Re: Technical committee resolution
On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:05:02 +1000, Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> said:
> On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 08:25:40AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:37:46 +1000, Anthony Towns said:
>> > On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 06:54:50PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
>> >> And, just to make things personal, I submit that one of the
>> >> problems is AJ.
>> > Because, of course, making things personal is definitely what the
>> > technical committee is all about, and just generally a brilliant
>> > approach to solving problems.
>> And yet, further down, you respond in kind.[0]
> Responding in kind to a personal attack, who would ever have thought?
> Do you agree that making things personal is a bad thing? If so, why
> aren't you bothered by the concept of only ever removing the worst
> person on the committee to replace them with someone better -- and in
> particular the rather personal analysis that's required to work out
> who's the worst person on the committee?
Because I do not see any logical means of reconciling term of
service with how useful the persons contribution is to the project.
And I think we should be guided by utility to the project as he
criteria, and try to determine that, to the best of our bility to do
so, trying as hard as we can to avoid the kind of personal bias both
you and Ian are currently displaying.
Indeed, this display does neither one of you any credit.
>> > I don't think the committee would be worse off without you; and I
>> > find it fundamentally disturbing that any of the founding members
>> > are still members ten years later. The same's true of Manoj (though
>> > I'm not sure if he joined when the committee was formed, or shortly
>> > after that). Even ftpmaster has changed significantly more than
>> > that over the same time period, for example.
>> This I don't understand. This seems like a blend of appeal to
>> novelty and a personal vendetta;
> It's never a good idea to make assumptions about things you don't
> understand, especially if the only things you can think of are
> "personal vendetta".
Aha. Rather than talking to my aruments, you indicate I just
don't understand the mighty intellect of the AJT.
Not sure this is worthy of any further response.
> Any group that relies on volunteers needs to accept they're going to
> generally have to work with the people who've got time, which is very
> rarely the best people for the job. If you don't have structures in
> place to ensure that you can keep moving with a less than ideal set of
> people, you're screwed.
We do. Think of Sven. And I would much rather not get rid of
you, or Ian, despite your recent sub optimal behaviour.
>> > The reason I didn't raise this last year was because the only
>> > reasonable path to removing members seems to me to be oldest first,
>> > and I was pretty sure you'd take that personally; given you're
>> > decision to hijack dpkg over coding style preferences, I find I'm
>> > not so bothered by what you think anymore.
>> Actually, basing removal on term of service seems to be the least
>> logical of the replacement strategies; since it care anught for
>> performance, or value of the contribution,
> That's a feature, not a bug: it avoids making removing someone from
> the ctte have to be viewed as a personal attack.
There are any of a number of mostly objective critera which can
be put into play without throwing people out based on a mechanism
whose sole benefit seems to be deterministic behaviour.
I kinda doubt that basing it on participation would seem like an
attack, and given that I believe, as others do, that the lack of
activity of the ctte, and other problems with it, stem mostly from
members lacking time, or moving on and becoming MIA (think of the
ppeople who left the ctte about the time you joined, and the reasons
they gave).
> Relying on someone voluntarily removing themselves also avoids that,
> but comes at the cost of putting their personal opinion about their
> contribution above that of the project.
Strawman.
> Being invited to be a member of the ctte should be a result of
> exceptional service to the project.
No. Absolutely not. membershipt on the ctte is not a reward. It
is not a candy being passed around for being the star pupil.
Mmebership ought to be offered to individuals who have
demonstrated superior technical judgement, nd the ability to see the
big picture, and guide the project through thorny technical issues.
> And for additional members, it is. But for continuing members, it's
> simply a result of having been there the previous year and not having
> been controversial enough to inspire someone else on the ctte to
> propose a vote for your removal.
Sounds silly.
You remove people if they are missing. You remove people for
repetitive, unsound judgement; but determining the later is tricky. A
ctte vote is a sound mechanism, or a GR; akind of vote of no
confidence.
I think we can get the ctte moving forward as long as we have 8
active people of sound judgement.
Far better than arbirary churn, in my opinion.
manoj
--
Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on the
dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam dancing.
-- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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