Re: Discussing issues

[Mark Vojkovich <mvojkovi@XFree86.Org>]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 15, 2003 at 12:30:12AM -0400, Mark Vojkovich wrote: 
> >    What's the matter with defining "large enough" to be "has made
> > significant contributions over many years"?  That sounds like as
> > good a metric as any, perhaps better than all others.  Though I can
> > pretty much guarantee you that by that definition the vote would
> > leave pretty much all of the current board and core intact. 
> > 
> > 
> >    This appears to disturb some people.  Why is that?  And what
> > justification do you have that this is not the best way for things
> > to be - with the people who have contributed the most having the
> > most say?  
> > 
> 
> The way I would justify any decision for how to draw these lines would
> be to look at whether it was working in other projects, whether it was
> working in XFree86, and for areas where it isn't working, I'd try to
> understand specific reasons why not.
>
> When I say "working" I mean in terms of results. One metric is how
> efficiently the technical aspects of the project are moving; are all
> submodules covered; is there steady progress; do bugs/patches get
> handled in a timely fashion. Another metric is whether the project is
> able to handle personality conflicts or issues such as company
> involvement without creating technical problems or endless
> distraction. Does the organization have confidence that it is fair,
> and that a company can't override the fairness? Another metric is
> whether non-code contributors such as docs, i18n, bugzilla triagers,
> web site maintainers, etc. are effectively used. Another is ability to
> make and execute shared decisions such as releases. A key
> XFree86-specific metric for me is whether it's driving much-needed new
> library APIs and extensions in a convincing fashion, as that's my pet
> agenda. And so on, you can think of lots of stuff, much of it has been
> brought up. XFree86 is good on some metrics and bad on others.

   While I hope you don't mean it as such, this does sound like
you expecting XFree86 to take up your agenda and then you being
disappointed that it didn't happen.

   You do agree that people don't have a right to expect XFree86
to do that don't you?  If so, then why is it a key metric for
you that they do?

   Kendall doesn't seem to see it, but I see alot of this happening -
people with expectations that XFree86 should be taking up their
agendas and having a bad opinion of the project when it doesn't.
I've even detected the desire to put a goverance in place that
they think will be able to force the XFree86 project to do that.
Anytime people start talking about XFree86's obligation to serve
the community, they seem to be talking about this.

> 
> To me the key point about a working project is that it's scalable.
> Scalable means you are set up to take advantage of the efforts of
> hundreds of people, with many different interests, talents,
> personalities, and motivations. While at the same time, keeping the
> ability to make shared decisions when necessary.
> 
> I'm not thinking of this in a priori moral terms, I'm just looking at
> what outputs we get for certain inputs, based on the empirical
> experience that's out there.
> 
> One random thought: so far XFree86 core team members have only really
> mentioned the Linux kernel as an example of how other projects
> work. I'd caution you that the kernel is a huge anomaly, it's the
> freak in the list. And despite being a poster child, the kernel does
> poorly on some of the metrics I listed, compared to other projects.
> 

   I think we like the kernel because it's the example that best
fits the philosophy of its largest contributors.  


				Mark.

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