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Re: Next Meeting: Wednesday, May 16th 19:00 UTC (today) - Currently no topics



Wouter Verhelst writes ("Re: Next Meeting: Wednesday, May 16th 19:00 UTC (today) - Currently no  topics"):
> On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 08:59:35PM +0200, Margarita Manterola wrote:
> > As David mentioned in IRC and I mentioned in person to the people in
> > Hamburg, it is a bit worrying to not have anything to discuss,
> 
> Why is it worrying?
> 
> The TC not having things to discuss means everyone in Debian is getting
> along nicely. That's great! :-)
> 
> (well, okay, that's the theory)

Sadly I think it is more likely that people in Debian have given up
trying to use the TC to resolve any differences of opinion they may
have.

debian-devel has become the most obvious escalation route.  (Along
with attempts to resolve disputes in one side or the other's favour
through chnages to policy and/or lintian.)  And, indeed, recently
no-one there diagreed when I wrote this in a thread about autopkgtest
regressions blocking testing migration:

   > a regression in a reverse dependency can come due to one of the
   > following reasons (of course not complete):
   ...

   I think you need more information about process and authority, and
   what to do if the maintainers disagree, or if one or the other does
   not respond.  We don't have a good formal mechanism for resolving
   disagreements, and our NMU rules are restrictive and opaque, so this
   is not so easy.

And later in the same mail I therefore proposed this wording, which
was adopted:

     If you find that you are not able to agree between you about the
     right next steps, bug severities, etc., please try to find a neutral
     third party to help you mediate and/or provide a third opinion.
     Failing that your best bet is probably to post to debian-devel.

Of course in cases of serious disagreement, using a mailing list turns
into a war of attrition.  Luckily most of our contributors have
spotted this failure mode and avoided it.

Instead, when the maintainers of a package, or a core team, dig their
heels in about something we care about, and block our work or break
things we are relying on, we shrug our shoulders and go and do
something else with our life.  Perhaps something not related to
Debian.

I think that a substantial proportion of the project even think that
this is how things should work.  But it does not mean that everyone is
happy.

Regretfully,
Ian.


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