Re: Delegation for the Release Team
Lucas Nussbaum writes ("Re: Delegation for the Release Team"):
> On 06/01/14 at 12:59 +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > Given Lucas's attitude, I would like to suggest to the release team
> > that they file a bug against the the Developers' Reference, containing
> > a proposed change explicitly authorising the release team to vary the
> > NMU rules. That ought to satisfy Lucas's idea of the proper process
> > and put us back to the status quo ante.
>
> Do you see a problem with the current NMU recommended practices, that
> you would like to fix? [...]
Well, Neil raised the question of bug squashing parties. They aren't
mentioned in the dev ref.
Also, the release team have historically occasionally put out
announcements that NMU rules would be relaxed for other reasons, such
as for release goals.
So I think the current dev ref text doesn't reflect our recent
practice.
> I'm asking because the current ones have been
> defined 2.5 years ago, and I don't remember much discussion about them
> since then. Maybe we could save everybody's time, and have that
> discussion about who is allowed to change them when there's a change
> that someone wants to do.
Perhaps it's just that everyone had thought that the release team's
announcements are sufficient to make exceptions to the rules in the
dev ref. It may be that that was the wrong process, and that power
wasn't really in the hands of the release team.
But AFAIAA pretty much everyone has gone along with it all this time
and deferred to release team decisions without questioning the basis
of their authority (that question having only arisen as a side-effect
of the team's DPL delegation). That suggests that the release team
have done well at making these decisions and should continue to do so.
In which case the right fix is to regularise the basis for their
decisionmaking.
> Also, I'm surprised that you didn't comment on the last part of my mail.
(Regarding the TC.) Well, of course I'm on the TC and the TC has the
power to rule on disputes about the dev ref. But right now I don't
see such a dispute.
I'm hoping that if Neil files a bug along the lines I suggested, the
dev ref maintainers would make the change as requested. That would
solve the problem completely and everyone would be happy, right ?
Perhaps there are people who don't want decisions on BSPs, release
goal NMU criteria, etc., to be made by the release team. But I think
anyone with that opinion should say who should make those decisions
instead.
Ian.
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