[gentoo-project] call for agenda items for 2020-01-12 council meeting

[gentoo-project] call for agenda items for 2020-01-12 council meeting

[William Hubbs]

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All,

the Gentoo Council will meet on 2020-01-12 at 19:00 utc in the
#gentoo-council channel on freenode.

Please reply to this message with any items you would like us to add to
the agenda.

Thanks,

William


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[gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-dev-announce] call for agenda items for 2020-01-12 council meeting

[Piotr Karbowski]

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Hi,

On 30/12/2019 00.30, William Hubbs wrote:
> All,
>
> the Gentoo Council will meet on 2020-01-12 at 19:00 utc in the
> #gentoo-council channel on freenode.
>
> Please reply to this message with any items you would like us to add
> to the agenda.

I'd like to request Council to define rules regarding maintainership
boundaries and provide guidance regarding under what conditions one is
allowed to make changes to packages that are by metadata.xml maintained
by another party.

The current situation is land of undefined rules and double standards
under disguise of 'common sense'. Although it does work for most part,
it's not uncommon to come across people that are overly territorial,
treating Gentoo packages as their own personal property, who openly
prohibit others from joining them as maintainers on packages, with the
solo reasoning that they feel territorial and do not want others
touching it.

This leads to a situations, where some bugs reported on bugzilla are not
fixed in timely fashion, even when there are other developers that are
willing to fix those bugs and deal with whatever aftermath of doing
those changes would bring.

Because those rules are unsanctioned, we have land of middle
inconvenience where one can never be sure if by declaring maintainer
fimeout and fixing a bug would not bring ComRel on him, for touching the
package one does not maintain. By defining rules and guidelines, it
would greatly benefit Gentoo as a whole as well as reduce the
frustration that come from dealing with people who are gate keeping
while being unable to provide a valid reason why they do not want anyone
toucing their property.

-- Piotr.


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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-dev-announce] call for agenda items for 2020-01-12 council meeting

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Sun, 05 Jan 2020, Piotr Karbowski wrote:

> I'd like to request Council to define rules regarding maintainership
> boundaries and provide guidance regarding under what conditions one is
> allowed to make changes to packages that are by metadata.xml maintained
> by another party.

> The current situation is land of undefined rules and double standards
> under disguise of 'common sense'. Although it does work for most part,
> it's not uncommon to come across people that are overly territorial,
> treating Gentoo packages as their own personal property, who openly
> prohibit others from joining them as maintainers on packages, with the
> solo reasoning that they feel territorial and do not want others
> touching it.

> This leads to a situations, where some bugs reported on bugzilla are not
> fixed in timely fashion, even when there are other developers that are
> willing to fix those bugs and deal with whatever aftermath of doing
> those changes would bring.

> Because those rules are unsanctioned, we have land of middle
> inconvenience where one can never be sure if by declaring maintainer
> fimeout and fixing a bug would not bring ComRel on him, for touching the
> package one does not maintain. By defining rules and guidelines, it
> would greatly benefit Gentoo as a whole as well as reduce the
> frustration that come from dealing with people who are gate keeping
> while being unable to provide a valid reason why they do not want anyone
> toucing their property.

This has been discussed a number of times in the past. I believe that
the best current practice is outlined in the devmanual:

https://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/package-maintainers/#maintainer-authority

Also, "request Council to define rules" normally isn't going to work,
because chances are that the Council won't see this as an actionable
item. So, if you want the rules to be changed (or better defined),
then it will work much better if you come up with a concrete proposal
and discuss it on the mailing list.

Ulrich

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-dev-announce] call for agenda items for 2020-01-12 council meeting

[Michael 'veremitz' Everitt]

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On 05/01/20 15:45, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>>>>> On Sun, 05 Jan 2020, Piotr Karbowski wrote:
>> I'd like to request Council to define rules regarding maintainership
>> boundaries and provide guidance regarding under what conditions one is
>> allowed to make changes to packages that are by metadata.xml maintained
>> by another party.
>> The current situation is land of undefined rules and double standards
>> under disguise of 'common sense'. Although it does work for most part,
>> it's not uncommon to come across people that are overly territorial,
>> treating Gentoo packages as their own personal property, who openly
>> prohibit others from joining them as maintainers on packages, with the
>> solo reasoning that they feel territorial and do not want others
>> touching it.
>> This leads to a situations, where some bugs reported on bugzilla are not
>> fixed in timely fashion, even when there are other developers that are
>> willing to fix those bugs and deal with whatever aftermath of doing
>> those changes would bring.
>> Because those rules are unsanctioned, we have land of middle
>> inconvenience where one can never be sure if by declaring maintainer
>> fimeout and fixing a bug would not bring ComRel on him, for touching the
>> package one does not maintain. By defining rules and guidelines, it
>> would greatly benefit Gentoo as a whole as well as reduce the
>> frustration that come from dealing with people who are gate keeping
>> while being unable to provide a valid reason why they do not want anyone
>> toucing their property.
> This has been discussed a number of times in the past. I believe that
> the best current practice is outlined in the devmanual:
>
> https://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/package-maintainers/#maintainer-authority
>
> Also, "request Council to define rules" normally isn't going to work,
> because chances are that the Council won't see this as an actionable
> item. So, if you want the rules to be changed (or better defined),
> then it will work much better if you come up with a concrete proposal
> and discuss it on the mailing list.
>
> Ulrich
Agreed with Ulm here, fwiw, this does go back and forth.

The only suggestion I could potentially think of (and may have arisen
before) is to add some kind of field in metadata.xml about any particular
salient issues that non-maintainers should be wary of touching, if
relevant. Otherwise, perhaps another field in metadata.xml as a default
reply/comment to any bugs opened, explaining that only 'best-effort'
maintenance is available for this package, and responses may be
particularly slow.

What also might warrant some further discussion, is how to handle instances
of devaway where maintainers haven't (most do..) set a policy for their
packages.


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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-dev-announce] call for agenda items for 2020-01-12 council meeting

[William Hubbs]

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On Sun, Jan 05, 2020 at 03:55:22PM +0100, Piotr Karbowski wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 30/12/2019 00.30, William Hubbs wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > the Gentoo Council will meet on 2020-01-12 at 19:00 utc in the
> > #gentoo-council channel on freenode.
> >
> > Please reply to this message with any items you would like us to add
> > to the agenda.
> 
> I'd like to request Council to define rules regarding maintainership
> boundaries and provide guidance regarding under what conditions one is
> allowed to make changes to packages that are by metadata.xml maintained
> by another party.
> 
> The current situation is land of undefined rules and double standards
> under disguise of 'common sense'. Although it does work for most part,
> it's not uncommon to come across people that are overly territorial,
> treating Gentoo packages as their own personal property, who openly
> prohibit others from joining them as maintainers on packages, with the
> solo reasoning that they feel territorial and do not want others
> touching it.
> 
> This leads to a situations, where some bugs reported on bugzilla are not
> fixed in timely fashion, even when there are other developers that are
> willing to fix those bugs and deal with whatever aftermath of doing
> those changes would bring.
> 
> Because those rules are unsanctioned, we have land of middle
> inconvenience where one can never be sure if by declaring maintainer
> fimeout and fixing a bug would not bring ComRel on him, for touching the
> package one does not maintain. By defining rules and guidelines, it
> would greatly benefit Gentoo as a whole as well as reduce the
> frustration that come from dealing with people who are gate keeping
> while being unable to provide a valid reason why they do not want anyone
> toucing their property.

The maintainership policy is here.

https://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/package-maintainers/index.html

By default you aren't supposed to touch packages you don't maintain
without the maintainer approving your changes unless the changes are
trivial.

If you open a bug or contact a maintainer and they don't respond to your
request in 2-4 weeks, you can use maintainer-timeout to make the change.

I think this is fine at the distro level.

The uncertainty around this is that some maintainers give devs
permission to change any or some of their packages without contacting
them as long as they clean up any breakages they cause, and we don't
have a way of knowing who those maintainers are.  There was a proposal a
while back for a tag that would go in metadata.xml for a package that
would specify one of three levels of non-maintainer permission for a
package, but it seems to have died. I do think we should bring it back.

William


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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-dev-announce] call for agenda items for 2020-01-12 council meeting

[William Hubbs]

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On Sun, Jan 05, 2020 at 03:55:22PM +0100, Piotr Karbowski wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to request Council to define rules regarding maintainership
> boundaries and provide guidance regarding under what conditions one is
> allowed to make changes to packages that are by metadata.xml maintained
> by another party.

After seeing the emails on this thread and a brief chat on irc, I don't
think this is actionable at this time. There should be more discussion
and a concrete proposal should be brought to the ml.

Thanks,

William


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