Re: [Gdbheads] proposed change to GDB maintainership rules

[Jim Blandy]

Ian Lance Taylor <address@hidden> writes:
> > On a tangential note - you and/or Andrew (I can't remember, and am too
> > lazy to sift through my archives) have presented Eric Bachalo as
> > somehow leading this.  As far as I have seen, that impression is
> > entirely inaccurate.  He was kind enough to arrange for our phone
> > conversations, but his participation in our discussions (whether via
> > phone or e-mail) has been minimal.  I have no reason to believe that
> > he has been doing anything other than what any good manager should do:
> > he has tried to help those working under him resolve a difficulty that
> > they were having.  But, to the best of my knowledge, he hasn't pressed
> > them to do so, he hasn't guided their actions, he hasn't done anything
> > that could possibly be construed as being for the benefit of Red Hat
> > instead of the GDB community as a whole.
> 
> I know Eric, and I like him, but I would have to say, based on this,
> that he called this one wrong.  A good manager should resolve
> difficulties directly; that's his or her job.  In this case, speaking
> directly to Andrew, and probably Andrew's boss (whoever that is) would
> probably have been the best step.  A good manager should not encourage
> private discussions aimed at solving a personnel problem, at least not
> for more than a day or two.

I think this is a tangential point, but for what it's worth:

A good amount of the blame is mine.  At one point where I was grousing
privately to Eric about Andrew, he said something to the effect of,
"All my GDB engineers feel the same way.  If you guys can figure out
what you want to do about it, I'll support you."

It was my idea to start the private discussion.  We had tried to raise
these issues in public so many times, and failed to make any headway,
that the only way I could see to get further was to actually work out,
exactly as David said, what we wanted to do, build some consensus
around it, and then present it with some sort of unity.

I understand that this is not a good way to do business.  If there is
a committee of ten people, of which nine get together for lunch before
every meeting and then show up at the meeting with a consensus, that
is not fair, to say the least, to the tenth person.  But if that tenth
person has been approached publicly, through all the proper channels,
many times over a period of years, and if the nine use their secret
lunch to effectively address long-standing problems, then I see that
differently.

> And I have to say that the idea of one group within Red Hat planning
> how to work around problems with somebody else at Red Hat, and
> bringing in people outside of Red Hat before speaking directly to the
> person at Red Hat, well, that just has me shaking my head in
> disbelief.

As I say, it's not the case that we have not spoken directly and
publicly with Andrew; we have done so many times.  See the links David
has posted; we could dig up more.