Re: Maintainer policy for GDB

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu dot org>]

> Cc: David Carlton <David.Carlton@sun.com>
> From: David Carlton <david.carlton@sun.com>
> Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 16:50:41 -0800
> 
> > How can I shape the documentation according to my ideas if I don't
> > have the final say?
> 
> By acting exactly the way you do now.  Anybody paying attention to GDB
> development knows that you're a very fast and responsive reviewer

But you see, this ``fast response'' argument works both ways: if I'm a
fast reviewer, why should it matter that only I can approve
documentation changes--a few hours of delay cannot possibly hurt
anyone or anything.  AFAIK and IIRC, Daniel suggested the change we
are discussing precisely _because_ of too slow response time of some
responsible maintainers, which was hurting development pace and
driving away contributors and potential maintainers.

So let's take my fast response time out of the equation.  Let's
imagine that it takes me two or three weeks to review a patch.  Or
let's imagine that I'm ill, or traveling, or otherwise incommunicado
from time to time.  What would be your answer to my question then?

> that your suggestions are always well-considered and almost always an
> improvement (no criticism implied, we're all fallible), and that in
> situations where there's a disagreement, you're willing to discuss the
> issue in a reasonable fashion.
> 
> So I'm pretty sure that people would continue to run documentation
> patches by you in the new system.  They probably won't do it quite as
> consistently as they do now, but they'll do it most of the time,
> especially the core GDB developers.
> 
> And (correct me if I'm wrong), I bet that, even in situations where
> they don't run patches by you in advance, you'll still comment on
> those patches when they're committed.  And in those situations, I
> bet most of the time people will make the corrections you suggest.

In other words (and sorry for over-simplification), you ask me to
assume that everybody else is nice and reasonable, and that, more
often than not, I will succeed in talking them into accepting my
opinions.  Unfortunately, my experience is that this doesn't exactly
work that way.  In fact, we invented the maintenance rules and we are
now rethinking them _precisely_ because the assumption that everyone
is always nice and reasonable doesn't seem to work too well.

My reservations about responsibilities without an authority is not
theoretical, nor does it come out of an experience with a single
individual.  (Although IMHO we shouldn't disregard Andrew's case too
quickly, because Andrew didn't quite steal his powers: he _earned_
them through many years of contributions and fruitful cooperation.
I think there's a lesson to be learned here.)

But even if we forget about that single individual, I can still show
examples of arguments, even disputes, with other maintainers over
issues where belief and personal attitudes prevailed over objective
reasoning, and we ended up in disagreement.  In those cases, where I
had powers to veto a change, I could have things my way, but where I
didn't, things got done against my opinions.

So these things can and did happen, and I don't think it's fair to ask
someone to take responsibility for some part of GDB and at the same
time to tell them they should expect to fight with others who have
write access and who just happen to respond faster to RFAs.

> I wanted to respond to your message, because I appreciate your
> taking my question seriously.

It was a very good question, so thanks for asking it.  I hope our
exchange will help us find reasonable ways to overcome the
difficulties.