On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 3:48 AM, Walter Dnes <waltd...@waltdnes.org> wrote: > On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 08:41:25AM +0200, Micha?? Górny wrote >> Next time such a thing happens, the discussion will happen on a >> completely private media or not happen at all because of the state >> of this mailing list. Is this what you really want? > > Here's the part you did not quote... > >>> If we could have a guarantee of proposed changes like that being >>> posted on Gentoo-User for comment, rather than being sprung on >>> users by surprise, I'd be willing to sign off this list. > > Note where I said "...posted on Gentoo-User for comment...". What I'm > asking is for such proposed changes to be posted on Gentoo-User, and the > discussion/feedback/flamefests/etc will be on Gentoo-User. This type of > surprise stuff seems to happen a lot in Open Source... > > * Gentoo /usr > * Firefox Australis UI, and dropping ALSA and going PulseAudio-only > * GNOME getting a hard-coded dependancy on systemd > * etc, etc >
What value would be obtained by posting this stuff for user comment? I'd also note that only one of those was posted on -dev-announce for comment as far as I'm aware. Two are package/project-level changes which typically don't get wide discussion. These sorts of changes aren't being made for the purpose of giving users a hard time. They're typically done because of technical constraints. Sure, it is valuable when somebody points out an issue nobody has thought of. However, dropping support for /usr not being mounted during early boot was something that was recognized up-front as being controversial. It is doubtful that a bunch of additional list contributors would have pointed out an issue that wasn't already discussed or anticipated. Sure, maybe we'd get 20 people posting that they don't like the change, but that would have been unlikely to actually change the outcome of the decision. That basically means that it is unhelpful. We already knew that a lot of people weren't going to like the change, and numerous developers said as much as well. The change was made because to some degree it had already happened and it was the result of upstream forces that were becoming increasingly difficult to work around. For what its worth, I suspect that a system with /usr mounted late probably isn't much more likely to break today than it was back then - we just won't necessarily take bug reports if it does in some corner case. Honestly, I think the flamefests are generally not helpful. For one they tend to discourage contribution. A few have already posted on this list that Gentoo is well-known to be a community with lots of infighting/etc. Well, putting controversial changes out there just so that people can complain about them isn't going to change that reputation if we're going to make the change anyway. Obviously there is only so much that we can do to stop people from complaining, but keep in mind that every time somebody posts a "Gentoo devs are out of touch" post/email/whatever it isn't exactly great for PR. Most of those who do contribute do so because it scratches some personal itch and so a lot of us just ignore it (which probably wasn't the goal of those complaining either). However, there are probably many who might get involved, and who might even listen to these complaints in the future, who don't get involved because of them. A lot of the sentiment in these discussions is about trying to keep the useful contributions without the noise. My main concern with the multiple list suggestion is whether it will actually accomplish the intended goal in the first place. If not, then the issue of social contract is a bit moot. -- Rich
