EPEL Leadership (Was: Re: June stable push ?)

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 12.06.2009 15:47, Jeff Sheltren wrote:
> On Jun 12, 2009, at 5:00 AM, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> [...]
> Agreed, the leadership has gone stagnant lately.  Partly due to  
> conflicting schedules, and I think partly due to lack of interest:   
> "things are working good enough".  There have been various grumblings  
> of things to do, but not too much has come from it.  I think that EPEL  
> is a side project for most, if not all, of the steering committee, and  
> without at least one dedicated leader, we've all gotten distracted by  
> other things.

Is "good enough" really a adequate description if the stable pushes are
not done for two month in a row and nobody cares for something like 40
days? I'd say the answer is "no". "It's working somehow" might be the
better description, but that's IMHO still bad for a project the size of
EPEL that has a fame and users to lose.

EPEL Steering to me feels a bit like parents that don't care at all what
their child (e.g the project as a whole) is doing the whole day. With a
lot of luck the child will make its way through life somehow, but
chances are way bigger that the children sooner or later don't go to
school and do bad things.

>> IMHO it's time for the steering committee to say "Sorry, we screwed  
>> up,
>> we all step down; the last thing we do it to make sure a new steering
>> committee is formed somehow"
> 
> I would be glad to step down if I thought it were the best thing to  
> do, but I don't think that it is.  We have trouble even getting more  
> than one or two non-steering committee members to the meetings (when  
> we do have them!). 

IRC and phone meeting IMHO hang way to high. From my experience a lot of
things can easier and better get solved in time-independent ways on the
list, if people just want to and as long as there is one driver that
brings the issue forward.

> What makes you think that we could find enough  
> interested/motivated people to replace the entire committee? 

Ohh, I didn't say the entire committee needs to be replaced. I guess one
active new member can make a whole lot of a difference if he makes sure
things move.

> I'm  
> under the impression that EPEL is popular with end users but there  
> aren't many in the user pool who are willing or able to step up and  
> help make EPEL better.

Maybe, but afaics often good people emerge if you give them the chance
to get involved properly.

>> (¹) Yes, I did prepare a few stable pushes over the past few months to
>> help out, but I mentioned a few times already that I didn't really  
>> want
>> to do them anymore; looking back at it I should have made it more  
>> clear
>> to prevent the current situation; sorry for that;
> I don't think any of this is your fault...

I tend to disagree. I should have yelled earlier.

CU
knurd