I was traveling for two days, and I miss a great thread like this. Go figure! One comment in-line.
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 3:55 AM, Flavio Percoco <[email protected]> wrote: > Greetings all, > > During the last two cycles, I've had the feeling that some of the > things I love the most about this community are degrading and moving > to a state that I personally disagree with. With the hope of seeing > these things improve, I'm taking the time today to share one of my > concerns. > > Since I believe we all work with good faith and we *all* should assume > such when it comes to things happening in our community, I won't make > names and I won't point fingers - yes, I don't have enough fingers to > point based on the info I have. People that fall into the groups I'll > mention below know that I'm talking to them. > > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. > > ## Keep discussions open > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private > discussions, if you've discussed a spec privately and right after you > went upstream and said: "This has been discussed in a call and it's > good to go", I beg you to stop for 2 seconds and reconsider that. I > don't believe you were able to fit all the community in that call and > that you had enough consensus. > > Furthermore, you should consider that having private conversations, at > the very end, doesn't help with speeding up discussions. We've a > community of people who *care* about the project they're working on. > This means that whenever they see something that doesn't make much > sense, they'll chime in and ask for clarification. If there was a > private discussion on that topic, you'll have to provide the details > of such discussion and bring that person up to date, which means the > discussion will basically start again... from scratch. > > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > happen. > > If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of > most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the > mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting > with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something > that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing > list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in > your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* > > Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. > We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take > advantage of it? > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > This is not right and I don't believe "core reviewers" (note I did not just say core, but core reviewer) are special in any way. In fact, they are likely less special because they have a huge responsibility: Reviewing code in a timely manner and merging changes to close bugs and features! This is nothing special other than much more additional work. I think more projects need to do a better job of ensuring their core reviewers are actually reviewing code, and it's a good idea to in fact cycle core reviewers in and out more frequently. Otherwise, a sense of entitlement can in fact occur, and this is where things go bad. > This is the point where my good faith assumption skill falls short. > Seriously, don't get me wrong but: WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F**K? > > THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING PRIVATE FOR CORE ****REVIEWERS***** TO > DISCUSS. > > If anything core reviewers should be the ones *FORCING* - it seems > that *encouraging* doesn't have the same effect anymore - *OPENNESS* in > order to include other non-core members in those discussions. > > Remember that the "core" flag is granted because of the reviews that > person has provided and because that individual *WANTS* to be part of > it. It's not a prize for people. In fact, I consider core reviewers to > be volunteers and their job is infinitely thanked. > > This is a very good point and I agree with it. > Since, "All generalizations are false, including this one. - Mark > Twain", I'm pretty sure there are folks that disagree with the above. > If you do, I care about your thoughts. This is worth discussing and > fighting for. > > All the above being said, I'd like to thank everyone who fights for > the openness of our community and encourage everyone to make that a > must have thing in each sub-community. You don't need to be > core-reviewer or PTL to do so. Speak up and help keeping the community > as open as possible. > > ++ to this as well. > Cheers, > Flavio > > -- > @flaper87 > Flavio Percoco > > __________________________________________________________________________ > OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > Unsubscribe: [email protected]?subject:unsubscribe > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev > >
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