Re: New MI maintainer

Daniel Jacobowitz writes:
 > I'm glad to announce that GDB finally has an official
MI maintainer
 > again: Vladimir Prus.
 > 
 > -- 
 > Daniel Jacobowitz
 > CodeSourcery

I must say I'm surprised by this appointment for several
reasons.  When I
offered to act as maintainer, a year or so ago, although I
had Eli's
support and other's endorsed it off-list, e.g., Alain
Magloire, my offer
was declined.

I've contributed to MI for six years now while Vladimir
started under three
years ago.  There are many people on this list who I would
say know more about
Gdb than me, but Vladimir is not one of them.  More
importantly when I pointed
out last year that his changes broke Emacs use of Gdb as it
needs the CLI, his
reply was:

    ...And probably the only way to change the situation is
to decide that MI
    is the future, and actively discourage use of CLI for
anything, to the
    degree of immediately refusing any request mentioning
CLI in relation to
    any frontend.

The process behind these decisions is not open to me but it
doesn't escape my
attention that Vladimir is now part of CodeSourcery, and
that CodeSourcery have
at least one contract (with Ericsson) to work on Eclipse
which uses GDB/MI in
its DSF plugin.  I ask myself in whose interest this
appointment is made.  It's
certainly not the GNU project or the FSF.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.n
z/~nickrob


 > 2008-02-14  Daniel Jacobowitz  <dancodesourcery.com>
 > 
 > 	* MAINTAINERS: Add Vladimir Prus as MI maintainer.
 > 
 > Index: gdb/MAINTAINERS
 >
============================================================
=======
 > RCS file: /cvs/src/src/gdb/MAINTAINERS,v
 > retrieving revision 1.388
 > diff -u -p -r1.388 MAINTAINERS
 > --- gdb/MAINTAINERS	29 Jan 2008 19:15:36 -0000	1.388
 > +++ gdb/MAINTAINERS	14 Feb 2008 16:34:14 -0000
 >  -370,6 +370,7  language support
 >    C++			Daniel Jacobowitz	dandebian.org
 >    Objective C support   Adam Fedor		fedorgnu.org
 >  shared libs		Kevin Buettner		kevinbredhat.com
 > +MI interface		Vladimir Prus		vladimircodesourcery.com
 >  
 >  documentation		Eli Zaretskii		elizgnu.org
 >    (including NEWS)

    The process behind these decisions is not open to me but
it
    doesn't escape my attention that Vladimir is now part
of
    CodeSourcery, and that CodeSourcery have at least one
contract
    (with Ericsson) to work on Eclipse which uses GDB/MI in
its DSF
    plugin.

If a company is willing to pay for work on MI, that is a
good thing.
I don't think we should treat that as something suspect.

However, it does sound like the SC should say something to
Vladimir
about the vital importance of backward compatibility and
compatibility
with other GNU packages.

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 09:18:46AM +1300, Nick Roberts
wrote:
> I must say I'm surprised by this appointment for
several reasons.  When I
> offered to act as maintainer, a year or so ago,
although I had Eli's
> support and other's endorsed it off-list, e.g., Alain
Magloire, my offer
> was declined.

Yes.  The global maintainers have been discussing the
problem of MI
maintenance for at least that long.  I was hoping to leave
this out of
the announcement, but the consensus of that group was that
you were
not a suitable choice for a GDB maintainer.  Part of the
delay was our
hope that the situation would improve.

> The process behind these decisions is not open to me
but it doesn't escape my
> attention that Vladimir is now part of CodeSourcery,
and that CodeSourcery have
> at least one contract (with Ericsson) to work on
Eclipse which uses GDB/MI in
> its DSF plugin.  I ask myself in whose interest this
appointment is made.  It's
> certainly not the GNU project or the FSF.

I expect an apology from you for this offensive statement. 
I am the
only member of the GDB steering committee working at
CodeSourcery, and
the SC is a group of GDB contributors, not some sort of sock
puppet.
The decision was made solely based on the interests of GDB
in our best
judgement.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery

Nick Roberts wrote:
> The process behind these decisions is not open to me
but it doesn't escape my
> attention that Vladimir is now part of CodeSourcery,
and that CodeSourcery have
> at least one contract (with Ericsson) to work on
Eclipse which uses GDB/MI in
> its DSF plugin.  I ask myself in whose interest this
appointment is made.  It's
> certainly not the GNU project or the FSF.
>   
One of the qualities we look for in a maintainer is the
ability to keep 
a level head, and to tone down the flames rather than
escalate when the 
situation is difficult. As we know from bitter experience,
technical 
ability and knowledge is not sufficient. Nick, this kind of
accusation 
is precisely the sort of thing that we want to keep out of
the GDB 
development process - if there were fencesitters on the
issue before 
now, do you think that your public insinuation of bad faith
and 
incompetence is going to cause them to regard you more
favorably? So 
while I don't myself expect an apology, you should think
more about your 
goals and how you are most likely to achieve them.

As for the decision process not being open, I note that
almost nobody 
volunteers to have their job performance reviews and salary
history be 
put out  in public. But if a wouldbe maintainer were to do
that, I 
suggest that the SC have the discussion about that person in
public as well.

Stan

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 05:09:27PM -0500, Christopher Faylor
wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 10:22:41PM +0200, Eli Zaretskii
wrote:
> >Sorry, but that's pure demagoguery.  "Open
Source" and "Free Software"
> >mean that the sources are available.  They don't
mean that every aspect
> >of human life is open to the public.  Even the most
open democracies
> >always have closed deliberations about certain
issues.  You cannot lead
> >a group in any significant human endeavor without a
certain distance
> >between the leadership and the rest, and without
closed deliberations
> >about some sensitive issues.
> 
> Amen.
> 
> It's interesting how often people try to tack on bigger
concerns to the
> simple concept of Free Software.  Free Software isn't
supposed to be
> solving global warming and it isn't supposed to be a
demonstration of a
> New World Order with feel-good cum ba yah.  It's just a
guarantee that
> you get the source code for the software that you're
using.
> 
> Managing any project where people are involved means
that sometimes the
> people in charge have to have frank, private
conversations.  The
> alternative, as Stan Shebs, notes is to essentially do
performance
> reviews in the open.
> 
> Some projects *do* work that way but they are hardly
bastions of
> civilized discourse.

This rhetoric annoys me. I was bringing up a sincere concern
that I
have. I suggested a more open model because I've been
wondering for 
well over 5 years why it (used to?) takes 6 months to get a
code review.

Because the time to get a review was so long, I stopped
bothering to submit
patches. I remember that I planned my rehersal dinner for
my
wedding faster than I could get a code review, and thought
that was
wierd.

I hope things are better now that Vladimar has taken his
position. If
so, I'll be joining you singing, cum ba yah.

Bob Rossi

On 22 February 2008 22:21, Bob Rossi wrote:

> This rhetoric annoys me. I was bringing up a sincere
concern that I
> have. I suggested a more open model because I've been
wondering for
> well over 5 years why it (used to?) takes 6 months to
get a code review.

  Because there are very few of us here and we all have day
jobs.  Not because
everyone's arranged behind the scenes to cut you out.


  For my part, I simply cannot understand where this entire
conversation is
coming from.  It seems to be predicated on the assumption
that a
maintainership is some kind of position of prestige, status
and power - as
opposed to the onerous duty and ongoing burden only
willingly accepted out of
a sense of debt and responsibility that it actually
represents.

    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....

I think, the real issue is not the openness of the project
management,
but this:

> Given that I have made significant contributions
> to GDB/MI over a long period of time then it would then
seem appropriate to at
> least e-mail me off-list before the announcement to
inform me of your
> intention.

As far as I see, nobody has commented on this sentence of
Nick. I think
it would be worth doing that, at least before blaming him
and saying
that a global maintainer must have a higher level of ability
of being
able to avoid heated personal debates.

As a complete outsider, my feeling is that if Nick had
really been
considered as a valuable and important member of the
community rather
than someone who should be "outmaneuvered", then
exactly the same
decision would have been communicated toward him in a much
more friendly
way.

Although Nick's responses in this thread are offensive and
his
statements may even be false, I understand his bad feeling
and I must
say it - at least partially - justifies his reactions.

Some people expected an apology in this thread but nobody
seemed to be
thinking about whether he should apologize. More than one
person made a
mistake in this awkward story. I strongly believe that a
frank 'sorry'
from the one who made the first one would be followed by
others.

After all, this is a great community of great people. With
no exception.

All the best,
Alpar

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 4:01 PM, Alpár Jüttner <alparcs.elte.hu> wrote:
>  Although Nick's responses in this thread are offensive
and his
>  statements may even be false, I understand his bad
feeling and I must
>  say it - at least partially - justifies his
reactions.

I'm comfortable with the decision we made, and how we
arrived at it,
but I do regret not explaining to Nick the reasons we
decided not to
invite him to evaluate patches for MI.  At the time,
explaining seemed
unlikely to be constructive, but perhaps I was also trying
to avoid a
possibly unpleasant conversation.  Explaining the decision
would have
at least allowed Nick to know for a fact what had happened,
instead of
being forced to guess, and tempted to guess the worst.

In situations where someone is expecting a response, and the
group
decides not to invite them to take on a responsibility, I
think the
group ought to explain their decision to the person in
private, even
when doing so is uncomfortable.