Daniel Campbell posted on Thu, 05 Feb 2015 22:55:05 -0800 as excerpted: > On 02/04/2015 04:43 AM, Mike Auty wrote: >> It's fine to have disagreements, but airing them in front of the users >> like this is not an ideal situation... > > As a user and prospective developer, why? Transparency is important to > open communities like Gentoo's, and reading the discussions can give > users and developers alike some context that they wouldn't normally get > if they hadn't seen the discussion(s).
(As a user myself...) I believe he's referring not to the technical disagreements themselves, but to the practical effects on users of unmasking, remasking, unmasking, changing USE flags, changing the / meaning/ of USE flags, changing USE flag defaults... before a final plan of action is settled on. IOW, the problem isn't the disagreement or the openness of the discussion, it's that various changes are happening before there's a settled plan, causing far more disruption for the users in terms of having to "fix" USE flags and keywords and masks via package.* then they should be having to deal with, most of it simply due to premature action before a final action plan is agreed to that will (ideally) ultimately minimize required user changes and "fixes". Tho in the past list discussions (and I gather the IRC channels as well, tho I don't personally do IRC so what I know of that is second hand) did get vicious and personal at times, until enough objections (including from gentoo sponsors apparently) forced a toning down, and these days people get a warning when it starts getting personal, and can get a posting suspension "cool-down period" if it gets too bad. But I'm not aware of such mandatory cool-down timeouts being imposed for some time now, and even warnings are fewer these days, as the lists have become far more professional in tone and in general a more pleasant place to discuss things, even when there are disagreements, because everyone knows it /cannot/ be allowed to get personal, now. And I for one am glad of that. =:^) -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
