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Re: Changes made with too little discussion



On 01/19/2011 03:13, haad wrote:
On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 10:31 AM, Alan Barrett<apb%cequrux.com@localhost>  
wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jan 2011, Jukka Ruohonen wrote:
On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 11:34:23AM +1100, Simon Burge wrote:
Why was this removed when there was an active discussion about removing
it where no concensus was reached?  This sort of thing where commis
occur before a discussion is finished seems to be occurring more and
more often.
I don't care much about /usr/share/misc/operator, but I do care about
people making changes without discussion, or making changes with too
little discussion, or making changes that go against the consensus of
the discussion.

I would like to see this change reverted, becasue it was made with
too little discussion.

Maybe because the whole tech-userlevel@ mailing list has become
poisonous?  I know several people who abstain from posting anything to
the list because of the nature of the list and these discussions.
If you are not willing to discuss changes, or pay attention to other
people's opinions, then you are part of the problem.

You don't have to agree with everybody, but you do need to pay attention
to the discussion.  If no clear consensus emerges, or if the consensus
is opposite from your preferred outcome, then you may appeal to core to
make a decision.
Let me say it this way, if will will spent months in clueless
discussion about thinks like remove misc/operator we will not do any
real work.

Then maybe it is a dumb-ass idea. I'm sorry to be blunt, but if you propose something that will have a month of discussion for something trivial, then you are doing it wrong.
e.g. Lua it took one year to discuss everything and it was major PITA
for almost everyone.

Again, maybe it was a dumb idea? Maybe it was poorly communicated? Either way, using this as an example might prove the point: you have to gather consensus for change and if you try to force it, then you are doing it wrong.
We need some proper way how to evaluate changes, discussion about them
is clearly  not good way. Because most of best developers are not
talking in those never ending mail threads. In practice most active
never ending mail writers contribute very small or zero amount of
code. I really don't think that their opinion should be taken serious.
If they really want to have NetBSD done by their way they should start
contributing, just talking is not going to fix anything.

E.G. Example scenario Dev A wants to add new feature, software
whatever he spent his time on it, developing, testing preparing and
sends patch to tech-userlevel@ where it starts never ending discussion
about it how it slows build on 20years old vax(replace with anything
with<  128Mb ram). After few weeks of waiting Dev A doesn't have
attitude to work on his patch anymore and he is totally pissed of by
trying to explain that we really need to move forward. In the result
we will lost (maybe good maybe wrong patch), contributing developer
and onlyone who wins are those who a priori hates any change.

Truly I haven't seen any discussion which had more than 10mails where
clear consensus was made. Thats not going to happen.

Then you are doing it wrong. In FreeBSD we have them all the time. I've seen them in NetBSD land too, so clearly, you aren't paying attention.

Warner



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