Re: On cooperative work [Was: Re: newbus' ivar's limitation..]

Hi,

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Attilio Rao <attilio_at_freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 5:32 PM, Arnaud Lacombe <lacombar_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 4:14 PM, Attilio Rao <attilio_at_freebsd.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> You don't want to work cooperatively.
>>>
>> Why is it that mbuf's refactoring consultation is being held in
>> internal, private, committers-and-invite-only-restricted meeting at
>> BSDCan ?
>>
>> Why is it that so much review and discussion on changes are held privately ?
>
> Arnaud,
> belive me, to date I don't recall a single major technical decision
> that has been settled exclusively in private (not subjected to peer
> review) and in particular in person (e-mail help you focus on a lot of
> different details that you may not have under control when talking to
> people, etc).
>
Whose call is it to declare something worth public discussion ? No one.

Every time I see a "Suggested by:", "Submitted by:", "Reported by:",
and especially "Approved by:", there should to be a public reference
of the mentioned communication.

> Sometimes it is useful that a limited number of developers is involved
> in initial brainstorming of some works,
>
Never.

> but after this period
> constructive people usually ask for peer review publishing their plans
> on the mailing lists or other media.
>
Again, never. By doing so, you merely put the community in a situation
where, well, "We, committers, have come with this, you can either
accept or STFU, but no major changes will be made because we decided
so."

The callout-ng conference at BSDCan was just beautiful, it was basically:

Speaker: "we will do this"
Audience: "how about this situation ? What you will do will not work."
Speaker: "thank you for listening, end of the conference"

It was beautiful to witness.

> If you don't see any public further discussion this may be meaning:
> a) the BSDCan meetings have been fruitless and there is no precise
> plan/roadmap/etc.
>
so not only you make it private, but it shamelessly failed...

> b) there is still not consensus on details
>
Then the discussion should stop, public records are kept for reference
in the future. There is no problem with this.

> and you can always publically asked on what was decided and what not.
> Just send a mail to interested recipients and CC any FreeBSD mailing
> list.
>
This is not the way "openness" should be about.

 - Arnaud

> Attilio
>
>
> --
> Peace can only be achieved by understanding - A. Einstein