geda-developers team mailing list archive

[Evan Foss <evanfoss@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 5:16 PM, Vladimir Zhbanov <vzhbanov@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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!)

I like this plan. Thank you for including me.

If adopted we should document it on the website next to the code of conduct.

> 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?

Are we waiting for a given number of them to respond or a particular
amount of time? I mean at some point we have to accept Peter TB Brett
as the only voter right?

> I hope you'll be not indifferent.
>
> Cheers,
>   Vladimir
>
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