Summary of the 2007-04-17 Packaging Committee meeting

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Josh Boyer schrieb:
> On Wed, 2007-04-18 at 10:44 -0500, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
>>>>>>> "TL" == Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info> writes:
>> TL> But reading the above I'm starting myself to wonder: does FESCo
>> TL> really want and have to look at such issue like adjusting
>> TL> references to fedora-extras-list?
>> Hey, whatever, I'm just following the rules.

Tibbs, I didn't mean to criticize your work. Your FPC reports are quite
good and I really appreciate them a lot. Thanks for your work.

> Fortunately, our rules are more like guidelines.  Garr!

Well, the only written rules/guidelines that I'm aware off are these:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Development/Schedule

"A representative from the packaging committee will send a report after
each committee meeting to fedora-maintainers at redhat.com for public
discussion. In order to give ample discussion time, this report should
be sent no less than 24 hours before the next FESCo meeting; if the
report is late, the veto period will be extended by one additional FESCo
meeting. FESCo may also extend the veto period if there is still ongoing
discussion."

There afaics isn't any mention of FESCo wanting to ACK each and
everything. FESCo just wants to have a *chance* to veto stuff afaics --
and to be able to do that it of course needs to be aware of any major
decisions the FPC did, thus there need to be public reports somewhere
and some time for FESCo-members to yell. Same for EPEL btw (and EPEL is
the reasons why I'm bringing this up in case anyone wonders).

The veto period according to the above para can be quite long -- for
EPEL (that meets 24 hours before FESCo) it's probably 8 days normally.
Maybe that should be adjusted to make sure FPC, EPEL and other projects
can move on in a timely manner without fearing that FESCo vetos stuff.

So in other words to get the whole stuff sorted out we might want a
guideline like this to make everyone happy:

----

Groups like EPEL or Fedora Packaging Committee have to send weekly
reports of their important doings, meetings and the major decisions that
were made to FESCo as well as a public mailing list for discussion. If
two FESCo members don't like a particular decisions then they should say
so on the list in less than three working days after the report got send
and the decision is put on hold until the next FESCo meeting.
The particular group at that point can decide to revisit the decision on
it's own; if that doesn't happen FESCo will discuss the issue in its
next meeting and can veto it for real if a majority of FESCo members
agree to veto it in that meeting. A vetoed issue gets send back to the
responsible committee with a suggestion from FESCo what should be done
differently.

----

Does that direction sound sane?

It should give groups like EPEL and FPC room to act on their own without
having to get FESCo involved for each and every detail or without
waiting for FESCo days before it ratifies a decision.

On the other hand it gives FESCo members a chance to jump in if they
don't like a particular decision.

And yes, writing those reports and summaries is a lot of work and might
feels like wasted overhead -- but groups like FPC or EPEL imho should
invest that time anyway, to make everyone (FESCo, Fedora News, Board,
general public, ...) a chance to know what's going on in their area,
without forcing people to follow the details of each flamewar ^w discussion.

> Thanks for pointing it out, but unless someone jumps up and down
> screaming, I think we're good with this change and it doesn't need an
> ACK.
> 
> /me wonders how many people will get the movie reference.

/me does not

CU
thl