List purpose (was Re: No more right click terminal)

[Miloslav Trmac]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 06:10:37PM +0200, Daniel Roesen wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 14, 2005 at 03:07:38PM +0200, Miloslav Trmac wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 14, 2005 at 08:36:50AM -0400, Dimi Paun wrote:
> > > Very smart. It seems that _anything_ is pointless to discuss here.
> > Anything except development of Fedora.
> Discussing and making decisions is INTEGRAL to the development process.
Not when there are 20 times more people attempting to make decisions than
people writing code.  And the decision all the people want overturned
is not a Fedora decision.

> It's what actually should stand BEFORE hacking around randomly.
That's what happened with GNOME 2.0.  If you don't like what they
decided to design, that's something different from thinking they
are designing it wrong.

> > Hijacking what is supposed to be a development list is not
> > counterproductive?
> It's not hijacking. It's using the list for what it's there.
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list :
"Development discussions related to Fedora Core".
Where does that say "user's feedback"?

> If you
> think otherwise, please point to a more appropriate list.
I don't think there was _supposed_ to be a list for that.  There
is bugzilla (and no, spamming bugzilla with 100 duplicates to
"make a difference" is not appropriate.).

> And actually
> one where the Red Hat folks who actually make all the decisions really
> take part in.
I'm employed part-time and I'm reading fedora-{test,devel}-list in my
free time.  If I were reading this list on company time, I wouldn't actually
_get anything done, at all_.  Don't hold your breath waiting for such a list.
(*)

> > > As I understand it, the entire point of having a _community_ distro like
> > > Fedora is to channel all this customer feedback into a better product.
> > Patches are the preferred form of feedback.
> Nonsense.
> 
> I won't waste hours on writing a patch that gets just ignored.
There's nothing wrong about asking a package maintainer whether
a patch adding $feature has a chance to be accepted.

> All else gets decided by Red Hat or "upstream" anyway
> (and "upstream" can be overridden by Red Hat again if they like... if
> RED HAT likes, not the community).
Maybe it's time to clarify who "the community" is.

Very roughly, I interpret "the community" as "fedora-maintainers + people
who should be there" (e.g. I don't know whether the documentation or
translation team members are on the list).  The community of people who
_do_ things in Fedora.

> > I'd like everyone here to take a few minutes and read recent
> > fedora-extras-list or fedora-maintainers-readonly archives.
> > That's what development discussions look like, and not
> > what one can see on this list.
> 
> -extras isn't Core, and we discuss here problems with Core.
-extras has almost the same number of (source) packages and (very roughly)
the same number of developers as Core.  So what makes it OK to
post off-topic messages to fedora-devel-list?

> -readonly is: <drumroll> READ ONLY </drumroll>.
See (*).  If it were not read only, many "folks who actually make all
the decisions" would unsubscribe to be able to get work done.

There _was_ no fedora-maintainers when the first lists were created.

<em>fedora-maintainers is what fedora-devel-list was supposed to be.</em>
	Mirek