proposal: new guidelines for rule makers

Nigel Jones dev at nigelj.com
Sun Jun 3 04:07:07 UTC 2007


Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-06-03 at 02:30 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>> Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>>> Hans de Goede wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> <humor, with a serious undertone>
>>>>
>>>> Since those making packaging guidelines and other rules seem to be out 
>>>> of touch with the workfloor these days I would like to propose the 
>>>> following guideline for rulemakers:
>>>>
>>>> Those making guidelines / rules within the Fedora project must 
>>>> actively maintain atleast 30 packages.
>>>>
>>>> Rationale: How can one make rules if one isn't involved in that which 
>>>> is regulated oneself?
>>>>
>>>> </humor>
>>> Packaging guidelines also cover licensing details which isn't connected 
>>> to workflow.  There are several other policies within the guidelines 
>>> which involve some amount of politics (kernel modules anyone?). This 
>>> rule would mean that everybody who proposes any drafts, folks in the 
>>> packaging committee and FESCo would have to maintain 30 packages.
>>>
>> Yes it would, and that would be a good thing! Let the people building the 
>> distro decide how it is build! As for licensing issues, since RH is paying 
>> mosts of the bills at the end RH decided what is okay licensing wise, and to me 
>> they have earned that right, because "paying the bills" == "building the distro"
> 
> I don't want to misinterpret what you're saying here, so I'll ask you
> straight out.
> 
> Are you suggesting that because I do not maintain 30 packages I am
> unqualified to be a member of FESCo?
> 
> Should I go out and submit about 20 more packages that I'll never use
> myself just to inflate my statistics and make myself eligible?
> 
I hope you wouldn't have to as well!

My point of view is FESco should be comprised of people from all parts
of the Fedora community.

I think myself and the 90% of people listed in Koji with less than 30
packages would hate to see the 1/8th of the community that have more
running FESco.

To have a community you have to have people from all types of lives, the
rich ones, the middle class ones, and the poor ones (for this analogy
think of packages as a currency), if you have the community run by a set
of people comprising of the 'elitist rich people' then you loose the
'poor people' and possibly some of the 'middle class people'.  If you
have the community run by the poor people, the 'rich people' loose
interest and basically kill off the community once again.  For a
community to work properly we need people from all 'social statuses'.

Now for some figures (these are rough, I'm too lazy to count exactly):
~40-45 packagers owning 30+ SRPMS (10.5%)
~100 packagers owning 10-29 SRPMS (25%)
~70 packagers owning 5-9 SRPMS (17%)
~190 packagers owning 1-4 SRPMS (46%)
~15-20 packagers owning 0 SRPMS (0.5%)
(There is 1% missing over the general spread due to rounding and estimates)

As one of the people in the 5-9 SRPMS bracket, I'm happy with the
current changes, *BUT* I'm looking forward to when the tools are united
under 'packagedb' which I hope will happen.  I wish some changes didn't
happen just before the release, but the overall effect seems good so far.

N.J.




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