On Jan 28, 2009, at 8:59 AM, Jim Jagielski wrote:
On Jan 28, 2009, at 8:26 AM, Kerr Rainey wrote:
2009/1/28 Jim Jagielski <[email protected]>:
As long as it *is* the vision of the PMC, and not the vision of one
person and the PMC, like sheep, simply accept it...
I don't think the PMC are following anyone as sheep. A single person
had a vision, expended a phenomenal amount of effort and risk in
bringing that vision to life. He then gave it away. That
engenders a
huge amount respect and willingness to listen to there opinion of the
subject. I don't think it's a sign of weakness that the opinion of
the person who has done the most work and understands the code the
best is sought out by the rest of the PMC.
I'm not saying that one should not give that person's
opinion a fair weighing. I'm also saying that vision
is what the PMC defines, as a team, and as a group of
people who all have a vision. That's what being on
the PMC is about, being able to define that vision.
Just just "rubber stamping" someone else's vision.
I'm also not saying this is what is occurring; I'm only
saying this a very real risk, esp for a recently graduated
ASF TLP. If developers leave, or decide never to join
because they fear that their voices will never be heard,
or their input or "vision" will ever be valid, unless
it happens to align with a single persons', then hopefully
people see the problem and concern.
My vote counts the same as another else. If my opinion counts more
amongst the other PMC members and other members of the community, it
is not by decree or force. So perhaps we can agree that it's based on
merit, or at least the appearance of merit.
Developing a completely new distributed database platform is a lot of
work and takes a tremendous amount of mental effort. I and the other
project members try to consider the community at large with every
decision, but we simply cannot move forward if we need to address
everyones criticism and concerns for every decision. It's exhausting,
and no matter how much we try, we still can't make everyone happy. Yet
we must make progress.
The reason people keep deferring to my opinion here because they know
I have an opinion on this, one I have articulated to the other project
members and gotten consensus around. However, the other project
members cannot be expected to recall every detail of every decision
and why it was necessary. And we cannot be expected to answer in
detail every criticism and concern of "why isn't it another way?" And
so people defer to previously made decisions, knowing they we're made
thoughtfully and respectfully, even if we can't remember all the
details right now. It's not ideal, but it's reality. We are trying our
best to push the project forward.
-Damien
