Re: Decisions you didn't intend to make [Was: Minutes of the meeting (2006-07-31)]

["Elijah Newren" <newren gmail com>]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for all your thoughts.  I'll try to respond to some things below.

On 8/1/06, Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org> wrote:
> I am *really* surprised that this decision was made and published, given
> that on numerous occasions it was clearly stated within the team that we
> were *not* going to make a broad decision about Gtk# applications in the
> Desktop suite...

Forgive me if I'm forgetting, but I'm not aware of any such occasions.
I am aware that at the last meeting you said you felt it wasn't a
decision that we should make, but nowhere that anyone else said or
felt the same.

> Preferring to focus on the question of Tomboy inclusion *alone* in this
> release cycle.

I assumed that this was your preference, and that you were of the
opinion that Tomboy should not be part of the desktop.  We weighed
things accordingly at the meeting.

> I recently sent a long mail to d-d-l in an
> attempt to clarify the situation, and split out all the conflated issues
> that the community was fighting about. I wanted to make it abundantly clear
> that all of these issues can be separated out and *are* different. Now, we
> have the release team conflating this issue with Tomboy's inclusion, and

To be honest, from my vantage point all I could see you doing was
repeatedly claim that people were conflating the issues without
explaining why they aren't intrinsically connected.  Yes, you did
repeatedly tell people, me included, to not conflate the issues, but I
saw no accompanying explanation.  Perhaps I was just dense, though.
Wouldn't be the first time.  ;-)

> making a decision that, all things considered, is inappropriate for the
> release team - alone, at this time, with the non-specific discussion we've
> had so far about this issue - to make.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I definitely don't follow.  Care to
explain why it's inappropriate for the release team to make?  We also
discussed this at the meeting because of your previous comment along
these lines (made at the 2006-07-21 meeting), and we disagreed with
you.  Stating my own opinion on the matter: I can't see any reason
that makes this decision inappropriate for the release team to make;
any reasoning I can think of would also disable us from deciding on
modules or release rules altogether.  I think that if it was an issue
that the release-team should not have decided, then the board should
have officially stepped in and said so at some point.  That didn't
happen.

Now, the foundation board has oversight of the release-team.  Always
has.  And you're one of the members of it.  Federico and Vincent are
two others.  I would be more than happy for you three to take this to
the rest of the board and decide whether to override the decision.  In
yesterday's meeting (in my timezone anyway), I mentioned the
possibility of taking our decision to the board so that they could
decide whether to override it, but Vincent said he would be really
surprised if the board got involved in this decision, so we didn't
consider this any further at the time.  We could still go that route
if you want.

> I don't have an immediate idea about how to fix this. Simply noting that
> this is the release team's suggestion, and that it is not a final decision
> would be a good start. Unfortunately, it already appears as if this is a
> final decision, and we will have to deal with some, if not all the fallout.

I'd be more than willing to state that some individuals want to take
the decision to the foundation board, and reminding everyone that the
foundation board has oversight of the release-team and ought to
exercise that oversight when they feel it's in the community's best
interests.  Would that help you feel better?


> Crucially, this was sent without a huge amount of thought as to messaging,

Ouch.  I was a touch offended at first...

> so that also complicates things (Elijah, I know you spent quite a bit of
> time trying to communicate this well, but your audience was the community
> alone, not the entire audience of people who will consume this message; if

...but I have to admit you are correct about who I was thinking of
when targetting the message.


Cheers,
Elijah