geda-developers team mailing list archive

[Vladimir Zhbanov <vzhbanov@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 11:03:53PM +0200, Markus Hitter (mah@xxxxxxxxxxx) [via geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxx] wrote:
> Am 14.09.2015 um 21:10 schrieb Vladimir Zhbanov:
> >> This is work in progress. LP admins are apparently mortal, too, because
> >> > none of them shows a sign of life.
> > Markus, please, stop this :)
> 
> Why whould I? I'm active not only on this list, I'm also on IRC and
> write people personally.
> 
> I wrote Peter TB Brett, the person listed as "owner" of the gEDA
> Launchpad team. I had to grab his email address from Git, because he
> decided to hide it on LP. I asked on IRC about the LP team. He decided
> to not answer. Or he didn't recognize it on any of the channels. From my
> perspective he's inactive, gone, disappeared, choose your favourite term.

Look, AFAIR, Al Davis didn't work on gnucap for two or three years. He
just had some private difficulties. Now he is again the leader of
Gnucap development. OTOH, you was inactive in the geda community at
least the last year. Another story is my participation in the
development. Sometimes I have so much load, that I cannot just do
anything for geda for weeks (while I'm still eager to).

I believe, there is no man who can be on-line permanently, every day and
every night. One of the solution I see is election of a leader who will
be responsible (yes, responsible, as a department director) for the
project. The leadership would give him/her the real power to promote
his/her strategy (approved by devs due to election) and the results of
his/her leadership would affect the next election.

> 
> > Admins are apparently mortals (their list you can find at
> > https://launchpad.net/~geda-admins/+members#active), and they cannot
> > read all this flow of posts as quickly as you write them.
> 
> This hide and seek game most of the older admins orchestrate has to
> stop. With this attitude they managed to grind gEDA development to an
> almost halt. None of them is forced to put work in, but if they decide
> to stay away it's most important they don't take the keys with them.
> Easiest ways to ensure this: hand out a lot of keys or remove the door
> lock entirely.

I disagree here. The fact that you try to not notice their work doesn't
mean they're not working. Look through the repos, presentations, don't
you see current admin's work? And after all, whom should developers give
the keys? And why? (See below)

> 
> > You know, for sure, the name of the admin responsible for pcb :)
> 
> The idea that some single person is "responsible" for community work is
> a wrong idea. Every single person of a community is. Some of these
> community persons keep the place nice, comfortable and, most important
> of all, open.
That's your vision. Any state is a 'community', however only
president/chancellor decides what's the way to go.

The hell is an example of democracy amongst its 'member's. The paradise
is always hierarchy.

> 
> > Probably, DJ could help you, too.
> 
> I asked DJ and he says he has no business with Launchpad.
> 
> > Therefore, Bert and Marcus, please just tell me what you want to do,
> > I've just not read the discussion yet. For now, I've configured
> > blueprints for pcb to be managed by launchpad.
> 
> Very nice :-) One person alive :-) Thank you.
> 
> Off the top of my head there are two more things:
> 
> - There's a backlog of 5 people waiting for approval:
> 
>   https://launchpad.net/~geda-admins/+members
> 
>   Neither approving nor declining them for several years(!) is certainly
>   not the way to grow and strengthen a community.
> 
> - One of them is Eugene Mikhantiev. A week ago I asked Eugene wether he
>   wants to move his PPA to the gEDA Administrators team to catch several
>   birds with one stone:
> 
>    - gEDA would have an official PPA, then, always delivering the latest
>      builds. Excellent for the "Downloads" web page.
> 
>    - gEDA would have an active admin on Launchpad. OK, counting your
>      appearance, he'd be the second active LP admin, then.
> 
>    - We had another developer and collaborator.
> 
>   Believe it or not, he agreed! You see? It's sometimes as simple as
>   writing people a nice email to bring them in. I used his PPA and it
>   works flawlessly, excellent contribution!
> 

OK, I can tell you my opinion on this.
Two of the waiting of approval people are Bob and Carlos, they are the
developers, who you'd call 'inactive'. That's why (I think) nobody
decides (at least, I wouldn't) if there is any sense to add them now.
One of them (Marco), is a translator. Why should he manage the project?
He has appeared not long ago, I'd wait for his contribution first.
I don't know who is David McAllister. Never seen him here or in any gEDA
context. He is the fourth. The reason for waiting can be the same. And,
eventually, Eugene, whom you want to see as an admin. I don't see any
his merits but making PPA's for Ubuntu.  Hey, there are many people who
makes packages for other distributions/OS's. And what?

BTW, looking through the list of people wanted to be gEDA developers I
see no one I remember having any contribution made in our repos or on
LP.

And, AFAICS, the gEDA admin list is the superior list over the gEDA
developer list. And I think it is very true that only developers,
having made significant contributions and knowing all this kitchen from
the inside, decide whom to approve to be a new developer.

OTOH, I see your point. We have no mechanism to get new admins without
'old' ones, who may become inactive some day. (I've seen this before,
and now I see where it has been led :( That's why I'm afraid of this new
tendency in the list).

So, my suggestion is as follows:

Let's play in the 'real democracy', that is
  * let's ask the current admins if they're ready/consider this to be
    good to changing the current policy and add some other devs/users as
    admins of the admins' list
  * let's do it in the dev list which all devs and admins have been
    subscribed on (At least you, DJ, Bert, Evan, me could participate in
    the voting)
  * If nobody of the admin list admins answers, we could consider them
    to be inactive
  * The result can be defined just as majority vote.
  * Any time there is a possibility to do a fork (I hate to say this!)

Let me be honest. I wouldn't do any such decisions without of the
developers/admins we already have, whose work I very appreciate, so I CC
this to the dev list. Let's try...

And my two questions for all devs are:
  * Please answer if you are ready to change the current
    policy and add some other devs/users as admins to the admins of the
    gEDA administrator list?
  * What are criteria for the people who might be admins of the gEDA
    administrator list?

I hope you'll be not indifferent.

Cheers,
  Vladimir