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

[Matthew Story]

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 1:05 PM, Arnaud Lacombe <lacombar at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

I attended the developer summit, and attended the mbuf working group ...
I'm also not a committer.  My ASCII transcription of the results of the
white-board session were posted to freebsd-arch in june, the post is
available for viewing here:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arch/2012-June/012629.html

When the information is readily available (as it is in this case), there is
a clear case of confusing one's inability to engage the entirety of FreeBSD
with "openness".  If you are concerned about the mbuf decisions, you should
be subscribed to (and reading) the arch list.


>  - Arnaud
>
> > Attilio
> >
> >
> > --
> > Peace can only be achieved by understanding - A. Einstein
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-- 
regards,
matt