[haiku-development] Re: Testing the poll

On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 12:49 AM, Niels Reedijk <niels.reedijk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> First of all, to make things clear, the 'you have to be a developer to
> vote' criterium was meant more descriptive than prescriptive,
> currently you really have to be a developer - meaning you need to be a
> member of the developers group in Trac - to vote. That's a setting,
> not a final selection of everybody who could vote.
>
> Secondly, whether the developer criterium is too exclusionary and
> unfair, that's a hard debate. It goes back to leadership, community
> and those discussions have been inconclusive, and in my opinion, can
> be considered a failure.
>
> So what we have here is a list of proposals. Initially, Axel said (and I 
> quote):
>
> "The aim of this thread should be to compile a complete list of things
> we want to have in the first alpha release, be it feature or software."
>
> My interpretation is that this has to do with the software, which is a
> domain exclusive to developers. That is not my interpretation, but
> rather something that has been asserted by various community members
> time and time again. It has been confirmed (on-list and off-list) that
> the decision making body of the Haiku software would become the
> developer group - which is everyone with SVN access - after the
> dismantling of the admin team and the creation of a new governing body
> for the non-profit. Whether that criterium is too exclusionary or not,
> that should be debated in a different thread and not in context of
> this alpha 1 release.

Everything in Haiku is about software. :) Even when you do marketing
or any other discipline for the project, it all comes back to
software, as nothing exists in a vacuum, and it's all part of a whole.

I realize that the devs have made statements that all
development-related things will be decided by the developers, and that
SVN access is the criteria for whether you can participate in the
decision making or not.

But I think when you look at a release, there is a bigger picture to
consider. I think this latest round of discussions has made it obvious
that this criteria is inadequate in such a bigger picture. I know
there is no intent, but the result effect of this criteria is this:

* People that have adopted alpha 1 related tasks, and are therefore
going to contribute to the release, are being left out

* People from peripheral projects whose work will be included in the
alpha 1 release are being left out (notably BeZilla and HaikuPorts)

* Recognized contributors that do not meet the SVN access criteria
(developers or not) are being left out

There is also the issue that the development list and Trac (a
development tool) are being used to discuss/decide stuff like product
naming, logos, etc. I guess that's ok, after all Haiku is a
developer-centric software development project.

But then those of us who are not developers need to be able to
influence those non-developmental areas of the project, and
automatically leaving us out from the vote does not help. The
inability to edit the wiki also makes it more cumbersome and
bureaucratic, and having to send send a message to a mailing list
every time is a real turn off.

> Now there is a thing which makes this selection of voters more
> complex. Some of the proposals are beyond the reach of the technical
> side. For example, the marketing proposals (such as #70 through #73),
> or #2 - to name the release Developer Release, or one might even argue
> whether to select a release coordinator (#6) is beyond the reach of
> software. In the latter case I would argue it isn't, but that is not
> the point of this message.
>
> The fact that this list is now so broad makes it less effective (in my
> opinion), but let's continue and evaluate later.
>
> I feel like I came over as the guy with the veto on who gets to vote
> and who doesn't. Let me make it perfectly clear that I don't have this
> power (other people can administrate Trac), nor do I want to.

I did not mean to say that you had the power. :)

I am raising the issues to everyone here, in the hope that they can be
addressed. It just happens that I did so in a reply to your message,
because you seem to be the person who administers Trac.

> To that extend, send me the list of all the people who - according to
> the 'consensus' - should be included, including Trac usernames, and I
> will make sure they can edit the page and vote. Since I have to
> investigate the Firefox 2 issue, I propose to hold of the actual
> voting until I find out what causes the problem, which should give the
> list enough time.

It's not my call either. But our community is not that big that it
would be so difficult to come up with such a list; it should be fairly
short. I think nobody will object if you start with the names that
Stippi sent to this list. If anyone wants to propose somebody, they
can send an email to this list to be considered for inclusion.

Somebody asked about the GSoC students. Personally, I feel that GSoC
participation *alone* is not enough to be considered a contributor.
But if a student completed his GSoC program successfully *and*
continued making contributions to Haiku after GSoC, then I would
consider that student a contributor.

Jorge

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