Re: follow-up to report 22

[Valentin Villenave]

On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Carl Sorensen <address@hidden> wrote:
> As far as I know, I'm not a member of -hackers.  I get a not-found error
> whenever I click on any of the links.
>
> I don't have any emails from -hackers in my inbox or saved mails.  I don't
> have -hackers in my Contacts list.  So I'm not part of the in-crowd in this
> discussion.

Oh. Then please accept my apologies. I assumed you were because, in a
private conversation I had with Graham (which I'm sure he'll forgive
me for quoting), he referred to -hackers as "a private+archived
mailing list for extremely well-known developers like Han-Wen, Jan,
me, Carl, and Neil".

By the way, I didn't want to raise the question of the criteria, but I
am bound to wonder why it is that you are not a member of this list.
To quote David's speculative criteria, you do seem perfectly
"sane/safe/trustable/reasonable" to me. -- On the other hand, with all
the respect I have for John, who is also a good friend of mine, I
believe he still is a member of -hackers although hasn't been doing
any visible work on LilyPond for months, and was dismissed by Graham
as the Translations Meister.

(Since I do know John, I also know how unfair what I've just said is:
although he hasn't been doing *visible* work on LilyPond, he's
actually been spending all this time working on something that will be
of great help to us when he unveils it. But I hope I've made my point:
where to draw the line between people deemed worthy of the -hackers
list and other people?)

> I'm sorry that my response was disturbing to you.  I was not trying to be
> disrespectful or condescending.  I certainly did not intend my response
> to expand or continue negative feelings.
>
> I'm trying to recognize this issue as a real issue, but one that would be
> better discussed at a specific time in the future.

I understand better now what you had in mind. As you may have
understood, I have a hard time not interpreting things as "go play
with your pointless doc-patches and let the grown-ups do serious 2.14
business". I never actually thought you could be implying such a
thing, but the mere fact that it crossed my mind illustrates how I am
feeling (and have been for some time) towards the development team: I
am obviously on edge.

> I have reread that email.  It asks for a lot of work to be done relative to
> the -hackers list.  But the hope is to figure out what the hackers list is
> and how we use it formally in the GOP, after 2.14 is out, instead of right
> now.

I'm not sure about the amount of work and discussions implied, but I
do trust your judgement on that.

> Would such a patch be helpful?

LGTM :-)

By all accounts, I wish someone from -hackers had proposed this patch
(or better yet, a more informative one?) instead of you. Rather than
dismissing every possible concerns altogether, it would have been much
appreciated if someone had simply thrown us a bone, e.g. a list of
names and/or informal criteria and/or some background, history about
this list, the why, the how, the when etc.

I obviously hurt Graham's feeling, which was certainly not what I was
aiming for, but I do hope we can work together and put an end to this
situation (and again: like David, I am not referring to the division
between people who are subscribed to -hackers and other people, but
between those who "know" about it and those who do not).

Cheers,
Valentin.