Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2014-04-08

[Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org>]

On Sunday 06 April 2014 18:10:56 Samuli Suominen wrote:
> On 06/04/14 15:47, hasufell wrote:
> > Andreas K. Huettel:
> > > 5) The council encourages teams maintaining central parts of Gentoo
> > > to accept new developers as team members and teach them the
> > > required knowledge and intricacies. We consider this important to
> > > ensure long-term continuity and increase the bus factor in critical
> > > areas.
> > 
> > Or don't accept them as team members in the first place, which is
> > perfectly fine if you can still contribute as a non-team member.
> 
> I agree, new developers shouldn't be allowed in the QA team, there
> should be some 5 year limit
> at least as safe kludge to avoid disrespect like this:

I wonder if you noticed that I've been a dev since 2004 ...

and disrespect, well, you actively work towards breaking things.

Even when told, multiple times, that you're breaking things,

And that we will revert breakage when detected ...


> 09:16 <@xiaomiao> if you don't ... well ... one dev more or less isn't
> *that* much difference, we can deal with it
> 09:17 <@xiaomiao> blah policy ... it took me months just to get PMS
> fixed with a two-line patch
> 
> Publicly stating he doesn't care about policies, I read that as only
> caring about his personal opinion and then,
> abusing the powers gained from the membership.

Common sense ...

If you need an explicit unambiguous policy spelled out for any action things 
get extremely unpleasant.

So maybe try to reason about the effects on users, and consider strategies that 
are not explicitly written down ... 

And I don't do this "as QA member", I've done this for long enough before. So 
don't play victim now, just don't cause any breakage and I'll not have to 
touch your precious ebuildsssss. Being part of QA is just putting an official 
label on what I've been doing for quite a long time.

... and don't think it's personal, I mask, revert or fix anything that needs to 
be unbroken, without any emotional attachment to the package, the author or 
the day of the week. 

> 
> > Letting someone in and then starting to teach him seems like the wrong
> > approach to me.
> > 
> > We should encourage the opposite order.
> 
> I agree. Specially when some of the new developers who gain a QA
> membership think it elevates them into higher
> platform than others who have been involved for years, making them
> stubborn, in a way they don't listen to others.
> 
> I didn't want to send this mail, but I felt I had to, because this has
> gone too far.
> 
> - Samuli

Yes, it has gone too far.

But only because you actively say that you don't care about breaking things, 
again, after getting massive pushback the last time ... I mean ...

Can't be that hard to think about the response other people will have when you 
waste their time. Especially when you have anecdotal evidence that predicts a 
very boring simple response.

Don't break stuff, and no one will have the desire to yell at you. And if you 
do, well, learn from it, fix the fallout, and don't get in the way of others 
fixing it if you don't feel like doing it.


So thanks for making me state the obvious about eleventeen times in one email, 
I shall now put on my Captain Obvious T-Shirt and watch some Batman (the old 
TV series) to feel better.

Have a ... day, I guess ...


Patrick