Re: [gentoo-dev] Please consider removing use.stable.mask and package.use.stable.mask

[Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org>]

On 14 November 2013 23:12, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 7:57 AM, Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>  I said
>> As it is always happy to point out, Council doesn't see itself as
>> leadership, just as a supreme court of appeal, when everything else
>> seems to have failed. It likes to get involved as little as possible.
>
> The last time I talked to Council she said that she doesn't like it
> when you anthropomorphize her.
>
> Certainly I stated in my manifesto that I believe that Council members
> SHOULD be leaders, and should not limit their leadership of the distro
> to casting votes.  That's why we're chatting on a list, and I'm not
> sitting back waiting for you to put this issue on a Council agenda.

That is nice of you, but many of your fellow councilmen (historically,
as well as currently) do not hold similar views, as was made painfully
clear to me a few years ago.

>>> We
>>> also have Comrel, which is a better starting point for cases
>>> concerning individuals vs policies.
>>
>> This also displays little real leadership. It concerns itself with
>> conflict resolution, with various degrees of success. (I still have a
>> bad taste in my mouth from my past dealings with that institution.)
>
> Well, that is the role of Comrel.  I don't expect it to decide whether
> developers can touch each other's ebuilds to add systemd units to
> them, etc.  However, if the Council establishes a policy then Comrel
> should certainly take issue with devs that ignore that policy.  Comrel
> certainly can show leadership when it comes to how it operates,
> facilitating better relations in the community in general, etc.
>
>>
>> The costs are higher than the benefits, in my opinion. Where are the
>> use cases for this high-cost solution that is being pushed upon us?
>
> Where are the costs for this high-cost solution that you purport the
> existence of?  Just what about this solution is difficult to maintain?
>  I keep hearing that it is painful, but I haven't seen specific
> examples of HOW it is painful.

See how much effort is expended on this, and how many maintainers are
being involved:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=ALL+multilib

I was particularly hit by this as maintainer of freetype, see bugs
455070 and 459352 for some of the mess that could have been avoided.

>>> The problem with having top-down leadership in a volunteer-based
>>> organization is that it tends to drive away anybody who doesn't agree
>>> with the leader.  If a supreme leader said "mgorny has the right
>>> solution to multilib - everybody is going to work to implement it"
>>> that would probably cause more harm than good.  Everybody wants a
>>> supreme leader until the leader backs something they oppose.
>>
>> But what's the alternative? Having a few dozen self-appointed leaders
>> doing whatever they want, and often taking things in opposing
>> directions. It's not top-down leadership, but rule of the strongest.
>
> When you have officially-appointed leaders they usually tend to be the
> same people who would otherwise be the self-appointed leaders.  They
> just have more power to kick everybody out who disagrees with them.
> It is still the rule of the strongest.  How did Linus become the
> leader of Linux?  He wrote it...

At least there is one person in charge who sets a clear direction, and
is accountable.

> I used to get philosophical about things like this, but I think the
> model Gentoo has is actually not a bad one.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one then.

> In the end, stuff only
> gets done if people write code.  Your power in any FOSS project really
> comes down to your ability to write code or convince others to write
> code on your behalf.

No, it's more about your ability to commit and get away with it.

> We can argue about what piece of software is
> conceptually the best, but implemented software will almost always win
> over the unimplemented competitor, unless the merits of the competitor
> are such that people will flock behind it and actually implement it.
>
> Rich
>

-- 
Cheers,

Ben | yngwin
Gentoo developer