Re: GNOME Enhancement Procedure

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> Here's a draft of one way to try and avoid this kind of extended
> flamewar. Let me know what you think.
> 
>   http://pobox.com/~hp/policy.html
> 
> Two example topics we might use for a test run of the procedure are
> this -config issue, and the sound server/API issue.

Looking this over, a couple of things came to mind, mostly in
terms of simplifying it a bit:

 * It would be better if the dates could be simplified, and the
   fast-track approval vs. normal approval distinction eliminated.
   It's a little tricky to do these both without greatly extending
   the timeline. Something as simple as:

  - Two weeks for people to submit comments, reminder sent out
    after one week.

  - Once the committee approves the RFP, two weeks for
    people to submit proposals.

   I think could work. But it extends the minimum time for getting
   a proposal through from 19 days to 28 days. (Compare this
   to timescales for process for the OMG or W3C, and this may seem
   quite short...)

 * I think you can eliminate the desciption of how the responsible 
   maintainers vote on the proposal, and simply say:

    The chosen proposal, if any, must be endorsed by more than 50%
    of the maintainers.

 * Just eliminate "Harrassment via Procedure" until it becomes a
   problem. Or instead say at the top:
   
    The intent of the proposal process is to reach consensus
    on technical issues with as much accuracy, timeliness and
    cordiality as possible. Abuse of the process will not
    be tolerated. 

Regards,
                                        Owen