On Monday, 29 September 2025 at 23:17:06 UTC-7 [email protected] wrote: Well, yes, you can complain that it's volunteers' dictatorships - but instead you can tell yourself that it's great that you didn't have to spend you precious time on that plumbing assignment. An unpaid volunteer's labour of this sort is donation to the project (obviously there is no direct benefit to the volunteer here, as it's not something interesting from scientific or engineering point of you)
I don't dispute that the sagemath build process needed maintenance/modernisation work because bitrot is a real thing -- and as Orlitzky points out, it happens by itself. I'm not doubting that your intent is to make sage really better. I think the plumbing analogy can do a little more work here: it may very well be that the sewage main in your street needs replacement. That's maintenance that needs to happen every few decades. But if the trucks show up one morning unannounced and break open the street and block the driveway, most people will be annoyed at least. Quite a few would be livid. And that's not how that kind of work generally happens. Instead, people receive information about what is going to happen, why it is going to happen, and what they can do to mitigate the impact. The exact actions would be different here, but the same principles apply: if people are informed beforehand about the work, its necessity and the benefits, it is much easier for them to accept and plan around the inconveniences of construction. The only real way to get any classical governance is to get some funding, then one can organise around the grant, like it happened in OpenDreamKit times. (then at least some volunteers can get paid and thus be more thorough in their work). Otherwise it's, as I explained above, a volunteers' dictatorship. Donate your labour, and rule with thus earned social capital. Time spent on improving sage can definitely earn "social" capital. It does require that many in the community *perceive* your contributions as improving sage, though. So I think it is also in the interest of the developer/maintainer who wants to earn social capital in order to be able to influence decisions in sage, to try and get buy-in from many community members: it will improve trust in their judgement to make changes to sage that are beneficial. Trust is an important component of social capital. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/f4871539-adb8-48a9-83c9-e737c7a7e477n%40googlegroups.com.
