Re: Contributors and maintainers

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: address@hidden (Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer)
> Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2015 19:46:04 +0200
> 
> I honestly don't remember a single response that even seemed to
> acknowledge the concern I've explained multiple times in detail,
> except for responses by Random832.  Having responded at all is not
> proof of having addressed the
> [...]
> > We've been living with the current shell-quote-argument for literally
> > *decades*, which might explain why we're not instantly ready to make changes
> > -- even though Eli has made a change to the docstring at your request. How
> > does that constitute "no response"? I am confused.
> 
> It made a change that was neither asked for (by me at least), nor
> addressed my concern.  Think about how irritating it must be to spend a
> lot of effort to explain a concern, *also* provide a patch which solves
> that concern, and then have the maintainer reject your patch and instead
> apply one of their own which *doesn't* address your concern.

How can installing a change triggered by your bug report be _anything_
_but_ A RESPONSE to your concerns?  It was not the patch you proposed,
that's true, but it was my response to the less-than-ideal situation
that _you_ described.

That's _exactly_ what we are here for: to listen to you and others,
make our own analysis of the situation, and act accordingly.  You will
have to accept a trivial thing -- that the way we act on your reports
and proposals will not always exactly match what you proposed, because
we have different perspectives and different experiences.  When you
will become an Emacs maintainer, a day that I hope will come, you will
have the same prerogative and the same responsibilities.

> > Also, it does not help to reiterate how clear and cogent your arguments have
> > been. Until we both agree, "clarity" and "cogency" have not been achieved.
> > These attributes must exist *between* disputants; they cannot be determined 
> > by
> > one side alone. We have all been working to achieve clarity, but I fear this
> > has been misunderstood as a stubborn rejection of your ideas.
> 
> The problem is that the concern was not even acknowledged, let alone
> being shown the courtesy to be openly disagreed with.

What else can possibly acknowledge your concern, if not making changes
to resolve your concerns??

> And all the while reiterating my main concern that remained unaddressed,
> I *did* try to address many of the counter-concerns that were raised,
> although in the grand scheme of things they only served to divert
> attention away from my concern.

That's your lopsided POV, nothing else.  You only consider your
concerns addressed if they and your suggested solutions
are_absolutely_ accepted, without any changes.  You don't allow anyone
to deviate even an inch from your proposals, and if they dare, they
are "not addressing" and "not acknowledging" your concerns.  Really,
this is beyond 1984's Newspeak.

> All of this may not be easy to see to an outside observer of the topic.

No, it's actually VERY easy to see.  Fact is, several people here
independently told you exactly the same: you need to accept the
judgment of the project maintenance team, and you should respect their
decisions even if you disagree with them.

> All that might make it very hard to understand why such a level of
> irritation would happen in first place, which is why I'm trying to take
> a sort of empirical approach to the problem, which is to enumerate the
> mails in which I explain the same concern, and ask for mails in which
> that concern is clearly acknowledged, and responded to with explicit
> disagreement or a solution; anything but bringing up a "related" topic.

Your concerns were acknowledged, but your proposed solutions were
disagreed to.  That's all that happened.  You need to learn to accept
that, because this is how any Free Software community works.

> I wish we had a professional psychologist or sociologist as part of the
> maintainer team. :-)

She wasn't needed until now.