Re: Replace the TC power to depose maintainers [and 1 more messages]

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Russ Allbery writes ("Re: Replace the TC power to depose maintainers [and 1 more messages]"):
> Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> > The TC has never desposed an existing maintainer, and very rarely even
> > overturned an individual decision.
> 
> There is a widespread perception that doing this would frequently cause
> that maintainer to leave Debian.  This is quite the mental hurdle to
> overcome,

But what about the contributors who leave Debian because their work is
stymied ?  To worry too much that the maintainer will quit Debian is
neither fair nor effective.

It is not fair because worrying more about the emotions of the
existing maintainer, than the other contributors, is privileging the
emotions of the powerful over those of the weak.  That is unjust.

It is not effective because it amounts to making life more comfortable
for those who block others, even in the face of advice and criticism.
Conversely we discourage for those who face problems trying to get
work done, and discourage those who do not like to fight (and will go
away and do something else).

So this approach is implicitly selecting contributors for
stubbornness, aggression and even selfishness.

> I think we all agree that this is a bad situation to be in, and we
> should not block other active maintainers because we're afraid that
> we'll demotivate someone who isn't doing a great job anyway.  In
> other words, I don't think anyone views the above situation as a
> *feature*.  However, it's still psychologically difficult,

Is there a way we can reframe this so that it is about empowering
those who are constructive but powerless, rather than about protecting
the feelings of the powerful ?

> and I don't think it becomes less difficult by ramping up the
> confrontationalness

I certainly don't think "ramping up the confrontationalness" is what I
am trying to do.

Of course by using this case as an example, that's what I'm doing to
this specific case.  But the situation of "difficult" maintainers is
hardly unusual.  I think there is massive suppressed demand for an
effective way to handle difficult maintainers.  We desperately need a
more effective approach.


> I think this is partly what Zack is getting at.  If we want to make
> the situation less fraught, and make changing maintainers or
> allowing other people to upload packages a less difficult step to
> make, formalizing this as a remedy in hard cases is less effective
> as just undermining the concept of maintainership *in general*.

I am really scared that without some idea of ownership we will be
playing core wars in the archive.  What rules do you propose to
replace maintainership with to prevent this ?

One thing that we /have/ done is made it much easier to transfer
maintainership away from a maintainer who is not realy bothered.
(It's still arguably not easy enough.)

The result is that the remaining cases are _by definition_ the ones
where the maintainer is bothered, and wants to defend their position.

> In other words, I completely agree with you on the problem, but I feel
> like you're tackling it from the wrong end, since hard cases make bad law.

You're saying that _any_ cases of dispute make bad law. 

I think your "hard cases" analogy is competely inapposite, actually.
We're not really talking about making caselaw.


I think the reason there are no "easy" cases before the TC is because
the TC is so ineffective and so unlikely to be useful, that you have
to be *really desperate* or *really frustrated* to invoke the TC.

If the TC were swift and decisive, it would be a much more normal
thing.  More people would have experience that it wasn't the end of
the world to have to have your argument refereed by someone.


If we really follow through on this "hard cases make bad law"
position, it leads to a conclusion that the TC can never work and
should be abolished and replaced with something entirely different.


I take a different view.  We already have ways of handling
maintainership that work well when the maintainer is not too stubborn
or possessive.

We just need a mechanism for dealing with the difficult cases.  That
mechanism is supposed to be the TC, which is supposed to decide cases
on the merits.

Ian.


-- 
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