Cees de Groot <cg at cdegroot.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 18:15:45 -0400, Lex Spoon <lex at cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
> > They can say they are our commanders all they like, but it will never  
> > make it so.
> >
> That's up the community to decide, and your statement represents your  
> opinion. Whether the community agrees with you remains to be seen, but I  
> do take (slight) offence that us sticking our necks out because we think  
> it is necessary is met with such harsh words as yours. We're not doing  
> this because we're power-hungry or something, but because we analyzed  
> things and thought it was necessary.


I have already been putting great effort into community organization,
especially over the last 7-8 months.  I have brought up issues, steered
discusisons towards workable concensus, and even posted code and offered
servers using my own resources.  Please drop these claims that you are
noble for shouldering the burden of dirty organizational work.  You are
not the only ones contributing on those lines, and it is rather rude to
disregard what other people are doing.  To be painfully honest, half of
my frustration with the "new leadership" proposal is that there are
already a lot of people helping on these issues, and now a subset have
declared themselves as the ones that count.

Aside from that, let me describe some specific background which makes me
especially wary of the "new leadership" proposal.

First, the package universes work I have put time into, is the *only*
working solution we have to a real problem: generating stable sets of
packages.  I spent extensive time trying to convince powers that be to
modify our infrastructure to use this approach.  When that failed, I
coded it up myself and have offered the service using my own resources. 
Despite this effort, the response has consistently been that universes
is attacking someone's turf.  On the mailing list, I get posts along the
lines of "how can you do this" and "how can you cause this
fragmentation".  On the Swiki it is worse.  For days, every time I
posted a mention of universes, someone in the .ch domain edited the page
to put a defamotory comment beside it.  One of the defamations went so
far as to dismiss the project by saying "universes has not been adopted
by SqueakMap".  This is a telling statement -- someone out there in .ch,
sincerely believes that SqueakMap approval is *already* the measure of
legitimacy in Squeak.

Don't dismiss this as someone whining about their superior solution
being rejected to an inferior one.  This is the *only* working solution
that we have.  Further, the problem it solves is one that is widely
agreed to be a to be one of the most important community issues we have.
 It's a stated goal of the "new leadership".  It's a problem so hard,
many have claimed it can't be solved at all.  Do we want the kind of
leadership that works hard to marginalize such an effort?

As further background, I have run into the same sort of problems with
the gatekeepers of the Unix port of Squeak.  I contribute bug fixes --
again, obvious bug fixes, like Squeak failing to start on SunRay
machines -- but they are passed over and left to sit on a separate
website literally for years.  This state has gone on for about 7 years
now, and almost the only time I have seen my bugfixes go in, is when
that group was threatened with losing status as the "official" Unix port
of Squeak.

In both cases, I freely accept that not everyone will like the things I
suggest.  I think we should use Jam instead of make, but if you don't
agree, so be it.  I think we should use registries instead of
allSubclasses, but if everyone is set on it, let's do it and do it
carefully.  What I don't accept, is that clear solutions to definite
problems are getting dropped on the floor.  There's no excuse for that.


We should try to remove gate keepers, not add more of them.  In my
experience, they kick out good things way too often.  The community is
hurt, when gate keepers reject the only solution to a real problem, or
when we have buggy VM downloads even though the fixes have been posted? 
The reason for these things are that the gatekeepers, despite their good
intentions, are not accountable and are not chosen by the community. 
It's just human nature that people in power will deal with their own
problems, if they do not have any kind of reminder about the effects on
the general population they are serving.  I dislike this rush to create
even more gate keepers.  we should instead work on setting up proper
processes so that they have feedback and are accountable.



So far, I see no problems with deciding things on squeak-dev.  When
there is a clear organizational need, and when there actually are
proposals, we do reach concensus over time.  I do not see what a
leadership body can do to improve this situation.  What we need are more
good ideas.  Once people post good ideas to group problems, they tend to
get adopted just fine.

If I am wrong, then please point out specific examples of where the
mailing list has stalemated.  Don't be flippant -- I want to see a case
where we actually have a problem and multiple proposals, but that the
list could still not agree on a way to move forward.  Harvesting, for
example, is a problem where there aren't any good proposals at all. 
Packaging technical details, are a problem where progress has been made
and where, in my analysis, the discussions seem to be progressing just
fine.  With namespaces, I think tabling the issue has been a good idea.


Let me reemphasize that I am sure everyone is trying to help. 
Additionally, I recognize the frustration some people are feeling, even
if I do not share in it.  All I object to is the way this is being done.
 I don't think we should hand pick this group as our "new leaders".

Could you consider redefining yourselves less abbrasively?  If you acted
as an "advisory steering committee", then I am sure most of your
proposals will still sail through because you are such insightful
people.  Some will not -- but come on, criticism is a good thing.

Yes, having the burden of convincing the crowd that your ideas are
sound, will slow things down.  However, it will make the group a much
more pleasant place if there is a little less "i am your leader, here is
the way".  

Eventually we would like to have things move faster, but the way to do
it is to form an election process like in Debian.  That should be doable
in 6-12 months I would think, should enough people put in the energy to
work out the details and sell it to the general community.  We need this
structure anyway, just so that we have a voice to speak with.  But what
is the rush?  I don't understand this feeling of crisis, that we cannot
put in 6-12 months and do it in a non-abbrasive way.




Lex