RE: How this all works... [was Re: 2.4 Proposed Modules - 2 weeks left]

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

> From: Luis Villa [mailto:louie ximian com]  
> On Thu, 2003-05-08 at 07:49, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > Of course, in the case of Gnome this "considering" 
> > basically consists of various people sending heated mails 
> on mailing 
> > lists, and finally the release team gets to "interpret" 
> this and come up 
> > with what they think is our decision as a group.
> 
> There seems to be some grumbling about this method.

I haven't seen much, but I haven't been on irc so I suppose it could be
there.

> I'm not very
> comfortable with it either- it puts too much power in the hands of a
> small group of fairly inbred people who have fairly set ways 
> of looking
> at the GNOME world. Problem being I'm not sure how else to do it.
> Really, it's the problem with all GNOME decisions and 
> actions- it boils
> down to someone taking some type of initiative and doing it, 
> and that's
> frequently not the best way to do things. 

Could we agree this after the imminent GNOME 2.4 new modules freeze? I don't
think we've failed yet.

> $UNNAMED_NAUTILUS_HACKER_WHO_HAS_BEEN_KNOWN_TO_BE_CALLED_CPN_PRINTMAN
> has suggested[1] that the key is mainly to enlarge the number 
> of people
> approving the relevant GEP. It's currently basically the release team.
> $HACKER suggests it be release team + team leads (a11y, QA, 
> docs, i18n)
> + current maintainers of core modules + proposed maintainers.
> 
> This would make the process slightly more unweildy (bad) but 
> reduce the
> appearance and the actuality of the release team basically making
> decisions for the rest of GNOME unilaterally (good.)

Note that this group is not, and will not, be deciding what they want. They
will be deciding what the wider gnome community wants. For instance, I'm all
set to give the green light to modules that I don't personally think should
be in GNOME.

Teams leads and maintainers are relevant people. But if it gets that big
then we will have to have a real vote because you can't even have a
consensus about what's the consensus when dealing with so many people. And
as soon as you have a real vote it will probably have to go to the whole
foundation membership.

So, again, let's just see if the current system is broken before fixing it.
We will need to do everything properly eventually but let's stay nifty for
now.

Murray Cumming
murrayc usa net
www.murrayc.com