Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: formally allow qa to suspend commit rights

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 9:56 AM, Tom Wijsman <TomWij@gentoo.org> wrote:
> If a developer does an unannounced mass action that breaks the tree
> severely or is heavily prohibited by policy, is unreachable while he
> continues to commit this; then it would be handy to "temporarily" be
> able to withdraw the commit access to bring it to that developer's
> attention.

Hadn't really thought about it in this light.  In this situation
restricting commit access is being used as a technical solution to a
technical problem - not unlike killing a runaway process.

I have no issues at all with QA taking action in a manner like this,
though unless that mass-update is really slow I doubt we'd ever react
in time.

What I don't like is the idea of QA taking what amounts to punitive
measures.  I think that this is a role best held by Comrel.  I do
appreciate Markos's comments regarding Comrel not being the right
solution to a technical problem.  I do not see Comrel has having a
role in mediating a dispute between QA and a developer over the
correctness of policy or its enforcement (personal conflicts are a
different matter as Markos acknowledges).  What I do see Comrel has
having a role in is a developer who simply refuses to follow policy -
whether that is CoC, technical policy, or whatever.  In the case of
CoC Cevrel is judge, jury, and executive (that is, they determine
whether it was violated in addition to dealing with the fact that it
was).  In the case of a QA issue QA is the jury (they determine if the
policy was violated), and Comrel is the judge and executive (they
determine how to get the dev to go along with policy or get rid of
them).

If Comrel really objects to this I'm not entirely opposed to letting
QA have the reins (certainly we can't just let policy go unenforced
entirely).  However, I would encourage the teams to give some thought
as to whether it makes sense to work together to separate the human vs
technical factors here.

This discussion has been helpful...

Rich