Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 21-12-12 13:32, Arun Raghavan wrote: On 21 December 2012 17:36, Ciaran McCreesh ciaran.mccre...@googlemail.com wrote: On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:21:57 + Markos Chandras hwoar...@gentoo.org wrote: Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like the existing policy, bring it to the list with a better attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want to pick a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore this thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years. http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93x01rSVK1qjvxfho1_1280.jpg And that also makes a convenient way to always ignore the tone of an argument, regardless of whether it is justified or not. You say that as if it is a bad thing. If we were all a little less easily offended, communication would be more effective. I find that Markos' objection is not unfounded and your argument is irrelevant here. It is fine to discuss tone too, but let's not use tone as an argument to not respond to content. Marijn -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with undefined - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlDq5M4ACgkQp/VmCx0OL2zqOQCfX0jBZy8i/jH6rVTvONN4/d5u gKkAnRK54RHeUXgJLYfVm5+VL76xXrzQ =MqQO -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein car...@gentoo.org wrote: I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc). I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's how they are to be treated that they can be retired. When they finally want to contribute again they have the lovely uphill of our dreadfully painful recruitment process. I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this. Often people stop maintaining packages. We use heuristics to detect these people. These are based on commits and bug activity, along with a whitelist for non-ebuild developers (forum moderators, irc ops, pr people, and so forth.) They are just heuristics; they are obviously not perfect. I'd be happy to just add steev to the whitelist for 12 months and then see where we are then (so he stops showing in the report). -- Doug Goldstein
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
El jue, 20-12-2012 a las 21:21 -0600, Doug Goldstein escribió: I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc). I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's how they are to be treated that they can be retired. When they finally want to contribute again they have the lovely uphill of our dreadfully painful recruitment process. I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this. I have just explained it at: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101792#c17 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
El jue, 20-12-2012 a las 21:21 -0600, Doug Goldstein escribió: I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc). I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's how they are to be treated that they can be retired. When they finally want to contribute again they have the lovely uphill of our dreadfully painful recruitment process. I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this. I have just explained it at: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101792#c17 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
El jue, 20-12-2012 a las 21:30 -0800, Paweł Hajdan, Jr. escribió: On 12/20/12 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein wrote: I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc). Dough, thank you for rising the issue. I'm receiving the undertakers@ e-mail, so I have a pretty good view of what's happening. I have several suggestions how we can improve things: 1. 3 months is too short period anyway. 2. Think through what the goals are. We do not want to retire as many people as possible. We do not want to frustrate people who do contribute to Gentoo. We do not want to discourage people who consider becoming new developers. At least I don't. 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package. 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained. Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good. They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with that as long as things are maintained properly. 5. Remember that cvs/bugzilla activity is not the only way of contributing. It's probably most tanglible and very needed, but let's not reduce real people and their real world situations, and their effort to contribute to just dates and numbers. Paweł Also I must note that I am currently only looking to people with 0 commits AND bugs assigned to them, if they don't have unresolved bugs for a long time I usually tend to leave them. Also, before sending first mail, I also send them a mail to set their devaway message and handle his bugs and if they don't have time to reassign his packages, I do it for them. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 6:30 AM, Paweł Hajdan, Jr. phajdan...@gentoo.org wrote: 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package. 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained. Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good. They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with that as long as things are maintained properly. +1000. The point is not to retire developers. To point is to make sure we have a clear picture of what packages are (somewhat actively) being maintained. Perhaps the undertakers project (or some other project) should focus more on package maintenance history than activity history. Cheers, Dirkjan
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On Thu, 2012-12-20 at 21:30 -0800, Paweł Hajdan, Jr. wrote: On 12/20/12 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein wrote: I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc). Dough, thank you for rising the issue. I'm receiving the undertakers@ e-mail, so I have a pretty good view of what's happening. I have several suggestions how we can improve things: 1. 3 months is too short period anyway. 2. Think through what the goals are. We do not want to retire as many people as possible. We do not want to frustrate people who do contribute to Gentoo. We do not want to discourage people who consider becoming new developers. At least I don't. 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package. 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained. Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good. They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with that as long as things are maintained properly. 5. Remember that cvs/bugzilla activity is not the only way of contributing. It's probably most tanglible and very needed, but let's not reduce real people and their real world situations, and their effort to contribute to just dates and numbers. Paweł +1 Even though I am a relatively new developer, I too got an email stating my inactivity (not from undertakers@). My main purpose for becoming a dev was not for ebuild work, but more for coding. Three months is way too short to be making that type of list. For all those young devs out there still in college/university. You will find that time accelerates as you age. 3 months may seem a long time for you now, but give it another 5-10 years and you'll discover that 3 months can go by quite quickly. Especially with a family (wife, kids, pets) and a full time job. -- Brian Dolbec dol...@gentoo.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On 21 December 2012 03:21, Doug Goldstein car...@gentoo.org wrote: I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc). I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's how they are to be treated that they can be retired. When they finally want to contribute again they have the lovely uphill of our dreadfully painful recruitment process. I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this. -- Doug Goldstein Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like the existing policy, bring it to the list with a better attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want to pick a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore this thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years. -- Regards, Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On 21 December 2012 08:49, Brian Dolbec dol...@gentoo.org wrote: On Thu, 2012-12-20 at 21:30 -0800, Paweł Hajdan, Jr. wrote: On 12/20/12 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein wrote: I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc). Dough, thank you for rising the issue. I'm receiving the undertakers@ e-mail, so I have a pretty good view of what's happening. I have several suggestions how we can improve things: 1. 3 months is too short period anyway. 2. Think through what the goals are. We do not want to retire as many people as possible. We do not want to frustrate people who do contribute to Gentoo. We do not want to discourage people who consider becoming new developers. At least I don't. 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package. 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained. Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good. They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with that as long as things are maintained properly. 5. Remember that cvs/bugzilla activity is not the only way of contributing. It's probably most tanglible and very needed, but let's not reduce real people and their real world situations, and their effort to contribute to just dates and numbers. Paweł +1 Even though I am a relatively new developer, I too got an email stating my inactivity (not from undertakers@). My main purpose for becoming a dev was not for ebuild work, but more for coding. Three months is way too short to be making that type of list. For all those young devs out there still in college/university. You will find that time accelerates as you age. 3 months may seem a long time for you now, but give it another 5-10 years and you'll discover that 3 months can go by quite quickly. Especially with a family (wife, kids, pets) and a full time job. -- Brian Dolbec dol...@gentoo.org Nobody said the policy is correct. I face the same problems so the policy might not be appropriate anymore. However, I totally disagree with the way Doug started this thread. Calling us brain dead ? No sorry, I am not willing to discuss anything about this policy nor willing to change it if someone can't behave properly and ask us nicely to discuss the problem. We never *insulted* or *threated* anyone with retirement, we are extremely polite and we just ask for status updates in order to clean up metadata, reassign bugs and look for new maintainers of unattended packages. Nobody ever complained in the past, and all of them were willing to drop themselves from metadata without problems. But I never expected this attitude just for asking hey are you there? do you still want to maintain all these packages? any ETA on coming back. Seriously... -- Regards, Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:21:57 + Markos Chandras hwoar...@gentoo.org wrote: Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like the existing policy, bring it to the list with a better attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want to pick a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore this thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years. http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93x01rSVK1qjvxfho1_1280.jpg -- Ciaran McCreesh signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On 21 December 2012 17:36, Ciaran McCreesh ciaran.mccre...@googlemail.com wrote: On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:21:57 + Markos Chandras hwoar...@gentoo.org wrote: Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like the existing policy, bring it to the list with a better attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want to pick a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore this thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years. http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93x01rSVK1qjvxfho1_1280.jpg And that also makes a convenient way to always ignore the tone of an argument, regardless of whether it is justified or not. I find that Markos' objection is not unfounded and your argument is irrelevant here. -- Arun Raghavan http://arunraghavan.net/ (Ford_Prefect | Gentoo) (arunsr | GNOME)
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On 21 December 2012 18:02, Arun Raghavan ford_pref...@gentoo.org wrote: On 21 December 2012 17:36, Ciaran McCreesh ciaran.mccre...@googlemail.com wrote: On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:21:57 + Markos Chandras hwoar...@gentoo.org wrote: Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like the existing policy, bring it to the list with a better attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want to pick a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore this thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years. http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93x01rSVK1qjvxfho1_1280.jpg And that also makes a convenient way to always ignore the tone of an argument, regardless of whether it is justified or not. I find that Markos' objection is not unfounded and your argument is irrelevant here. To expand on that a bit -- it's fair game to discuss whether we should give more leeway before pinging idle devs, but pouncing on the people doing to work of trying to make sure packages don't fall off the radar and remain unmaintained is counter-productive and detrimental. -- Arun Raghavan http://arunraghavan.net/ (Ford_Prefect | Gentoo) (arunsr | GNOME)
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 7:32 AM, Arun Raghavan ford_pref...@gentoo.org wrote: On 21 December 2012 17:36, Ciaran McCreesh ciaran.mccre...@googlemail.com wrote: On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:21:57 + Markos Chandras hwoar...@gentoo.org wrote: Your tone is not appropriate for discussion. If you don't like the existing policy, bring it to the list with a better attitude so we can try and discuss it. But given that you want to pick a fight with your email, I will most likely ignore this thread and keep doing our job like we do for many years. http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93x01rSVK1qjvxfho1_1280.jpg And that also makes a convenient way to always ignore the tone of an argument, regardless of whether it is justified or not. I find that Markos' objection is not unfounded and your argument is irrelevant here. I think this is a topic worth discussing, but I think Markos was fair to point out that starting out with an aggressive post isn't the right way to go. Having been recently guilty of something similar (off list) I can sympathize that it is easy to get a bit emotional when passionate about something. It doesn't hurt to provide feedback when this happens. Perhaps the wait time should be increased. Also, if somebody wants to post the email template we could have a go at bikeshedding it into something appropriately soft and squishy. :) If security is a concern, we could also consider adding another state to the graph were cvs access is temporarily unnecessary. This could be an intermediate state between active and retired devs, and devs could request reactivation with no further hurdles. This would cut down on unnecessary cvs access but keep the barriers to re-entry low. Long-term inactive devs could still be retired in the current way (if somebody is gone for 5 years with truly no Gentoo involvement they probably should go through recruitment again). However, inactive devs should be genuinely inactive - it shouldn't just be based on commits/etc. The main concern is that they're still connected to Gentoo and have a general sense of what is going on so that they don't go back to their ebuilds with questions like huh, I wonder if this EAPI thing is important? Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On Fri, 2012-12-21 at 10:46 +, Markos Chandras wrote: On 21 December 2012 08:49, Brian Dolbec dol...@gentoo.org wrote: On Thu, 2012-12-20 at 21:30 -0800, Paweł Hajdan, Jr. wrote: I have several suggestions how we can improve things: 1. 3 months is too short period anyway. 2. Think through what the goals are. We do not want to retire as many people as possible. We do not want to frustrate people who do contribute to Gentoo. We do not want to discourage people who consider becoming new developers. At least I don't. 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package. 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained. Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good. They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with that as long as things are maintained properly. 5. Remember that cvs/bugzilla activity is not the only way of contributing. It's probably most tanglible and very needed, but let's not reduce real people and their real world situations, and their effort to contribute to just dates and numbers. Paweł +1 Even though I am a relatively new developer, I too got an email stating my inactivity (not from undertakers@). My main purpose for becoming a dev was not for ebuild work, but more for coding. Three months is way too short to be making that type of list. For all those young devs out there still in college/university. You will find that time accelerates as you age. 3 months may seem a long time for you now, but give it another 5-10 years and you'll discover that 3 months can go by quite quickly. Especially with a family (wife, kids, pets) and a full time job. -- Brian Dolbec dol...@gentoo.org Nobody said the policy is correct. I face the same problems so the policy might not be appropriate anymore. However, I totally disagree with the way Doug started this thread. Calling us brain dead ? No sorry, I am not willing to discuss anything about this policy nor willing to change it if someone can't behave properly and ask us nicely to discuss the problem. We never *insulted* or *threated* anyone with retirement, we are extremely polite and we just ask for status updates in order to clean up metadata, reassign bugs and look for new maintainers of unattended packages. Nobody ever complained in the past, and all of them were willing to drop themselves from metadata without problems. But I never expected this attitude just for asking hey are you there? do you still want to maintain all these packages? any ETA on coming back. Seriously... Ah, yes. Sorry, I was replying to Pawel's suggestions. I should have deleted Doug's text from the above as I've done now. I in no way meant it as I was insulted/threatened by the email I got. And Doug's original comments were harsh. -- Brian Dolbec dol...@gentoo.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
Markos, Markos Chandras wrote: I totally disagree with the way Doug started this thread. That's of course completely fair, but try to look beyond that, and let's focus on how we can make things better for everyone. Calling us brain dead ? Please read email even more carefully, especially when you read something that makes you upset. I think you completely misunderstood what Doug wrote. He wrote: I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers that are still interested in the distro So as I mentioned in a previous email that I wrote, *you* aren't being attacked here. brain dead is of course strong wording, but note that it refers to the idea and *not* to anyone who is implementing the idea. I guess the idea is really really old by now. No sorry, I am not willing to discuss anything about this policy nor willing to change it That's not very helpful. I had expected much more from you, since you are a strong contributor to Gentoo since a long time. if someone can't behave properly and ask us nicely to discuss the problem. As I wrote, I think Doug's email was nice enough. He included his attitude as background for an inquiry. It should be pretty easy to recognize which is which, and for the community to work together on making things better for everyone, with focus on the inquiry. Refusing to discuss and change for any reason seems pretty weird to me. Basically you are saying that communication can only happen on your own terms, instead of trying to always adjust communication to your party. Guess what happens if both parties do that. We never *insulted* or *threated* anyone with retirement Cool! My impression of the process was the exact opposite. I don't have experience from it of course, but the way it was described it was certainly a big part of me not being able to grow motivation to work through the Gentoo recruitment process. I never expected this attitude just for asking hey are you there? do you still want to maintain all these packages? any ETA on coming back. Seriously... Maybe you can understand that there is a disconnect between what people who have no experience from what you do and what you actually do? That was certainly the case for me, and maybe also for Doug. The documentation that I once read was certainly much more aggressive than what you and others describe, and it's easy to assume that documentation is correct. :) //Peter
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On 21 December 2012 22:50, Peter Stuge pe...@stuge.se wrote: Markos, [...] Maybe you can understand that there is a disconnect between what people who have no experience from what you do and what you actually do? That was certainly the case for me, and maybe also for Doug. The documentation that I once read was certainly much more aggressive than what you and others describe, and it's easy to assume that documentation is correct. :) Ok let me clarify something since it appears there is a confusion. The Undertakers project is in no way special compared to other Gentoo projects. What this means is that this project is a separate entity (like *all* Gentoo projects) and free to shape and form whatever policy it see fit for inactive developers. *All* Gentoo projects operate in the same manner, meaning nobody outside of the project controls what decisions are made and why. If you want to be part of the decision making process, join the project. If you have problems with what this project is doing, *please* come a talk to us. Having said that, and I already said that previously, I agree that the policy is not ideal and we need to change it. *However* nobody *ever* talked to us and raised his concerns in a civil matter. Nobody *ever* complained with the status updates emails we send to them. Like I said before, the emails we send are far from insulting, you can see the templates here[1] and here[2]. I can see why these templates may look a bit distant, but Pacho and I always add extra bits to them, especially asking them to consider dropping themselves from metadata.xml until they come back. *Every single one of the devs we asked so far* was more than willing to cooperate with us, drop himself from metadata.xml, allow us to reassign his bugs and seek new maintainers. Those who didn't, agreed to retire because they realized they didn't contribute anymore so having the Gentoo badge made no sense. Again, the fact that we ask inactive developers about their status, it does *not* mean that we will retire them if they don't make X commits/ week. We just need to make sure that packages are maintained properly and avoid having unattended bugs for years because a maintainer got MIA. Finally, I am very proud with the work we are doing, especially Pacho who has been doing most of the work lately. We have managed to free many many packages and this was one of the reasons I formed the proxy-maintainers project, so that non-dev contributors could step up and take care of all these packages that inactive devs left unattended. [1]http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/undertakers/retirement-first.txt [2]http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/undertakers/retirement-second.txt -- Regards, Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein car...@gentoo.org wrote: I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc). I could MAYBE understand it if they're consuming some valuable resource that we need to free up by retiring them. But instead they get a nasty-gram about their impending retirement and decide if that's how they are to be treated that they can be retired. When they finally want to contribute again they have the lovely uphill of our dreadfully painful recruitment process. I'm really just trying to understand the sense in this. -- Doug Goldstein Probably best to give an example.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
Rich Freeman wrote: I think the bar for keeping access should be kept low - they shouldn't be forced to go find some trivial change to make just to get their name in the logs. When I first started looking into becoming a Gentoo developer I got a very strong and very clear impression that this would be absolutely neccessary not to get kicked out again. I still find that really unfriendly, just like all the other bad stuff about Gentoo. I've since understood that the documentation I had read is simply incorrect, does not reflect reality, but it seemed quite authoritative when I read it. Desinformation is IMO always worse than no information. //Peter
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
Peter Stuge wrote: I think the bar for keeping access should be kept low - they shouldn't be forced to go find some trivial change to make just to get their name in the logs. When I first started looking into becoming a Gentoo developer I got a very strong and very clear impression that this would be absolutely neccessary not to get kicked out again. I still find that really unfriendly, just like all the other bad stuff about Gentoo. To be clear, by unfriendly I mean the things I subjectively consider make Gentoo less awesome *for me*. There aren't many of them but there are a few. I understand that they all have their reason for being there. I don't neccessarily agree with them, but that's not the point, just like it isn't the point that there is some stuff that I don't like. Desinformation is IMO always worse than no information. This line is the point. //Peter
Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements
On 12/20/12 7:21 PM, Doug Goldstein wrote: I'm curious who had the brain dead idea to retire Gentoo developers that are still interested in the distro, that maintain low activity packages for herds that are stretched way too thin, and are still contributing to the distro in many ways other than direct CVS commits (e.g. overlays, user support, providing hardware to other devs, etc). Dough, thank you for rising the issue. I'm receiving the undertakers@ e-mail, so I have a pretty good view of what's happening. I have several suggestions how we can improve things: 1. 3 months is too short period anyway. 2. Think through what the goals are. We do not want to retire as many people as possible. We do not want to frustrate people who do contribute to Gentoo. We do not want to discourage people who consider becoming new developers. At least I don't. 3. I think what's important is to keep packages maintained. I consider maintainership to be a duty, not a privilege. If someone is listed in metadata.xml, but is not really maintaining the package, that creates a formal illusion that the package is maintained, and may prevent other people from stepping up and taking maintenance of that package. 4. I suggest that we focus on the above: keeping packages maintained. Taking packages out of hands of inactive/overworked maintainers is good. They can always become _more_ active, which is easier if they retain cvs access. If they make a single commit every 3-6 months, I'm fine with that as long as things are maintained properly. 5. Remember that cvs/bugzilla activity is not the only way of contributing. It's probably most tanglible and very needed, but let's not reduce real people and their real world situations, and their effort to contribute to just dates and numbers. Paweł signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
