Bug#877024: Modemmanager probing of unknown Devices

[Sam Hartman]

Dear Ian:

I wanted to make you aware of a status update.
The maintainer who has been doing most of the uploads on modemmanager
stepped down after receiving my query.  First, I'd like to extend my
thanks to Michael for his hard work on modemmanager in the past and all
the things he continues to do for Debian.  Second, I'm glad that he
stepped aside when it was time to do so: doing that is an important part
of staying healthy.

As a matter of process, it's not clear that there's an active maintainer
of modemmanager.  Speaking as an individual, but not as a TC member (I
haven't talked to anyone else), I think it would be reasonable to treat
modemmanager as a package that is under-maintained at the moment in
which you've found a bug you care about, approaching things and
balancing the same as you might in any similar situation.

With more of a TC hat on, I am very reluctant to rule on this issue
without an active modemmanager maintainer.  I don't think there is a
compelling need to do so, and I don't want to rule out the possibility
of a modemmanager maintainer coming along later and presenting an
argument about how we should balance this issue.
I don't think the lack of a ruling will be a blocking force at the
current time.


I won't stand in the  way of other members who do want to rule on this
issue.  However, I cannot imagine getting to a point where  I'd vote
anything other than FD or defer on this issue right now

Also, as may be obvious from my previous post today, I was shaken by
some of the meta issues here.  I am much more focused at the moment on
thinking about the TC process and our community than I am about this issue.


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Let's Stop Getting Torn Apart by Disagreement: Concerns about the Technical Committee

[Sam Hartman]

As a member of the technical committee, I've grown increasingly alarmed
as I think about the impact of the issues that come to us.
Yes, we're giving answers.  However, I think we are doing a lot of harm
to the members of our community in the process, and I would like to
explore whether we can do better.

I've written a blog entry describing my concerns.  It's on Planet, and
you can see it at https://hartmans.livejournal.com/97174.html

I've reached a point where I'd like to share my concerns and ask "anyone
else feel similar?  Anyone else want to work on solving this?"

In thinking about my concerns I went over a list of issues that have
come before the TC going back somewhat before the Systemd discussion.
However, I did not perform any quantitative or statistical analysis.
As you can see I also didn't share any discussion of specific issues.
I'm not trying to persuade you I'm right.  I am very interested in being
exposed to your ideas about how one might think about this situation,
and certainly exposing me to new ways of thinking is likely to change my
opinions.  But I'm not really interested in persuasion either incoming
or outgoing at this point.  I'm seeking shared interest.

If we get to a point where we want to propose a specific change, we'll
need to convince the project it will make things better.  That's a ways
down this road.


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