(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_knot)
Having just read jmpp's request for "a bit more time" to sort out a
voting process, I must confess to feeling more trepidation than
assurance. To be completely fair, he does note several times that he
and the rest of the moribund portmgr team would like to move quickly,
but given the degree to which that group has also demonstrated itself
to be overworked and less than involved in the day to day affairs of
MacPorts, anything which delays a solution also runs the risk of
blunting some of the current enthusiasm should said "process" end up
dragging out longer than anticipated (which, as experience amply
suggests, it invariably does) and I honestly don't think we can afford
that at this late stage.
I would therefore like to suggest that we simply ratify the following
list rather than dragging out a lengthy "voting" process for a set of
positions which, from a certain angle, might even be viewed as largely
ceremonial since there is no real "power" afforded by membership in
the portmgr team. Volunteers will always choose to follow (or not)
such a group on the basis of the credibility of its individual members
rather than any fancy paper hats they may be wearing, and the sooner
we simply slam those hats on some credible heads and say "Thank you!
Get started!", the sooner we can all get back to discussing the real
question of how to get to where we need to go next.
As a courtesy to the outgoing portmgr team, I would also be perfectly
happy to see them be the official "ratifiers" of this new team,
assuming it passes their sniff test and they're also willing to do so
in the next day or two, otherwise I would be just as happy with a
statement along the lines of "if there are no significant, well-argued
objections in the next 72 hours, they're it! Quick, before they
change their minds!" :-)
Portmgr (subject to individual acceptance, of course - we still
haven't heard from two of the four):
Ryan Schmidt
Bryan Blackburn
Rainer Mueller
Joshua Root
[Note: Any subset of the above would also be acceptable - 4 is not
some magic minimum number, for all the reasons I've already outlined]
Release engineering team:
Ryan Schmidt (interim or longer, if he wants it)
Julio Biason
I'm really not trying to undercut anyone here, least of all jmpp, but
seriously folks - we've been suffering from a leadership/directional
vacuum for quite some time now and I don't think we need to bog down
the only solution to be offered in quite some time by getting all
constitutional about it or saying "hey, wait, let's all think about
this for awhile and engage in lengthy discussion!" That might have
been a good plan of action about a year ago, and I would be also more
than happy to see the "new portmgr" establish a framework for
elections and term limits and all the other checks and balances that
they might wish to create for future generations, but what we need
right now is an immediate "interim government" and some long overdue
action on the release engineering front.
Any objections?
- Jordan
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