Re: [Gdbheads] Steering Committee nominations

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 01:59:25PM -0500, Elena Zannoni wrote:
> This example doesn't require the members of the SC to read the code,
> because doing that wouldn't have helped.  Having a grasp of the level
> of complexity of that particular task, and knowing some general
> principles of good software engineering is plenty here.  In case I am
> not making myself clear, you don't need developers directly involved
> in this decision apart from them offering objective and unbiased
> estimates of the amount of work involved going one way or the other.
> Was there disagreement among the ssa developers about how much work
> was involved?

I'm not sure what you mean.  The amount of work spent on the branch is
a purely objective thing, and no one argues about it.  Anyway, we don't
need to pick up this tangent, I think.

> I think that being part of the SC is not just a honorific position, it
> requires some active participation and time commitment.  And I think
> we are all in agreement on this, whether the members are also
> developers or not.
> 
> Anyway, I totally agree with Eli about the fact that developers should
> not be on the SC, given the current tension among us.  I'd like a more
> unbiased body.  I don't want to find myself in another similar
> situation a few months in the future.  Just saying "we hope that this
> will not happen again" is not enough, given human nature.  Look at how
> judicial systems work in most countries, lawyers, judges, jurors are
> not usually intimately familiar with the matters they oversee.  There
> is always a discovery phase that involves consultation with those
> directly involved to collect all the facts.  The same would apply
> here.  The SC would not be making decisions in a vacuum, we would be
> in the loop.

Thanks - I'm convinced.

My biggest concern is the fact that GCC development has active
participants who are not maintainers, and GDB has extremely few of
these.  Not including any of the current SC members, who are all either
active developers, formerly active developers, or have never
participated in community development of GDB - this is purely to the
best of my knowledge, which is of relatively recent origins.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software                         Debian GNU/Linux Developer