
> 2. Think through what the goals are. We do not want to retire as many
> people as possible. We do not want to frustrate people who do contribute
> to Gentoo. We do not want to discourage people who consider becoming new
> developers. At least I don't.
> 
> 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider
> maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in
> metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a
> formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other
> people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package.
> 
> 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained.
> Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good.
> They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs
> access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with
> that as long as things are maintained properly.
> 
> 5. Remember that cvs/bugzilla activity is not the only way of
> contributing. It's probably most tanglible and very needed, but let's
> not reduce real people and their real world situations, and their effort
> to contribute to just dates and numbers.
> 
> Paweł
> 
> 

+1  

  Even though I am a relatively new developer, I too got an email
stating my inactivity (not from undertakers@).  My main purpose for
becoming a dev was not for ebuild work, but more for coding.  Three
months is way too short to be making that type of list.

For all those young devs out there still in college/university.  You
will find that time accelerates as you age.  3 months may seem a long
time for you now, but give it another 5-10 years and you'll discover
that 3 months can go by quite quickly.  Especially with a family (wife,
kids, pets) and a full time job.

-- 
Brian Dolbec <dolsen@gentoo.org>

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Markos Chandras]

On 21 December 2012 03:21, Doug Goldstein <cardoe@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers
> that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity
> packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still
> contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits
> (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc).
>
> I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable
> resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they
> get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's
> how they are to be treated that they can be retired. When they finally
> want to contribute again they have the lovely uphill of our dreadfully
> painful recruitment process.
>
> I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this.
> --
> Doug Goldstein
>

Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like the
existing policy, bring it to the list with a better
attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want to pick
a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore this
thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years.

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2

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

[Markos Chandras]

On 21 December 2012 06:09, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
> Rich Freeman posted on Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:33:55 -0500 as excerpted:
>
>> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Doug Goldstein <cardoe@gentoo.org>
>> wrote:
>>> I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable resource
>>> that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they get a
>>> nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's how
>>> they are to be treated that they can be retired.
>>
>> Could anybody post the text of one of these "nasty grams?"
>>
>> I can understand the sense in just checking in to make sure a developer
>> still is interested in Gentoo and wants to retain cvs access.  However,
>> I think the bar for keeping access should be kept low - they shouldn't
>> be forced to go find some trivial change to make just to get their name
>> in the logs.
>>
>> Sure, sometimes real life gets busy, but if a dev still runs Gentoo and
>> has interest they're fairly likely to return when life settles down.
>
> Obviously I can't post the text of one of these "nasty grams", but I was
> around when the idea was first discussed and then implemented, by
> undertakers and infra, with the blessing of either council or whatever it
> was that came before (I was young in gentoo back then and didn't have a
> clear understanding of how it all worked, but when I started, drobbins
> was still around, but in the process of setting up the foundation and etc
> so he could leave gentoo in good shape when he did retire, and IIRC/
> AFAIK, he had turned things over to some sort of interrim executive
> committee... and I don't recall whether the events here predated what we
> call council today, or not).
>

Sorry, this e-mail is huge for a topic like this. Please consider
breaking your thoughts into logical chunks.

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Markos Chandras]

On 21 December 2012 08:49, Brian Dolbec <dolsen@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-12-20 at 21:30 -0800, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr." wrote:
>> On 12/20/12 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein wrote:
>> > I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers
>> > that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity
>> > packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still
>> > contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits
>> > (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc).
>>
>> Dough, thank you for rising the issue.
>>
>> I'm receiving the undertakers@ e-mail, so I have a pretty good view of
>> what's happening.
>>
>> I have several suggestions how we can improve things:
>>
>> 1. 3 months is too short period anyway.
>>
>> 2. Think through what the goals are. We do not want to retire as many
>> people as possible. We do not want to frustrate people who do contribute
>> to Gentoo. We do not want to discourage people who consider becoming new
>> developers. At least I don't.
>>
>> 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider
>> maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in
>> metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a
>> formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other
>> people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package.
>>
>> 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained.
>> Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good.
>> They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs
>> access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with
>> that as long as things are maintained properly.
>>
>> 5. Remember that cvs/bugzilla activity is not the only way of
>> contributing. It's probably most tanglible and very needed, but let's
>> not reduce real people and their real world situations, and their effort
>> to contribute to just dates and numbers.
>>
>> Paweł
>>
>>
>
> +1
>
>   Even though I am a relatively new developer, I too got an email
> stating my inactivity (not from undertakers@).  My main purpose for
> becoming a dev was not for ebuild work, but more for coding.  Three
> months is way too short to be making that type of list.
>
> For all those young devs out there still in college/university.  You
> will find that time accelerates as you age.  3 months may seem a long
> time for you now, but give it another 5-10 years and you'll discover
> that 3 months can go by quite quickly.  Especially with a family (wife,
> kids, pets) and a full time job.
>
> --
> Brian Dolbec <dolsen@gentoo.org>

Nobody said the policy is correct. I face the same problems so the
policy might not be appropriate anymore. However, I totally disagree
with
the way Doug started this thread. Calling us "brain dead" ? No sorry,
I am not willing to discuss anything about this policy nor willing to
change it if someone can't behave properly and ask us nicely to
discuss the problem. We never *insulted* or *threated*  anyone with
retirement, we are extremely polite and we just ask for status updates
in order to clean up metadata, reassign bugs and look for new
maintainers of unattended packages. Nobody ever complained in the
past, and all of them were willing to drop themselves from metadata
without problems. But I never expected this attitude just for asking
"hey are you there? do you still want to maintain all these packages?
any ETA on coming back". Seriously...

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:21:57 +0000
Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like the
> existing policy, bring it to the list with a better
> attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want to pick
> a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore this
> thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93x01rSVK1qjvxfho1_1280.jpg

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Arun Raghavan]

On 21 December 2012 17:36, Ciaran McCreesh
<ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:21:57 +0000
> Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like the
>> existing policy, bring it to the list with a better
>> attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want to pick
>> a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore this
>> thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years.
>
> http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93x01rSVK1qjvxfho1_1280.jpg

And that also makes a convenient way to always ignore the tone of an
argument, regardless of whether it is justified or not.

I find that Markos' objection is not unfounded and your argument is
irrelevant here.

--
Arun Raghavan
http://arunraghavan.net/
(Ford_Prefect | Gentoo) & (arunsr | GNOME)

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Arun Raghavan]

On 21 December 2012 18:02, Arun Raghavan <ford_prefect@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 21 December 2012 17:36, Ciaran McCreesh
> <ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:21:57 +0000
>> Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like the
>>> existing policy, bring it to the list with a better
>>> attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want to pick
>>> a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore this
>>> thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years.
>>
>> http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93x01rSVK1qjvxfho1_1280.jpg
>
> And that also makes a convenient way to always ignore the tone of an
> argument, regardless of whether it is justified or not.
>
> I find that Markos' objection is not unfounded and your argument is
> irrelevant here.

To expand on that a bit -- it's fair game to discuss whether we should
give more leeway before pinging idle devs, but pouncing on the people
doing to work of trying to make sure packages don't fall off the radar
and remain unmaintained is counter-productive and detrimental.

--
Arun Raghavan
http://arunraghavan.net/
(Ford_Prefect | Gentoo) & (arunsr | GNOME)

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 7:32 AM, Arun Raghavan <ford_prefect@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 21 December 2012 17:36, Ciaran McCreesh
> <ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:21:57 +0000
>> Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like the
>>> existing policy, bring it to the list with a better
>>> attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want to pick
>>> a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore this
>>> thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years.
>>
>> http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93x01rSVK1qjvxfho1_1280.jpg
>
> And that also makes a convenient way to always ignore the tone of an
> argument, regardless of whether it is justified or not.
>
> I find that Markos' objection is not unfounded and your argument is
> irrelevant here.

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.  Having been recently guilty of something similar (off
list) I can sympathize that it is easy to get a bit emotional when
passionate about something.  It doesn't hurt to provide feedback when
this happens.

Perhaps the wait time should be increased.  Also, if somebody wants to
post the email template we could have a go at bikeshedding it into
something appropriately soft and squishy.  :)

If security is a concern, we could also consider adding another
"state" to the graph were cvs access is temporarily unnecessary.  This
could be an intermediate state between active and retired devs, and
devs could request reactivation with no further hurdles.  This would
cut down on unnecessary cvs access but keep the barriers to re-entry
low.  Long-term inactive devs could still be retired in the current
way (if somebody is gone for 5 years with truly no Gentoo involvement
they probably should go through recruitment again).  However, inactive
devs should be genuinely inactive - it shouldn't just be based on
commits/etc.  The main concern is that they're still connected to
Gentoo and have a general sense of what is going on so that they don't
go back to their ebuilds with questions like "huh, I wonder if this
EAPI thing is important?"

Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Brian Dolbec]

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On Fri, 2012-12-21 at 10:46 +0000, Markos Chandras wrote:
> On 21 December 2012 08:49, Brian Dolbec <dolsen@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2012-12-20 at 21:30 -0800, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr." wrote:
> >> I have several suggestions how we can improve things:
> >>
> >> 1. 3 months is too short period anyway.
> >>
> >> 2. Think through what the goals are. We do not want to retire as many
> >> people as possible. We do not want to frustrate people who do contribute
> >> to Gentoo. We do not want to discourage people who consider becoming new
> >> developers. At least I don't.
> >>
> >> 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider
> >> maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in
> >> metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a
> >> formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other
> >> people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package.
> >>
> >> 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained.
> >> Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good.
> >> They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs
> >> access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with
> >> that as long as things are maintained properly.
> >>
> >> 5. Remember that cvs/bugzilla activity is not the only way of
> >> contributing. It's probably most tanglible and very needed, but let's
> >> not reduce real people and their real world situations, and their effort
> >> to contribute to just dates and numbers.
> >>
> >> Paweł
> >>
> >>
> >
> > +1
> >
> >   Even though I am a relatively new developer, I too got an email
> > stating my inactivity (not from undertakers@).  My main purpose for
> > becoming a dev was not for ebuild work, but more for coding.  Three
> > months is way too short to be making that type of list.
> >
> > For all those young devs out there still in college/university.  You
> > will find that time accelerates as you age.  3 months may seem a long
> > time for you now, but give it another 5-10 years and you'll discover
> > that 3 months can go by quite quickly.  Especially with a family (wife,
> > kids, pets) and a full time job.
> >
> > --
> > Brian Dolbec <dolsen@gentoo.org>
> 
> Nobody said the policy is correct. I face the same problems so the
> policy might not be appropriate anymore. However, I totally disagree
> with
> the way Doug started this thread. Calling us "brain dead" ? No sorry,
> I am not willing to discuss anything about this policy nor willing to
> change it if someone can't behave properly and ask us nicely to
> discuss the problem. We never *insulted* or *threated*  anyone with
> retirement, we are extremely polite and we just ask for status updates
> in order to clean up metadata, reassign bugs and look for new
> maintainers of unattended packages. Nobody ever complained in the
> past, and all of them were willing to drop themselves from metadata
> without problems. But I never expected this attitude just for asking
> "hey are you there? do you still want to maintain all these packages?
> any ETA on coming back". Seriously...
> 

Ah, yes.  Sorry, I was replying to Pawel's suggestions.  I should have
deleted Doug's text from the above as I've done now.  I in no way meant
it as I was insulted/threatened by the email I got.  And Doug's original
comments were harsh.
-- 
Brian Dolbec <dolsen@gentoo.org>

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

[Peter Stuge]

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

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

[Diego Elio Pettenò]

On 21/12/2012 17:16, Peter Stuge wrote:
> 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.

I love how people always suggest 5-minutes fixes without understanding
anything behind what they would like to fix/improve.

Hint: Gentoo Infra does not use ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.

It's not to say that the proposal to limit access doesn't make sense,
but ...

> 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.

... the users generally are kept, and locked, but also one of the things
that is done is archiving their home directory on dev.g.o as it might be
taking quite an amount of space.

But besides, as others said, one of the main concern is making sure that
the developers are up to speed with current procedures, which is why
they are requested to go through the quizzes again — although this
usually ends up being quite simple.

I get to speak about that as somebody who retired, and was then
re-instated. Going through the cycles was less bothersome than just
growing the motivation to get back to Gentoo, so I can't see the point.

-- 
Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes
flameeyes@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Peter Stuge]

Markos,

Markos Chandras wrote:
> I totally disagree with the way Doug started this thread.

That's of course completely fair, but try to look beyond that, and
let's focus on how we can make things better for everyone.


> Calling us "brain dead" ?

Please read email even more carefully, especially when you read
something that makes you upset. I think you completely misunderstood
what Doug wrote. He wrote:

"I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers             
that are still interested in the distro"

So as I mentioned in a previous email that I wrote, *you* aren't
being attacked here. "brain dead" is of course strong wording, but
note that it refers to the idea and *not* to anyone who is
implementing the idea. I guess the idea is really really old by now.


> No sorry, I am not willing to discuss anything about this policy
> nor willing to change it

That's not very helpful. I had expected much more from you, since you
are a strong contributor to Gentoo since a long time.


> if someone can't behave properly and ask us nicely to discuss the
> problem.

As I wrote, I think Doug's email was nice enough. He included his
attitude as background for an inquiry. It should be pretty easy to
recognize which is which, and for the community to work together on
making things better for everyone, with focus on the inquiry.

Refusing to discuss and change for any reason seems pretty weird to
me.

Basically you are saying that communication can only happen on your

own terms, instead of trying to always adjust communication to your
party. Guess what happens if both parties do that.


> We never *insulted* or *threated* anyone with retirement

Cool! My impression of the process was the exact opposite. I don't
have experience from it of course, but the way it was described it
was certainly a big part of me not being able to grow motivation to
work through the Gentoo recruitment process.


> I never expected this attitude just for asking "hey are you there?
> do you still want to maintain all these packages? any ETA on coming
> back". Seriously...

Maybe you can understand that there is a disconnect between what
people who have no experience from what you do and what you actually
do? That was certainly the case for me, and maybe also for Doug. The
documentation that I once read was certainly much more aggressive
than what you and others describe, and it's easy to assume that
documentation is correct. :)


//Peter

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Markos Chandras]

On 21 December 2012 22:50, Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se> wrote:
> Markos,
>
>[...]
> Maybe you can understand that there is a disconnect between what
> people who have no experience from what you do and what you actually
> do? That was certainly the case for me, and maybe also for Doug. The
> documentation that I once read was certainly much more aggressive
> than what you and others describe, and it's easy to assume that
> documentation is correct. :)
>
Ok let me clarify something since it appears there is a confusion.

The Undertakers project is in no way special compared to other Gentoo
projects. What this means is that this project is a separate entity
(like *all* Gentoo projects) and
free to shape and form whatever policy it see fit for inactive
developers. *All* Gentoo projects operate in the same manner, meaning
nobody outside of the project controls what decisions
are made and why. If you want to be part of the decision making
process, join the project. If you have problems with what this project
is doing, *please* come a talk to us.

Having said that, and I already said that previously, I agree that the
policy is not ideal and we need to change it. *However* nobody *ever*
talked to us and raised his concerns in a civil matter.
Nobody *ever* complained with the "status updates" emails we send to
them. Like I said before, the emails we send are far from insulting,
you can see the templates here[1] and here[2]. I can see why these
templates may look a bit "distant", but Pacho and I always add extra
bits to them, especially asking them to consider dropping themselves
from metadata.xml until they come back.

*Every single one of the devs we asked so far* was more than willing
to cooperate with us, drop himself from metadata.xml, allow us
to reassign his bugs and seek new maintainers. Those who didn't,
agreed to retire because they realized they didn't contribute anymore
so having the Gentoo badge made no sense.

Again, the fact that we ask inactive developers about their status, it
does *not* mean that we will retire them if they don't make X commits/
week. We just need to make sure that packages are maintained properly
and avoid
having unattended bugs for years because a maintainer got MIA.

Finally, I am very proud with the work we are doing, especially Pacho
who has been doing most of the work lately. We have managed to "free"
many many packages and this was one of the reasons I formed the
proxy-maintainers project, so that non-dev contributors could step up
and take care of all these packages that inactive devs left
unattended.

[1]http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/undertakers/retirement-first.txt
[2]http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/undertakers/retirement-second.txt

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2

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

[Alan McKinnon]

On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:57:44 +0100
Diego Elio Pettenò <flameeyes@flameeyes.eu> wrote:

> > 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.  
> 
> ... the users generally are kept, and locked, but also one of the
> things that is done is archiving their home directory on dev.g.o as
> it might be taking quite an amount of space.


At my day job I'm the retirer (or BOFH depending who you speak to).
I'll describe mt process, maybe you fellows can use it.

Retiring people is too much effort, reinstating them doubly so; we
all have better things to do with our time. There's only 3 things that
get you retired or remvoed:

1. Resign from the company
2. Dramatically change your entire job (like move from technical to
sales)
3. Prove I was wrong giving you access at all (i.e show a long history
of stupid, or demonstrate malice)

Most systems are Operations, so people who need access will do so at
least once in 90 days to keep the account alive. If the account is not
used in a 90 day period, it is parked (essentially "locked", but the
user can unlock it by going to a specific web site and auth'ing using
two-factor (password and hardware dongle)

There's a small list of exceptions for people where 90 days does not
apply, like for me. I need access to everything (I'm last call in any
emergency) and most systems I rarely touch but I must not be locked out.

What emerges out of this is the most security and ease for the smallest
effort. Works for me :-)

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Doug Goldstein]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 7:05 PM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Finally, I am very proud with the work we are doing, especially Pacho
> who has been doing most of the work lately. We have managed to "free"
> many many packages and this was one of the reasons I formed the
> proxy-maintainers project, so that non-dev contributors could step up
> and take care of all these packages that inactive devs left
> unattended.
>

I see "free" as "dump a lot of orthogonally related packages on to the
herd that is listed but really the other herd members aren't
interested in those packages. So over time we go from a herd that had
decent number of semi-active developers that handled a large swath of
the packages to only a handful of active devs who are only interested
in a select few packages with no support for all those other packages.
Because the result was you could prod the semi-active guys about the
packages they maintained and they would fix something or they'd give
you feedback on something you might do to test it. Once they're
retired, the magical list of person X has knowledge of Y goes away
(metadata.xml).

If you're curious if I'm speaking about a specific herd, I am. It's media-tv.

IMHO, if you're really after finding others to take care of packages
that appear abandoned then you should contact the inactive people to
see if there's any packages they'd be ok with giving up to the
proxy-maintainers project or to another developer, but don't retire
them. The reason I say ask them about packages is that they might
appear to be inactive because they really are only maintaining one or
two packages that infrequently get any activity, but when they package
gets activity they jump on it and fix it right away. I know that was
the case for me when I was busy with RL things for a while. But there
were a number of packages my employer paid me to maintain and I did.
All the other packages that had my name on them I just didn't have the
time.

If the goal here really is to ensure well maintained packages then
retiring people is akin to treating a screw like a nail and banging it
in with a hammer, wrong tool... wrong job. For some packages you may
find another developer right away with interest to fix it, or a proxy
maintainer but in some cases you might have just kicked the only
person who had any inclination to fix the package. Some packages have
50 users and 49 of them are Gentoo developers or would step up and
become Gentoo developers to fix the package should it become
unmaintained and that's great. But some packages have 200 users and 1
person willing to be the developer to maintain it. You retire that
person and you might have well just told those 200 people to pick a
different distro because inevitably their package will be treecleaned.

If you need a concrete example of a package, that would be MythTV.
I've been hoping for the day that someone becomes a Gentoo developer
with the goal of maintaining MythTV for nearly a decade but it hasn't
happened. If I stop touching it, it languishes and I get e-mails and
bugs, etc. I tell everyone they are more than welcome to maintain it
and 99% of the time nothing comes of it, and 1% of the time someone
does 1 bump for me and nothing more again.

Regarding my use of the words "brain dead", notice I never said
"Markos is brain dead". What I said was the policy of retiring people
when what you really want is an active maintainer of packages is brain
dead. Now I understand that you're involved with the enforcement of
that policy and therefore identify with it, but I would have to
encourage you to separate yourself from a policy. I unfortunately feel
after reading all the comments in this whole thread that my original
statement is still true.

Well that felt like a Duncan e-mail so its time to wrap it up.
-- 
Doug Goldstein

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Markos Chandras]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

On 12/23/2012 02:06 AM, Doug Goldstein wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 7:05 PM, Markos Chandras
> <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 
> 
> I see "free" as "dump a lot of orthogonally related packages on to
> the herd that is listed but really the other herd members aren't 
> interested in those packages.

Then that herd should not be on metadata.xml. What's the point of
being there if they have absolutely no idea how to maintain the package...
> 
> IMHO, if you're really after finding others to take care of
> packages that appear abandoned then you should contact the inactive
> people to see if there's any packages they'd be ok with giving up
> to the proxy-maintainers project or to another developer, but don't
> retire them.
We working on such a policy.

> If the goal here really is to ensure well maintained packages then 
> retiring people is akin to treating a screw like a nail and banging
> it in with a hammer, wrong tool... wrong job. For some packages you
> may find another developer right away with interest to fix it, or a
> proxy maintainer but in some cases you might have just kicked the
> only person who had any inclination to fix the package. Some
> packages have 50 users and 49 of them are Gentoo developers or
> would step up and become Gentoo developers to fix the package
> should it become unmaintained and that's great. But some packages
> have 200 users and 1 person willing to be the developer to maintain
> it. You retire that person and you might have well just told those
> 200 people to pick a different distro because inevitably their
> package will be treecleaned.
> 
*Sigh*. We don't retire people who actively commit. If that person was
not capable of maintain this package (say if that package has 20 open
bugs for months) then we need to remove him from metadata.xml and say
"sorry folks nobody maintains it"

> If you need a concrete example of a package, that would be MythTV. 
> I've been hoping for the day that someone becomes a Gentoo
> developer with the goal of maintaining MythTV for nearly a decade
> but it hasn't happened.
Did you explicitly drop it to maintainer-needed@ so others can know
nobody maintains it? Or do you expect them to guess it by leaving bugs
open on purpose? Telling people on bugzilla that they are welcome to
maintain it is only part of a solution. Did you announce it on a
mailing list? Maybe gentoo-users@

> 
> Regarding my use of the words "brain dead", notice I never said 
> "Markos is brain dead". What I said was the policy of retiring
> people when what you really want is an active maintainer of
> packages is brain dead. Now I understand that you're involved with
> the enforcement of that policy and therefore identify with it, but
> I would have to encourage you to separate yourself from a policy. I
> unfortunately feel after reading all the comments in this whole
> thread that my original statement is still true.
Like I said we are working on a "less brain-dead" policy so I have
nothing else to contribute to this thread


- -- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Rich Freeman]

On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 4:39 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 12/23/2012 02:06 AM, Doug Goldstein wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 7:05 PM, Markos Chandras
>> <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>
>> I see "free" as "dump a lot of orthogonally related packages on to
>> the herd that is listed but really the other herd members aren't
>> interested in those packages.
>
> Then that herd should not be on metadata.xml. What's the point of
> being there if they have absolutely no idea how to maintain the package...

Agreed - I suspect that many herds reflect how packages were
maintained 5 years ago, and not how they are maintained today.  If a
herd isn't associated with an active project, it should probably be
dropped.

> *Sigh*. We don't retire people who actively commit. If that person was
> not capable of maintain this package (say if that package has 20 open
> bugs for months) then we need to remove him from metadata.xml and say
> "sorry folks nobody maintains it"

Depends on the bug.  :)  At work most of the systems I work on have
had hundreds of open bugs for years.  A failure to close a bug is not
a failure to maintain.

In any case, nobody should be forcibly retired if they're interested
in sticking around.  However, the fact is that if you guys are sending
out emails and getting no replies for weeks on end, what else can you
do?

>
>> If you need a concrete example of a package, that would be MythTV.
>> I've been hoping for the day that someone becomes a Gentoo
>> developer with the goal of maintaining MythTV for nearly a decade
>> but it hasn't happened.
> Did you explicitly drop it to maintainer-needed@ so others can know
> nobody maintains it? Or do you expect them to guess it by leaving bugs
> open on purpose? Telling people on bugzilla that they are welcome to
> maintain it is only part of a solution. Did you announce it on a
> mailing list? Maybe gentoo-users@

Hmm, mythtv is part of its own herd, so I never bothered to add myself
to the metadata.xml.  Maybe I should do that.  :)

I don't have any plans to go anywhere - in fact I just stuck a new set
of 0.26 fixes in my overlay for testing (rich0 in layman) and was
planning on moving them into the tree in a week or so.

> Like I said we are working on a "less brain-dead" policy so I have
> nothing else to contribute to this thread

Feel free to solicit feedback on such policy from the dev community at
large.  This is obviously something of general interest.  That isn't
to say that you can't brainstorm things internally and formulate your
thoughts as well.

Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Alec Warner]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein <cardoe@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers
> that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity
> packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still
> contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits
> (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc).
>
> I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable
> resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they
> get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's
> how they are to be treated that they can be retired. When they finally
> want to contribute again they have the lovely uphill of our dreadfully
> painful recruitment process.
>
> I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this.

Often people stop maintaining packages. We use heuristics to detect
these people. These are based on commits and bug activity, along with
a whitelist for non-ebuild developers (forum moderators, irc ops, pr
people, and so forth.) They are just heuristics; they are obviously
not perfect. I'd be happy to just add steev to the whitelist for 12
months and then see where we are then (so he stops showing in the
report).

> --
> Doug Goldstein
>

Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Marijn]

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On 21-12-12 13:32, Arun Raghavan wrote:
> On 21 December 2012 17:36, Ciaran McCreesh 
> <ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:21:57 +0000 Markos Chandras
>> <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like
>>> the existing policy, bring it to the list with a better 
>>> attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want
>>> to pick a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore
>>> this thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years.
>> 
>> http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93x01rSVK1qjvxfho1_1280.jpg
> 
> And that also makes a convenient way to always ignore the tone of
> an argument, regardless of whether it is justified or not.

You say that as if it is a bad thing.  If we were all a little less
easily offended, communication would be more effective.

> I find that Markos' objection is not unfounded and your argument
> is irrelevant here.

It is fine to discuss tone too, but let's not use tone as an argument
to not respond to content.

Marijn

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