Re: Process, etc.

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

> Even now with a cooler head I won't apologize for that. I simply will
> not respond politely to any mail containing conspiracy theories about
> the "GTK Team" or "Red Hat" instead of assuming I'm an individual with
> equal standing in the GNOME Project. Sorry. Maybe he should try
> rephrasing whatever he was trying to say.

I personally did not care about the statements on the positions in
Michael's mail.  They were useful ways of labeling the two visions we
have here.  

Independenly of who the actors were on that e-mail, he is right when
it comes to describing that we do have two different visions: we
believe in Bonobo and CORBA, and you believe in the Hub.  And so on. 

I would not sweat over whether it is Red Hat's strategy or your own
strategy, that is irrelevant, and unfortunate because it made you
upset.  The rest of his email (give or take) is enlightening on the
problem. 

> I'm hoping you will join Daniel and Dietmar and others in addressing
> the question I've asked about how we could have avoided this. I
> politely discussed this bonobo-config/GConf issue with you and Dietmar
> some months ago, with Colm etc. participating. If you go back to that
> thread I thought it was technical in content, quite rational, with no
> use of the term "fuck" IIRC.

I remember the discussion being polite, and I also find Michael's mail
polite.  Maybe not tactful, but hey, Alan is the kind of not being
tactful with me ;-)

> So my question is, what could we have done back then to avoid this
> situation? I don't think "just be nice and loving" is an answer; I
> don't think "just agree with us" is an answer. What would an answer
> have been?

I think pride is involved in the issue.  GConf is your baby, and some
of us have disagreements on it at various levels (which we have
discussed back and forth).  

The impression I got back in the day is that you were unwilling to
make changes to GConf using excuses (sorry to be blunt about this, but
I am trying to explain to you why things did not work out). 

> My view is that the answer was that thread had to continue, possibly
> accompanied by phone calls or in-person meetings, until we actually
> all understood the issues and arrived at a common
> conclusion. i.e. agreeing to disagree was not a viable option, we were
> deluding ourselves. Do you think that's right?

We can do that.  And it seems Michael did speak to you at GUADEC about
this issue.  Indeed, Michael was probably the most active outspoken
individual at GUADEC that had on his agenda `talk to all involved
parties and try to solve our problems'.  

I would tell Michael `Lets go to a party' and he would say `No, I
still have to talk to Darin today' and he would do this for everyone.  

> What is your alternative suggestion for ensuring that people really
> confront issues and solve them together, rather than sulking off to do
> their own stuff?

The decision to use BonoboConf on gnome-libs seems to have been one of
a technical merit, it would remove a compile time dependency and would
use existing APIs, which I consider a good thing.

I do not see a problem with the use of bonobo-conf in its current
incanrnation/agreement.  The only problem so far seems to be one of
peeing in someone else's territory. 

Havoc, you are not actively developing GConf, you are an active
contributor of Gtk+.  I would like to claim to be the maintainer of
gnome-libs and the maintainer of gnome 2, but I am not.  Other people
are doing that work, and as a matter of sanity I have distanced myself
from the work on GNOME 2: other people with more time and more
expertise on it are working on it. 

> And moving beyond that old thread, what is your suggestion for the
> present as to how we make this decision? Or are we currently in
> agreement? I think we may mostly agree.

I think so, but I honestly want someone to post a summary ;-)

> But the question still remains, if we have this technical discussion
> (again), and still don't agree at the end, how do we address that?
> We do have to make this decision.

I am going to air two concerns.  I know it is not the most productive
way of working, and I should be more propositive, but I wanted to
answer your email before going to the movies.   

Maybe tomorrow I can be more propositive, and follow my own advise of
looking for possibilties: 

My fear from watching this debate is that although technical evidence
was readily avaiable (Martin posted urls to various discussions) many
people did choose to discuss and repeat the same inacurrate
information over and over.

My second fear is having the board of directors make judgement calls
on things we have little or no experience and just dictate policy.  I
am afraid of trying to pretend that the foundation is a company where
decisions can be made at the top and employees work on what they are
being told: that is now how free software works.  

I am afraid that we will manage to piss off existing contributors.

Miguel.

> I'm hoping you have some insight into this issue.