On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 09:57:20AM +0200, Frank K?ster wrote: > Been there, done that. Came to the conclusion that the proposed (now > accepted) change to the SC had no effect on the release of sarge. > > This was evidently wrong, and one reason for this is that some people, > including you, thought differently about this. If you don't think it should have any effect on the release of sarge, then you should make that case to the technical committee. The issue really isn't what I think; pretending that it is isn't going to do you any good. > You have more influence on this than I have (and that's pretty > good). No, I quite specifically don't: release policy wrt the social contract is quite specifically within the purview of the technical committee. You've got the exact same right and ability to convince them of the correct course of action here as I do. As far as working out what the social contract should say, you've got the exact same privileges there too. > Therefore I would appreciate very much to hear from *you* what > you think about the consequences of the proposed changes. I'm sorry; but as I've said repeatedly I'm not willing to take the blame for this situation, which is another way of saying I'm not taking responsibility for creating it or working out what to do about it. It's not one I would have chosen, and it's not one that I did choose. But it is one the project has chosen. If you don't think my response was right, warranted, or obvious then you should be convincing the technical committee that some other course of action is better, possible and reasonable. If you don't think there's any other course of action that's satisfactory, you should think through what that implies about how you participate in the project; not demand someone else cover for your own lack of competence. > It doesn't > help me at all to "try thinking for myself" if I come up with the > conclusion that some vote will allow this and that, and later find out > that our Release Manager has a different opinion. Sure it does: you convince the release manager that you're right, and you're done. If you're not right all the time, then you need to get some practice about making sure you're not wrong, and that when you are wrong you minimise the consequences. I'm not willing to spend my time in the project focussing on every GR that comes up to the exclusion of other things that I think are more interesting or worthwhile; it's proven to be both boring and completely unrewarding. If the rest of the project can't make good decisions without my doing that, then there's an easy solution: get rid of the whole GR process and make me supreme dictator for life. With great power comes great responsibility: GRs give you the power to shape the project as you will, so you need to exercise that power with the appropriate restraint. Relying on authority figures rather than developing your own judgement is not the way to do that effectively. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> Don't assume I speak for anyone but myself. GPG signed mail preferred. ``Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.''
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