No subject

"The voting system itself should be used to choose new committers, both full
and partial. But here is one of the rare instances where secrecy is
appropriate. You can't have votes about potential committers posted to a
public mailing list, because the candidate's feelings (and reputation) could
be hurt. Instead, the usual way is that an existing committer posts to a
private mailing list consisting only of the other committers, proposing that
someone be granted commit access. The other committers speak their minds
freely, knowing the discussion is private. Often there will be no
disagreement, and therefore no vote necessary. After waiting a few days to
make sure every committer has had a chance to respond, the proposer mails
the candidate and offers him commit access. If there is disagreement,
discussion ensues as for any other question, possibly resulting in a vote.
For this process to be open and frank, the mere fact that the discussion is
taking place at all should be secret
 . If the person under consideration knew it was going on, and then were
never offered commit access, he could conclude that he had lost the vote,
and would likely feel hurt. Of course, if someone explicitly asks for commit
access, then there is no choice but to consider the proposal and explicitly
accept or reject him. If the latter, then it should be done as politely as
possible, with a clear explanation: "We liked your patches, but haven't seen
enough of them yet," or "We appreciate all your patches, but they required
considerable adjustments before they could be applied, so we don't feel
comfortable giving you commit access yet. We hope that this will change over
time, though." Remember, what you're saying could come as a blow, depending
on the person's level of confidence. Try to see it from their point of view
as you write the mail."
---

I personally suggest reading that whole chapter (#4) for reasons why a lot
of projects have a committers mailing list (and yes it is a standard
practice.)

Adam

> -----Original Message-----
> From: opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de [mailto:opensim-dev-
> bounces at lists.berlios.de] On Behalf Of Ryan McDougall
> Sent: Monday, 19 October 2009 9:33 PM
> To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> Subject: [Opensim-dev] The notion of "core"
> 
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 2:49 AM, Frisby, Adam <adam at deepthink.com.au>
> wrote:
> > Ter pretty much summed it up - both it and the irc channel are fairly
> low-volume, and the 'topic' is restricted to only 'personal' or 'meta'
> matters; such as discussion of approval of commit rights.
> >
> > It's pretty standard practice across open source projects with more
> than 5 committers for the committers to have a mailing list for these
> purposes, since realtime chats aren't practical across timezones.
> >
> > Adam
> >
> 
> I am not sure I'd agree just how standard a process it is.
> 
> The one's I've been involved with or otherwise have some detailed
> knowledge of, have never had them; including such big names as GNOME,
> Fedora, and Linux. For example the GNOME foundation list is not only
> world-readable, but anyone can join:
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list . Actual
> foundation members are voted by the community at large.
> 
> Basically the way they are able to operate is, they don't distribute
> commit access according to monolithic vote of knighted members; they
> have a system of maintainership, and each maintainer gives access
> rights to his module/repo as she sees fit, in a web of trust.
> 
> One of the complaints one sometimes hears is how monolithic the
> project is (even if the code-base is modular). Maybe the move to git,
> and the maturation of the code allows more distribution and
> specialization of responsibility?
> 
> My concerns with core mailing list are:
> 
> 1. It's "secret", ie. not world readable. I can understand limiting
> membership to voting partners to avoid bikeshedding, but I can't
> understand secrecy of any kind in an open source project.
> 
> 2. Decisions made there (aside from commit rights) affect other
> people, and they not only have no voice to represent themselves, they
> don't even get to know what is being said about them. That doesn't
> seem fair somehow.
> 
> The knowledge that someone can read what you write makes you think
> harder about what you say. Maybe a private list makes the problem of
> disagreement within core worse rather than better? I haven't the
> faintest idea who this snowcrash guy is, but when I was a topic of
> discussion on -core, I remember not liking it at all.
> 
> As for the issue of timezones, I understand that completely! Which is
> why I wish you guys used ML more frequently! :)
> 
> My intention is not to bike-shed, but to be productive. Either opensim
> core is open to this point of view or it's not, and we move on from
> there.
> 
> Cheers, and much love!
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-dev mailing list
> Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
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