On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Martin Vaeth <mar...@mvath.de> wrote: > > It is the general attitude: Does Gentoo welcome contributions > or want to make their developers live in an ivory tower? > > It is about openness vs. isolation. >
I'm pretty sure most developers, myself included, want to welcome contributions. Much of the concern is that the lists have been turning into endless arguing over things like very topic. If a newcomer comes along and reads your post, they're going to get the impression that the developers live in an ivory tower. Why would somebody want to contribute to Gentoo in the first place if that is their first impression? Before it was the debate over mailing list policy it was a debate over discipline policies. Apparently developers live in an ivory tower and like to kick people out of the tower as well. In that particular debate the people most informed about what was actually happening were forbidden by policy from explaining what was going on, which basically left everybody who knew nothing of the details to spin conspiracy theories. It is natural that people are going to disagree on some of these issues. The problem is when it turns into a personal attack or hyperbole, which IMO the part I quoted falls into. The intent isn't to stifle debate/discussion. Whitelisting vs blacklisting on a mailing list have obvious pros/cons, and you made a legitimate point in the second half of your email (one that was hardly unknown to the Council I'm sure). The problem becomes when we try to attach motives to everybody else's actions. It isn't enough to point out the pros/cons of whitelisting/blacklisting/etc. Now we need to talk about "ivory towers" and "attitude" and in other posts "cabals" and so on. This kind of language can be demotivating because it demonizes those trying to fix things no matter what they do. Are they promoting "ivory towers" or are they allowing "toxic people" to attack new contributors (which also hardly is welcoming to new contributors)? And then everybody feels like they have to lead some kind of revolution to save Gentoo from itself. A lot of this comes down to considering that most people in these debates probably are well-intended. -- Rich
